bLuE

Blue

Blue’s the color of the neat dim sky that surrounds us with great intensity, the thing which covers most of our dear planet Earth, with grayish-blue puffs of smoke—also called clouds—humming along it.

There’s also the blue sun: feeble and dull, dimly casting rays of sunlight that pierce through the heavy clouds that pose above.

It’s been like that for ten years now. Ten years of wearing the same saddish-blue outfits, of going to the same blue building at 8 o’clock, of drinking the same blue macchiato coffee, and of having to support the blue Baltimore Orioles—and between me and you, they did not look good in blue.

“Lost something?” Elijah’s voice snapped me out of it, breaking the fine line that divided reality and fantasy.

Fantasy of a colored world.

He’d found me gazing out of the window, admiring the paradise of blue across the city. Of the blue-colored donut shop that had once been tainted in all but blue, or that coffee shop that was everywhere, what was it called? Starbucks, was it? Yeah, I think it was that. Target too now looked like another Walmart, and even Coca-Cola looked like the direct straight copy of Pepsi.

Things were just so messed up.

Now, every time I tried to picture the colors back in my mind, they seemed to be fading away from existence, out of my memory, and out of the world. Would we even go back to the way things used to be?

A tear rustled down my eye without me noticing it. I had to clear it away before someone saw it.

I turned around to Elijah, who glared at me, his navy blue eyes glinting softly. “No, it’s okay. Just looking.”

He nodded in understatement. We all knew what that meant. We all knew what it meant being stuck in a government system nobody was in favor of, a government system that forced us only to look at the color I’d liked in my early days of childhood—not anymore, I hated it.

“That color is… is great, right?” he said, forcing those words to come out of his mouth.

I coughed and glanced out of the window once more. I knew what the word “right” meant in our new world of saying things. The word “right” meant nothing else but shit. Fucking shit. Nobody liked it, nobody liked the government, but when you had invisible vigilante drones roaming around everywhere, you couldn’t risk saying a word, or else you’d end up like Dante.

Poor guy thought of asking for a rainbow-flavored ICEE at the shop. Surprise when the drone came into the store, putting a good amount of bullets in his torso. He never woke up after that.

“Absolutely,” I answered with the biggest fake smile possible in human history. “It’s the best color ever.”

He nodded in appreciation and exited my office through the door, leaving me with the city evolving between my eyes. Blue Camaros, blue Chryslers, blue Mustangs—they did not even look good, nothing looked good in blue!

But of course, the government had other ideas.

I felt my throat dry as I returned my eyes to the computer screen, to nothing but unfinished work and a lot of responsibilities that seemed useless in terms of this job. Big news in case you hadn’t noticed: I hated my job with all my heart. Hated it like dogs hated cats, and like cats hated mice. I hated it like finding out your favorite snack got discontinued.

And yet, here I was, staring at the Excel sheet with a frown so deep you might think this had great significance in the fabric of the universe itself. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

Hours passed slowly before I finally got to get out of this hellhole. I slung my blue backpack over my shoulder, pulled my blue coat tight against the evening chill, and walked outside into the restless city of Baltimore. The city buzzed around me—horns blaring from impatient drivers, streetlights flickering away in colors now so used to me. Sky blue was for drive, normal blue was for go slower, and dark navy blue was for stop. The distant wail of sirens blended with murmurs from pedestrians and food vendors that stood with their Hot Dogs For Only $1 stands all over the sidewalk.

I sighed as a pedestrian brushed past me, knocking me on the shoulder without much of an apology. Typical. But just as she disappeared into the crowd, I saw something tumble out from her bag—a blue Michael Kors wallet now sat on the floor as the woman got each time further away.

I hesitated for half a second before picking it up. “Hey! Hey, lady! You dropped your wallet!” I called, jogging after her.

Nothing. No reaction. She kept walking like she had noise-canceling headphones on or just zero awareness of what was happening around her. I tried again.

“Ma’am! Your wallet!”

Still nothing.

“Oh, come on!” I muttered under my breath. My feet had started to hurt as I ran against the currents of people, saying quite a lot of sorries as I hit almost every one of them. The lady kept getting further away. “Hey, lady! Blue hoodie! Michael Kors! You looking like you’re losing some money today?”

Still, she didn’t turn around.

Stupid pedestrians, I thought as I hurried my steps to follow her. In an alley, she turned a sharp right and I was forced to follow her, jogging as I shouted, “Hey, lady. Your wallet!” My steps quickly catching up to her, but it didn’t matter how much I shouted and made a scandal of noise, she just didn’t seem to hear me.

Or maybe she didn’t want to turn.

I considered leaving the wallet on the floor and running in the opposite direction, but there was something holding me back, like an invisible force that told me: You have to give her the wallet, trust me.

So, it came as a surprise when she stopped in the middle of an alley, grabbed me by the collar of my coat, and pushed me against the brick wall, my back hitting with an agonizing thud. “Why are you following me?” she hissed.

I couldn’t answer, not because of the obvious reasons of feeling threatened and feeling like I was about to die. There was something off with her. In the dim flickering light of the streetlight, her hoodie cast a heavy shadow over her face, but for a split second, as her head passed beneath the light, I saw it—a glint of red in her eyes. Not just a reflection, not just a trick of the dim glow, but color. A deep, unnatural red, vivid against the darkness.

Something that wasn’t there anymore.

Something I hadn’t seen in years.

My breath caught in my throat. My mouth opened, not in fear, but in pure, stunned amazement. I could not believe it. After years of hearing stories that the chosen one—the colored one—would one day come, now I was staring at her with my own two eyes. Frank Byers, the very one and only.

Oh God.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

“I asked you a question! Answer it!” hissed the lady, grabbing tighter on my collar. She must’ve noticed something was wrong, because her hands were now shaking with fear.

I just couldn’t believe it. “Your eyes,” I muttered softly, thousands of emotions swirling around my body. “You have beautiful eyes.”

She pushed her hood tighter, bringing more shadow to her eyes, which now blended in the uniformity of blue and darkness. She shook me more violently by my collar. “Who do you work for? What do you want?”

“Um,” I raised my hands and showed her the Michael Kors wallet. “You dropped your wallet.”

She gasped and let go of the tight grip she held on my collar, cleaning her hands from the dust she now had. “Sorry,” she muttered, crestfallen, grabbing the wallet from my hand and stuffing it away into her bag. “Look, I should get going.” She said, raising her head up a bit, and gifting me a polite smile. “Thanks for the wallet.”

But all I could think, all I could see and feel were two words that kept blaring inside of me like a repeated mantra. Chosen one. Chosen one. Chosen one. She had to be it, she had to be the savior of them all, the one who was supposed to bring color back to our lives. Everything back to the way it used to be.

“You’re the chosen one, aren’t you?” I asked before she could walk away from there. “You’re the one that’s going to save us from everything.”

I could see a flicker of something pass between her eyes before she went for a laugh. “The chosen one? You really believe I’m the chosen one?” She laughed even louder, kicking some beer bottles that were scattered on the ground. “I’m nothing, okay? Just an old common loser here, okay? Nothing to be excited about.”

“But your eyes—”

“They’re nothing.” She huffed, restless around her place, and turned her glare to me, her red eyes not visible from the light, which was now growing fainter as the sun hid behind the buildings that surrounded Baltimore. “Look, I really appreciate your words and everything, but I should get going. I have more… important matters to take care of.”

She dropped a smile and ran away in the opposite direction from where she had come from. Her figure quickly disappearing into the transited streets of Baltimore, all filled with that boring, saddened color of blue.

Even if it was like that, I got the impression everything was going to change soon. I didn’t know the name of the girl, or where she lived, nor if I was going to see her again in my life. Nonetheless, I knew she could change the course of destiny.

A tiny spark of hope erupted inside of me.