A Journey From Grey to Radiance

Collective dust settled in the dull room as Kenton sat in front of his laptop, and he hesitated to click the esc key and close out for the night. The screen blared in his face, even overriding the light coming from the window glass. Beams refracted onto his chin, and if his life were any more comical, it would dissolve a hole in his head like a centered sun ray through a magnifying glass.

The home phone began to ring. He moved over a hand from the esc key, the blaring chime of it interrupting his compulsion with the computer screen.

No words came from the other end, yet, rather than the patience for him to speak first.

"Hello?"

"Hello, this is your CFO speaking."

"May I ask why, sir?"

"Ma'am, to you." The voice slightly snapped back. Kenton hadn't realized it was a much deeper-spoken woman talking: not a stereotypical CEO in a fitted male tuxedo and black leather shoes.

"Sorry, can I help you?"

"Yes you can. How are those statements coming along?" She seemed preoccupied, her bass a little distant from the phone speaker. "Due in a couple days, Kenton."

He muted his microphone, scooting his chair back as he cursed.

"Damn it."

"Excuse me, Kenton?"

Or he thought he muted himself. He quickly scrambled back to the phone, his hands clinching the phone in place.

"Good! They are going good. I just need maybe, uh, like two more days? About it?"

"Tomorrow, have it by my office or attach it to an email. No later." She hastily replied before the line closed. Kenton screeched his chair back, hands cupping his face as he wiped off sweat. He wanted to curse more, but that wasn't going to write him those statements, so he refrained.

He turned to the rest of the room: looking at the computer would only make it worse. It was a cubicle of an apartment. There was a living room, if he considered it that, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a multipurpose box that he kept the junk in. The bed room was more of a bed that took up all the space, but it made due. The kitchen blended into the living room, a counter top and tile floor separating the two, holding up a couple plastic bowls of uncooked Spaghetti-O's and cheap cereal. The fridge was in the back, by the junk spot, and inside of it was a couple half gallons of milk and water bottles. Kenton sighed.

He moved to the fridge, stepping beside it and opening the door to the junk room. Inside was an old suitcase of his, a canvas board and some acrylics that dotted the floor. The brushes used to endlessly work at the tips of his fingers, coloring intricate blank sheets and crafting images only the child-like part of his mind could generate. Airplanes made of painless fire, that is only there for the looks. Marshmallow men that bounced off of walls, scenery with upside-down trees and walking fish. He smiled at the sight of them.

"Been a little bit." Kenton murmured, bending over to pick up the broken colors. Each set reminded him of a different past painting, likely already sold or pawned off for the extra money.

Quitting artistry wasn't his desired path, but it was the survivable one. Modern art, regardless of social media and all the posts, doesn't get as much credibility as those in the Renaissance did: The Starry Night, featuring 2025, wouldn't pass a high school course nowadays if it didn't already have its relativity. Kenton needed money. And accounting was more promising than creativity had been. A steady income was better than a recurring one, and a cubicle wasn't much different than sitting on a stool to paint once he adjusted to it.

Kenton looked to the large, blank canvas, still propped up on the stretcher frame. It was glaring him down as much as he did it, and he couldn't help but reach out a hand to ease it's calling. His fingers delicately grazed the surface.

The room began to shrink. He looked around, twice to be positive, before his grip tightened on the suitcase below him and he began to spin, as if it would anchor him to the ground. His head heaved, the dizziness blurring his vision and strained lights tapping on his eyelids. He felt stretched, tightened, and closed all in the same moments, and only opened his eyes once his body wasn't teetering, and at first the white glare overwhelmed him.

He looked around. Rubbing his eyes countless times, he didn't seem to be wrong. It was white. He kept looking in countless directions, unable to calculate distance or relativity in the vast space of infinite color. It was like a blizzard, stuck in time, where snow toppled everything and the lands were flat plains for eternity.

"Hello?" Kenton called out. "Am I blind?" he asked shortly thereafter, wiping his eyes. He felt his right palm wrapped around the suitcase, seemingly glued to the leather handle. Somehow it was still there, and he set it down on the bleached ground.

He squinted. There wasn't anything but chalky air for what seemed ever, and the only things with any color was him and his gray dress clothes, as if prepared for a day at work. He tightened the damp silver tie on his neck, looking to his suitcase.

It had clicked open. No crease in the opening, but the locks had come off, and it was almost calling for him to receive. He walked closer, popping the top off.

Unlike the white abyss he had been sprawled into, the suitcase was a deep, black hole. He reached in, expecting to touch it's bottom, but instead gripped the panel of a keyboard: he pulled it out, gazing at the item as if it were alien in his hands. It felt weightless and indisputably useless. He set it down, his arm reaching back down into the suitcase, grabbing the wooden leg of a table.

"What is this..." he murmured, pulling out the body, and the other legs of his work desk, with almost no trouble. He set it upright, able to move it with minimal difficulty, and set it to the side. "What do I do with you?" He looked back to the keyboard, then the desk, and felt a slight click in his head. His apartment items: in all their entirety, were deep in the guts of the old suitcase.

Kenton rummaged through, pulling out the few furniture appliances he had in his home, and the small items within them. His cloth couch, the pillows off his bed. Somehow the bed itself hovered through the opening of the suitcase, and he smiled at his progress.

The keyboard went on top of his work desk, connected with cords to the laptop he found. The coffee mug went on the edge of the table as if it would fall. The kitchen counter separated the living room and dining area, uplifting exactly three plastic cups of Spaghetti-O's and cheap, great-value cereal. His bed was a few steps away in orderly fashion, still taking up plenty of space in white heaven. The carpet was shoved back in the middle of the living room. His little pictures and portraits were placed back up on non-existent walls: somehow they sat upright in thin air, as if the room itself was coming back piece by piece.

Kenton wiped sweat from his brow, panting as he put down his last object: a canvas, in the center of the junk room. He stepped back, awaiting the most impossible to happen. For the space to magically inflate again and for the phone to ring its most annoying ring: any noise in this setting would give him endless joy. For the light to start pestering him through the window and shine all over his workspace, even placing that glare on the computer screen he so despised.

His grin was slowly fading. He regained his breath, looking around at the life he had formed. He looked at the suitcase, still open on the ground, a black hole, and then back to his apartment. He lived here. His brain began to bobble reality.

"What, no? This is not..." Kenton whispered, aligning his body against the walls and the decor, even the junk room. His eyes darted from his workspace to the bedroom, to the kitchen and the floor. The ceiling, even the fan he'd stuck back up there.

"I don't understand." he softly worried, his joy of rebuilding the room falling into fear of being dead. The possibility of this being the afterlife wasn't out of question. Not yet.

He went back to the suitcase, going armpit-low into the depths of it. He moved around his hands, widening them for the hopes of touching something: anything.

The feeling of something small and dense smacked his fingertips. He reached in further, clasping the grip as he pulled it out, a gasp of relief as he pushed it in front of him, onto the floor.

The suitcase slammed shut, just as it had been before he collected his home from it. His life. All the physical things he owned. Every little detail to his humble abode, and even then it didn't come out as much.

The item on the ground was a paint brush. A simple, wooden-handled utensil with bristles on the end. Kenton leaned against the door frame, slight tears loosening from his eyes.

"No, what can I do with a paint brush?"

His hands lazily dropped to his sides, and he looked at the floor they were resting on. White. He looked to the walls, the photographs, his bed, every door, the fridge. Gray, white, gray.

Using a sleeve of his suit to wipe the tears from his cheek, he picked up the paintbrush. He let it settle on his fingers, and he picked his body up, walking over to his work desk. He took one deep, wavering flick of his wrist, the bristles scratching across the surface, leaving behind a light red, burgundy strain on the previously dull material.

"Yes!" Kenton smiled as color began to flush, and he ran across the room illuminating the hues and shades as he doused his previously dead apartment in complexion. The fridge was lime, his window frame now a bright coral. The bed work was purple, lavender smeared along the walls and whatever dreamy shade he desired was splotched on the floor. The crooks and crannies of his apartment were the brightest: edges were blossoming in greens, yellows, and scarlet. His fan had different colors of the rainbow for every blade. His plastic, cheap foods were given sponsorship of color and the marble counter was a sky blue.

He made sure every bit of the naked eye was suffocating in reflections: that not even a little section of his home was left out. He waltzed into the junk room, painting the suitcase a matte pink, and took a seat on the stool in front of the canvas. He grinned, a wave of freedom and joy arranging themselves accordingly in his head.

Kenton raised his brush once more to the canvas, setting it into the paper-like covering with a newfound purpose.

The room began to shrink. He looked around, this time spreading his arms in reconciliation as the spinning begun. He laughed as he got dizzy, the familiar sensation only screaming that he is coming back home.

He dropped his arms as the room came back to, and pulled himself out of a trance. He looked down at his suitcase, which was back to it's leather brown, and the walls were an every-day grayish blue. The hum of his fan in the living room still spun, and his phone was ringing. He hopped off the stool in the junk room, tottering through the kitchen and onto his chair. He picked up the phone, the deep breaths of effort likely echoing into the phone.

"Kenton? CFO speaking. I sent some update messages to your email on those statements and haven't heard back in hours. Are you trying to get fired?"

He smiled this time, tapping on the back of the home phone, debating on what to say.

"Maybe I am. I don't think I'm going to turn in any statements."

"What?"

"Yeah, I'm done. I can't do this anymore." Kenton looked back to the junk room, the nature of his true love radiating from it much clearer now. "I want to try something else."

"Oh." The voice on the other end of the line sounded a lot less in control now, and Kenton hung up before she could say anything else.

He rose, moving back to the junk room and leaning on the entrance, staring from a short distance at the now colorful canvas. A self-portrait of his bland room, instead doused in color. He'd been lacking real individuality for as long as he could remember.

And maybe. Just maybe, all it took to bring that back was a little bit of magic.