A Life in Gray

It was raining the day the color left.  Overcast with hues of blue, the sky cried until the streets were swimming with tears.  Puddles reflected neon orange and bright yellow starbursts and smeared a vibrant crimson against the speckled concrete canvas.  Another colorful disaster, an unavoidable tragedy of which I was the unwilling witness.

I think, perhaps, my eyes had seen too much color.  Unable to comprehend the constant variations, my mind relented.  The muddled amalgamation of pigment faded into dull gray which encompassed everything.  When life is built in shades of gray, nothing stands out.  To me, that nothingness was comforting.  I was a gray being operating in gray space, a moving part of the background.  No one sought connection with me and neither did I with them.  Connections inherently had color.  Someone who saw in gray had no use for such things.  Connections would only cause pain.

My daily life in gray passed in relative peace.  There was no pain, no excitement or wonder, not even joy.  But time passed.  The weeds in my yard sprouted and grew tall.  The light of the sun, a luminescent light gray, came and went each day.  My meals of gray potato with grayish sauce satiated any scrap of hunger I had.  I needed very little and wanted even less.  Truly, I had no complaints.

Eventually, I stopped counting days.  Weeks passed in blissful ennui, unmarred by remarkability or novelty.  My other senses began adapting to the grayness.  Things felt gray, tasted gray, and even smelt gray.  It didn’t bother me.  How could I be bothered by what I was?

It was a misty gray morning when the creature appeared.  I was retrieving pale gray mail from my dark gray mailbox when it approached.  Four legged, a curling tail and inquisitive eyes, the cat sent a shiver down my spine.  It was black.

Was black a color?  A shade of gray? My thoughts spiraled in quick succession.  Color was a stranger to me.  I couldn’t see it, even if I wanted to see it.  So black must be a shade of gray.  It had to be.

The cat meowed, demanding something.  Of what, I wasn’t sure.  It continued to insist so I brought it inside and offered it gray potato.  It ate it without complaint.  Perhaps this cat was a gray being as well.  Vaguely, I wondered what colors the cat saw, if any.

It became a daily ritual, my feeding of the cat.  Each morning and evening it would appear, yelling for food.  I couldn’t blame it.  In recent days, I had upgraded my gray potato offering to gray canned cat food.  If I didn’t temper my generosity, I was sure more cats would accumulate on my doorstep.

Many days, I would catch the cat perched on my windowsill.  He monitored the birds fluttering by, silently wishing for one to come near.  An avid hunter, he often displayed his captured prey on my doorstep.  A display I found disturbing, yet I lacked the heart to discourage him.

Tuna, named for his favorite flavor, was the playful sort.  Shoelaces were an irresistible temptation.  I procured a set from an old pair of shoes and spent hours sliding it across the ground, teasing him into diving for it.  He so desperately wanted the string and yet never bit my hand for it, content to be led along for the game.

One day, Tuna wandered into the forbidden room.  He had somehow wiggled the door free and made himself at home in the vacant bed.  I froze at the threshold.  This room contained color.  Though I couldn’t see it, I knew sorrowful pinks and somber greens were threatening to saturate my safe, gray world.  That couldn’t happen.  It would hurt too much.  I screamed, startling Tuna.  He bolted from the room as I collapsed.  

I didn’t see Tuna for a while.  In those days, I missed his stark presence, his dash of black against the gray.  Birds loitered in the yard unopposed.  Mealtimes occurred in silence.  Time, which had been passing so quickly, now kept an agonizingly slow pace.  Somehow, without realizing it, I had begun to enjoy time spent with Tuna.  Enjoyment was an emotion of color and the idea of experiencing it was unnerving.  Yet, Tuna felt like an exception.  He was also a creature of gray after all.

Eventually Tuna returned as he had first arrived, demanding dinner.  This time, however, I was well prepared with not only canned cat food, but cat treats for dessert.  My offerings appeased him and when he had eaten his fill, he contented himself by curling up on my lap.  He vibrated softly, purring in a soothing rhythm.  His weight was comfort and eased the anxiety I had felt at his disappearance.  As I reached to pet him, he gave my hand a quick lick.

I flinched at the touch.  Not from the sandpaper sharpness, but from the color.  His tongue was pink.  His tongue was pink and I could see it.  Part of me wanted to scream, to shake the cat away and banish the color from my mind.  Seeing in color is what brought about my pain.  I couldn’t let it hurt me again.

Yet despite my heart’s pounding, I remained still.  Tuna purred, unaware, on my lap.  It had just been a small fleck of color.  Was a kiss of pink worth scaring Tuna away again?  Was Tuna worth a spume of color amidst an ocean of gray?  

I reached down again and received another colorful lick on the hand.  Tears welled in my eyes.  A life in gray was stable, structured, and simple.  There was no excitement, no joy, wonder, or pain.  With Tuna, life was less gray but somehow still stable, structured, and simple.  There was excitement, joy, wonder, and also pain.  This pain, however, ached less than existing with nothingness.  Yes, Tuna was worth it.  And maybe, given more time, other things would be too.

I began to give Tuna scratches behind his ears, much to his approval.

“I miss you.”