13.5.12

Forgetting Color

A floor of checkerboard stretched before the one who disliked uniformity. With mild disdain for the redundancy of the pattern, the disapprover scuffed at a tile. Interest pooled into the conscious gap which previously held the lack there of. There was nothing at all uniform about the square inky abyss into which the scuffing foot disappeared. All the more intrigued, the knee followed the foot, hip transcending into the dark, immediately followed by the rest.

How strange was it to be doing a headstand in the middle of the bar? Surely the curious had just pulled themselves through, or did they climb through? Either way, this position was obviously not the proper way to stand. This was told easily be the looks the gargoyle was giving the head-stander. Archaic was he, shaking his head with a menacing frown. Snorting ash from his nose, the gargoyle returned to his pitcher of beer, figuring he had said his bit.

Uprighting themselves and landing on a cushioned stool, the new arrival turned red as a beet. Ordering a pitcher for himself, he used the cool beverage to extinguish the burn in his cheeks. The more he gulped, the less embarrassed he became. Embarrassed about what? At the end of the pitcher (which seemed to grow deeper with every glug) he couldn't even remember what there was to be embarrassed about, no more than he remembered how he came to be on the bar stool.

Paying in clovers, for goats do like clover, he shot the beast a grin and slid from the stool, melting into a puddle and slushing along out the door. When did it start raining? Probably about the same time the gargoyle had begun to weep. You see, he hadn't enough clovers for another pitcher, no clovers at all. He was sent into the night, wings spread wide, wailing his sorrows at the moon.

An umbrella would have been nice about now, but the empty pitcher did just as well. Catching the drops that tried to fall on his hair, the man who forgot who he was and how he got here made his way into the sunrise.

Forever he wandered these lands, looking for a way out of this gray place. Devoid of color, it was, which took quite a time for the man to notice. Anyone he mentioned this phenomena to gave him a certain look, much like the gargoyle that first day at the bar. They then continued on, shaking their heads as they left, wondering what exactly color was, and what place it could possibly have in the world. No, color couldn't have been anything good, lest it would have existed from the start.

The man, in his travels, became so distraught with his surroundings that he began to question himself. His thoughts ran parallel with the others, what was color? Why was no color here? What could color even be? The madness began to set in, and the man believed color was just a figment of his imagination. Not even a figment, for when he tried to picture the strange concept of red, green, nothing came to mind but shades of gray!

Along the road, just beyond a stone city which specialized in the production of butter, the man crosses paths with the gargoyle. Flinging clovers at him in a fit of mental exhaustion, he cried,
"Please, familiar sir, for the sanity that i just cant seem to grasp, answer me but one question! What is purple?!"
The gargoyle caught what clovers he could, and upon hearing the strange word darted out of sight. Collapsing to the rocky ground, the man wept as he never had before.

He was still crying when the rain began again, and didn't finish until the rain did. He cried away his qualms, becoming quite solemn there on the ground. Sniveling like a child, he brought himself to his feet, smoothing his tattered sports jacket and staring down at his scuffed shoes. He shuffled along to the stone city, forgetting color, as well as anything else abstract or curious.

If only he had stood on his head again, the sanity would have flowed from his feet where it did cake like dried blood, into his mind again. Alas, he did not, and only became more sluggish in his ways. Eventually, hunched with gnarled limbs harshly weathered from dull travel, he would settle himself in a city of stone. He would perch on the edge of a less than.grand estate, stare into the rainclouds, and become a stone himself. He would realize why the gargoyle wept, submit to the misery, weep, and become a solid stone creature himself. The only thing that would ever warm his soul again would be the sweet brew from the tavern of which he first stumbled into.

2 comments:

  1. Great read Breana! You wrote this at the bar last night?!! Wow, the stories that we see!!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you so much! Hopefully will have more short stories coming through.

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