Black & White

Someone had stolen the light out of this world. Someone ripped it from the Earth, from the trees and the water, from the fields and flowers. They stole it so wholly that there wasn’t a shred of it to be found in a single corner of the universe now. There were no stars in the sky. There was no sun. It was bad enough; what was worse, no one else seemed to remember a time before. The world went on as though nothing had ever happened. This whole place was a grotesque and lifeless husk now, inching, scratching, clawing its away through dead leaves on frozen ground. No one cared. I wondered *why*. All the time, I wondered *why*.

They forgot. Almost instantly. But I remembered the color. I remembered them all. They were beautiful. Vivid and transcendent. Different parts of light bouncing everywhere into our eyes. They were so bright sometimes, you could almost taste them. They all had names too. Each one, a different, wonderful, unique name. Yet... those I can’t recall. I used to be able to, for a time. But now, even I have forgotten them. I wondered if anyone remembered their names. If the light came back, would we remember then? Or would we have to create new names for all the shades and hues that came flooding back? I supposed it didn’t matter. The light was gone and there was no reason to hope it would return.

The colors were everywhere I remember. It wasn’t so long ago, the books, the shelves, the toys, the clothes that I saw then, they all had such magnificently vibrant shades of... of this and of... that. I could see them in my mind, if I tried hard enough. Sometimes it took effort to recollect them in all their beauty and innocence. There were days I would lie in bed and do nothing but chase them - rebuilding the world as it was, color by color, trying to recreate them in all their splendor in my brain. I would remembering what life was like with them in the world. Every once in a while I would become entranced by their memory that for a moment, a brief beautiful moment, I would forget they were stolen from the world. Stolen from me and from all of us. I would remember though, inevitably. Always. I wished I could live in those memories forever. That is where the color was. That is where it still existed. The outside world was grey. It was always and forever grey. Lifeless gray fields beneath a blank gray sky.

Sometimes I tried to talk to other people about the colorS. I tried to see if they remembered them the way I did. I had to know if there was anyone, anyone else that cared they were taken from the world and that they weren’t coming back. I simply couldn’t wrap my head around how life went on for them all! Didn’t they remember? Surely they saw how pointless this new existence was? Surely they could see nothing mattered without the color, without the light. It was everything! But they all seemed to continue like... like it wasn’t anything. They got up. They ate breakfast. They crossed the streets, they went to their jobs, they talked and joked and laughed, all like everything was the same. Sometimes I wondered if I had gone crazy. Maybe there never were any colors and it was all my imagination. Maybe there was nothing ever here but dust and ash. Gray and black and white. There were days I was the same as them. I tried to forget and move on with life. I got up like them. I ate breakfast. I crossed the street and I went to work. Sometimes I did forget, for a time. But I could never joke like them. And I could never laugh like them.

So much of my time I spent trying to get others to remember the world that existed before this one. I held up pictures that should have been filled with all kinds of wondrous light and shadow. I know they couldn’t see it though. For a moment I thought I could, but then the moment passed and I merely saw the same shades of grey that I knew they all did. I screamed and I hollered. I wailed and wept like an insane person before them all.

Don’t you remember?!

Don’t you care?!

How can you go on like this?!

It was all so beautiful before!

Doesn’t anyone want it back?!

They all stopped and stared. I could see they tried to contort their colorless faces into a vein display of caring or empathy. They wanted to act like they cared. I think they knew they *should* care and God knows they wanted to appear like they cared. But the moment I left the room they did everything they could to forget me. They did everything they could to pretend I didn’t exist. It was easier this way. To live in a world with no color is an unspeakable horror. No one liked to be reminded of a twisted fate such as this. If they were able to forget about the light and move on with their existence then they didn’t want to be reminded that it could be different. They didn’t like to be reminded that it *was* different. Once.

I am a nuisance. I am sad. I am in grief. I do not understand. I am small minded. I am powerless and I am no one. They did not have to listen to me. I wondered how many would be by my side, screaming and weeping for the light that we all lost if they could remember it the way I did. Remember it the way I remembered it every day. Every wretched, blank, lifeless, colorless day.

They wanted me to stop reminding them of the world we once had. They wanted me to stop reminding them of the way the light and the color bounced, skipped, jumped. They wanted me to stop reminding them of the way it made everything around it full of life and wonder. One day I will. One day I will give up and I will go back to being like them. I will live in a world devoid of light and I will walk through the streets of black and white like the rest. But I will never forget the way the Earth spun when it was bright and filled with the color that was stolen from it. I will never forget the way the she laughed and smiled in the sun. I will never forget her eyes. They were the most splendid color. I think its name was green.