Colorless

One day after work, Sarah decided to lie down for a quick nap since the day had been especially draining. She decided to pick up some takeout after dinner since she didn't feel like cooking for herself that evening. Before she could even think about it, she had drifted off to sleep. She soon found herself floating above the air and looking down at the town below her. All the streets had flowers lining the sidewalks the street names coincided with the flowers on that particular street. In her dream-like state, nothing was in color. This street was named Violet Street. She knew that street existed, as it was just down from her house. She wondered idly if any other towns did this or if her town was special this way.

Another interesting thing was that all of the store names had a color in the name. In another corner of her mind, she knew this fact, but she realized that it was every single store. For example, Green Rock Bank and Black Staple Hardware were right there beside Brown Temple Saloon. She hadn't really ever heard of any other towns doing things like this, so she figured it might just be their sweet little town.

She continued on her journey and began wondering if she was indeed still sleeping or if she had somehow slipped into another timeline, or if something had happened and she didn't realize what was going on. There were no people anywhere. There were no stars in the sky, no animals, no movement anywhere, other than her floating along observing everything from above. Everything was grey and colorless, and she felt sad looking at the world without any color.

She ended up landing softly in a field just outside of town, and she lay there for a while looking up at the sky. She tried getting up to go home, but she was not able to move. It seemed she was frozen in time. As she looked around and wondered what to try to do next, an elderly man came out of the clearing. He had a cane with a glass globe on the end of the cane, and he had long hair with a long grey beard to match. He sat down beside her and began telling her a story about another world. He told her that her time here in this world, the world that was full of color and light, had come to an end. All of the people, animals, and anything of life ceased to exist due to all the evil in the world. This world would only be grey and dark, and she would be the only living soul left. She could either come with him to the new world or she could stay here and live out the rest of her days. She began to cry, and he began to get angry that she couldn't see that this new world was the better option. He tried begging her to come with him and to see the light. Sarah refused, saying she would find her way in this new, colorless world. She knew this couldn't be the way things ended and that something wasn't right. The strange man got angry but decided to let her go and decided that her own fate would determine if she survived or not. He released her from her frozen-like state by banging his globe-ended cane on the ground, and she ran free. She felt carefree and light-hearted as she ran, as if it was a new beginning and a new chance to start over and see the world in a different light. As she ran, things began changing right before her eyes, the grass became green again, the sky opened up and became blue as blue could be, and the sun was the brightest yellow she could ever remember. This was all very odd as it was still nighttime, or so she thought. In her current state, though, she didn't know what was real and what wasn't anymore.

Sarah ran, and ran, and before long, she found herself standing wide-eyed in front of the Round Red Pepperoni Pizza store, and there were people in there working, and it was all in color, and the flowers on Rose Street (the Street that Round Red Pepperoni Pizza was on) were in full bloom. Sarah couldn't believe it. She decided from that day forward that she was going to spread a message of love and kindness to everyone and try to warn the people that if we didn't change the way we were, that all of the color and light in the world would soon come to an end. Hate didn't have a place in this world, or it didn't need to have a place here. She could find a new job that wasn't so draining and tiring every day. A job that helped people and gave back. She would get that dog she had been promising herself she would get, and go on that once-in-a-lifetime vacation. Most importantly, she would tell the people in her life how much she loved them and how happy she was that they were in her life. Sarah tried thinking about how to tell people what happened to her and how it happened, but she couldn't come up with a way that didn't make her sound crazy. She tried asking people if anything like that had happened to them,m but no one else had a similar experience. It didn't stop her from telling her story or from spreading the kindness and joy. People noticed that she seemed different and happier, but they couldn't explain where it was from or why. They didn't understand the transformation that had happened to her.

Thinking back about it all, she still doesn't know if it was a dream, a warning from another dimension or timeline, or if it really happened but whatever it had been, she would remind herself if things got hard or dreary that there could one day be a world without color and light, but it was not now, and she could bring the light herself and make that change. The time is now to do all the things that she'd been putting off for later because later meant a colorless world. Later meant that time had indeed run out.