Colours

...Or your clichéd druggie story. I wrote it as an original composition for English....

    I peered at the walls around me, once a pristine white, now faded cream, marked with bearings of the colours of the rainbow. Scribbling all over your room with pencils and crayons, we are told, is what children do. But I am not a child. I have years and decades left to live, yet I have expired my life in two years’ time. The only life I have left is what I’ve etched onto the walls: the black dove, the grey, withered plants, the bone-white faces juxtaposed by the swirling, kaleidoscope-like patterns reeking of chemicals and linseed oil. I scraped a bit of the paint off with my yellow fingernail, the colour still buttery smooth and moist, and drew in more swirls in a flurry of candied stars… The shifting skyscape reminded me of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night in many a peculiar hue. I then smeared the rest on my face, under my gaunt cheekbones, vertical lines across my lips, with dark, gaping holes under my eyes and for my nostrils. I had no mirror to look at myself, but who would care about me? Who would care about how I looked?

    Once again, I looked around, and found evil eyes glaring back at me. I frantically filled them in with black to blot them out. Then I saw the one blank spot of canvas that was left on the wall. It was at the height of my head and shoulders when I kneeled—this is how I always sit now. I crawled, and clasping a broken pastel into my hands, I raised my finger, only to drop it limp against my side. For long, all I could do was gaze at the dusty colour, my glazed stare reflecting the emptiness of the space in front of me. I raised my arm and tried a second time, and began drawing an oval, which then became a mirror….

---

    The coffee staining the inside of my cup, along with empty sugar packets, sat unfinished a half arm’s length away from me. I flipped to a fresh page of my sketchbook and withdrew my pencil from the coil binding, though instead of laying down the foundations of a new drawing, I dropped my pencil down, letting it roll off the page. The man beside shifted in his seat and I caught a whiff of smoke.

    He then passed me a small sheet of paper in my direction. I glanced at it and saw the perforated lines spread out across a myriad of colours, and looked back at the man, who smiled enigmatically.

    “It’s the key to creativity,” he said.

    It had always appeared that the customers in this coffee shop did not come here to drink coffee. Most of them came here with the intention of intoxicating themselves, revelling in the smoke-infested air and drowning reality away. Nevertheless, I had never considered dabbling into such substances, but I had been curious about them for a long time….

    I picked up the sheet, the artificially hued flowers dancing about. I stroked a strand of my red hair, and tore out a piece of the paper, carefully following the white, dotted lines. As I pressed it against my tongue, I lay back in my chair and waited for the effects to dawn upon me. Nothing happened at first, but then I began to see things I have never seen before….

    I giggled feverishly. “I see… I see…so much. Oh, those colours. They’re…they’re really pretty. Oh… What’s that? It’s… It’s moving toward me… What… What… AHHHHHHHH!”

---

    I placed the pastel stick aside. In front of me, for the first time in months, I could see my own face, but that wasn’t how I looked now. That was how I looked before, full red hair and all. Now, it was limp, dull, as was my face, my body, my life….

    But why should I worry about how I looked, or how I’ve degraded myself to this sad, frail being? I could change it all with a stroke on the wall….

    Crawling, I searched the floor for the one thing that kept my mind going. I sighed with relief when I found it, ripped out a piece, and placed it onto my tongue. I grabbed the pastel stick again, and waited. Everything was still for a while. Then laughter ensued.

-bookguild