Reality_Check.mp4

is this sci-fi? i can't say for sure

Collected are the crimson droplets that flow from my face. They drop onto the grimly shaded wooden floor a bit of which I can only see through my left eye, where the blood is coming from I can only guess. I am unable to move, but this doesn’t alarm me. Reflected, I can see the spin of a fan that moves the air around me.

Where am I?—I ask the void and the void whispers back the same, like it is merely a captive itself.

Is anyone there?—again I ask, calmly or tiredly, I cannot tell which. No response.

In a split second my eyes clear and I see a room that is shaded like an old black-and-white movie, and I hold out my arms and look at my skin and see that it is tinted its normal tan color, and my clothes are not only intact, but similarly, normally colored.

I do not see even the inklings of invitation: I mean to say this is not my home. I do not see any soul around me either, just the divergence handed around me by the darkly lit obscurity of anticolor.

If anyone lives here I know not who could, for it seems I have entered into a storybook, a fiction generated by my dying mind but this could not be—I am not dying, I was only—

What was I only doing? I was only lying down for a moment, resting my eyes from the entropic errors that consitute my existence. I then only opened my eyes for a second and then the color was drained from around me, like I pulled it into myself.

Like the colors of the sofa, the counters, the calm blues and greens from beyond the window were stolen, the color was thieved.

A color thief I am!—I must be, so I drop to my knees and I find the nearest object that looks sharp enough to penetrate and I bring the blade to my thigh and I jerk it to the right hard and there’s a black liquid that seeps out, but I feel no pain yet, so I do it again and I begin to see a bit of red, yes, there is some red that is inside me—I must give it back, I must . . .

I bring the blade now to my arms, and as I do so, I see the blue and green rush out, the orange and red and yellow—not a red from inside me, no, it’s the red that belongs to the world around me.

It’s the red that the sky betrays when it darkens around the fallen leaves of heaven, the yellow that collapses in rays sent from God, the blue that hangs blistered in the sky, perhaps a mere atmospheric projection but there nonetheless, the orange that I start to see flashes of as the red that is inside me spills out too, I see flashes of an orange fire that can only be the hell that awaits me.

I lie back with my body leaked, coldness spreading to my hands and feet and then I see the color slowly spreading back into everything around me, and I smile. I smile in between the flashes of orange, in spite of them.

The only thing is that when my head hits the ground I see the room saturate too much until it seems to spill out of the objects and then rush toward me in a torrent of color, a purple-black color that will soon overtake me if I don’t move.

Paralyzed, I watch as darkness falls into my eyes and through my body, entering the openings of my arms and exiting the same on my legs. I am a filter for the color, I am purifying it as I have a million times before.

Orange flashes again and again: each blink brings them forth amidst the darkness that gorges itself on me when my eyes are open.

I call to the void—Where am I?—and it whispers back to me as it always does, and I expect it now, an old friend that lets me know I am nearer to death than I was.

Is anyone there?—again I ask, calmly or tiredly, I cannot tell which, just as I haven’t been able to tell if I am dying or if I am reviving myself the last time this happened.

It is coming back to me now, my left eye can see a pool of crimson, that is reflecting a ceiling fan that spins eternally, and maybe that’s why I am so cold.

What does the orange mean?—I ask aloud and the void doesn’t answer me this time. I don’t think I have ever said this before.

I still see it, but it is getting quicker now that I am unable to keep my eyes open. Soon it will be all I see. I sleep.

---

I feel the buzz in my pocket of my pager that tells me it is almost time to go home, and when I am there my friends will be waiting for me. My family, too, for it is my birthday and I know they will want me to act surprised when they jump out at me.

If I make it home, if this day ever ends, I will pray that the color is there waiting for me too, and that I don’t need to give it back. I don’t think I could do that again today.

I sleep. And the orange fills my head, and I feel warm again, so in spite of the hell that awaits me, I smile again.

And I hear no more.

Photo by Chris Linnett on Unsplash