Short Story of the Month: September

Smudged (Tinted II)

By: S. McManus

Drawing by I. Chan

Rose.

That’s what the world looked like to her. She didn’t think it was possible to forget about what other colours looked like, but suddenly, it was as if they never existed. Since god-knows when, her world turned completely and utterly pink. In every way. 

Hues and all sorts of shades, ranging from peachy tones, bright, border-line red and dark violet shadows. It was like a blanket had been dropped from the sky, curling around the top of buildings, posts, birds, even her own being, to take their shape. A quirky, cascading form of colour, so thin and sticky, it was revealed to be irremovable, a permanent stain in her monotone spectrum. But the change itself was also seeping beyond what was visible to the eye, apparent in the contrast of words, gestures, demeanours of the surrounding people; what was once sharp and intimidating, now grew fuzzy and warm. Brightening little smiles were coaxed out of stoic expressions. “Isn’t it so much nicer,” she would think, when the sheer pinkness of it all was still news to her, “to see flowers blossoming just as nicely within people.” 

And no matter how far she would wander, the warmth still gripped, settled in her bones, hugging tight in a comforting manner. With this confidence to explore, she soon found that all the mysteries, all the questions, the deceiving unknown of the world had been shushed, tamed, pressed down beneath layers of healthy garden, perfectly predictable and pleasant as any other place she’d come across. An endless summer was draped in the outdoor, and it's alluring variety of blossoms, whistling music was simply just crying out to her, which is why, more often than not, she couldn’t bring herself to deny a walk outside, taking in the ever-gorgeous mother nature at her finest, basking in the flushed light. 

Her favourite part of it all was actually just shutting her eyes for a moment and losing herself to her senses, yet still actually seeing the colour in the darkness, so accustomed to it as she was. Inhaling, exhaling what could only be her own essence spread meti- 

SPLAT. 

And suddenly that ever-present warmth was suddenly drowned in a waterfall, entirely composed of ice water straight from the North pole. 

“What the bloody he-“ 

She spun her gaze furiously to the direction of whatever-that-cursed-thing-was. Hair soaked, glasses tipping dangerously on the point of her nose and a rather hell-bent glare (armed with a full set of piercing daggers), she was quite the embodiment of pure, unyielding rage. And to her skyrocketing annoyance, she found that the offender was one of those figures, the ones that were so blurry in the pink that she would actually be forced to get up from her picnic spot to see who the (blasted) person-thing was. In any normal situation, the fairly rare, blurry figures would be too indistinguishable from anyone else to pique her interest, so she was quite content to have never approached one. But now, now, she was steadily beginning to gain a whole other motive to avoid them. 
​
As she began to approach her, him, it, it became apparent that fuzziness levels were apparently too irritatingly tough to be meddled with by distance. So, she walked towards what was a faint outline of a person - a shadow perhaps, blending in far too neatly with the background. She stopped short and waited - because really, how would you start talking to something you weren’t even sure was quite there. Luckily (or so she hoped), the figure began to move and a clear of a throat was all her ears needed to believe it was in fact a person, and not some ghost set on making her life miserable. 

“Ah.. I'm really sorry about that,” a croaky sort of voice said. 

While she couldn’t be 100% sure, it would be adequate to assume it was actually a him, by the slight deepness of his tone, along with the distant recollection it brought of her father. 

“Y’know, water fights always get messy…” he rambled off, laughing awkwardly to himself, no doubt noticing the hostile, top-notch quality of her glare. “Look, I’m just..let me try helping a bit.” 

​And before she knew it, hazy figure boy’s arm-hand-part was getting larger for some odd reason, and BAM! Her glasses were gone. 

A crashing wave of everything just swept her away to the stars and back because how could blue and orange and purple and yellow and - the whole blinding rainbow have the weight of a thousand worlds. 

She stood there, entirely awe-struck with the world while the stranger beside her cleaned her glasses. 

“There you go,” not-so-hazy boy said, plopping the specs back down on her nose, “see you around, yeah?” 

After that he left, or she thought he left, not truly noticing because the oceans were parting again to paradise island, and who would want to miss that? Still, even as the ambience was being poured with her favourite delights all over again, the memory of what she had just seen was still burning itself into her mind, and pink perfection looked a tiny bit duller in comparison. The effects, she would notice, were extraordinarily akin to something like fairy dust, the green of the grass around her dissolving, the remnants of the water balloon evaporating into thin air, coupled with most of the Earth’s problems. Nevertheless, the insistent goose bumps scattered around her skin spelled out how real all of that was. 

And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t just the fiery sight of a whole spectrum that made her frown, because- yes that’s right- she could still see into that reality. It made her eyes inch even wider, and hey, that wasn’t supposed to happen.. 

Her right eye peered at her previous life through rosy tint, while the other felt like it was being overfed with multi-coloured strings of information - either pounding at her brain’s door with an equally believable side of a single, messed up story. 

Grudgingly, she took the glasses off to inspect them. 

And once again, the sky came crashing down - maybe just a tad bit more bearably. 

Straight away, a startling difference was evident in the cherished pair of specs. Their tint, remarkably delicate, were now a slight bit more faded, more blotted, smudged carelessly over to the side on the left. And peeking out from their absence, was a boorish edge of plain, transparent glass. 

She glanced around, still unwaveringly blind, and wondered who could do such a terrible thing.