A Grey Town
The Town was lovely, The Town was bland, The Town was whole.
It is made so by the way the cobblestones fit together perfectly, without a single uneven edge, in the way the streetlamps all around light up at the same hour each evening. That cold, grey, hospital light.
It was truly a good Town. A clean Town.
A Grey Town on a Monday morning.
Somewhere above the rooftops, a child calls to its mother.
The sound is small, in fact barely audible. It comes from a place in the body which lives yet in the bliss of not knowing that some doors, once closed, will never reopen regardless of how long you stand outside them. The mother is silent, her cold body grasping the tattered blanket wrapped around the child. She was already not of this world, has not been of this world ever since a winter morning on New Year’s when the child was 8 years old and the hospital had a particular smell with a doctor who used words that the child took carefully and carried home without purpose. The calling reaches its climax and the bloodied rain swallows it, leaving a beautiful azure in its wake. The crimson rain drips down at the edges.
The children hurry along.
On the other side of The Town, in a narrow gap between two buildings a child lies alone in the darkness. It had not always been there. There had been a before, long long ago, when the child had a roof, a table, a small starfish plushie and a father who had stayed for eleven years before the staying became too much for him. The before disappeared just as fast as it had come. Only flashes of purpur appeared in the empty gap between two buildings, a reminiscence of a will to fight.
The passersby go by. Their shoes are excellent. Their shoes are grey.
In a back room of an establishment with no sign above the door, a child sits at a card table, bruised and injured. It had come here with something, not much but enough to matter to passersby who tried to snatch it. The last material remainder of a mother who had disappeared in the winter when the child was but seven years old. The table did not ask for much in the beginning and the child did not give much. But it continued, little by little, until the table had everything while the child had nothing but a smile and a pair of hollow eyes of someone who has given away the last thing they had loved in this world. The green speck is all that remains next to the table. Above the cards lying patiently on the table.
In a schoolyard a child stands apart from the others. Its hands are bruised, its eye black and its chest covered in scarred mementos of the fun times. Its soul bleeds a faint amber, a longing so habitual to the child it is no longer a pain. Most other children ignore it, but an older child with a soul of grey raises his hand to strike it, and the teachers avert their eyes. The child smiles as its teeth fly out in a shower of crimson.
The Town was fair. The Town must always be correct.
On a park bench an old child watches pigeons with the attention that only someone who has nothing else to do could accomplish. A child sits next to him, looking up at the old child and smiles at him. The old child gives the boy some seeds to feed the pigeons, stands up and leaves. Only an ochre stain, next to the smiling child, can be seen on the wooden bench.
In a bright office with large windows a child sits across from someone whose soul is flat silver. The child has been trying to explain something with a smile for twenty minutes. The empty face nods. A nod that means nothing. The smiling child gets up, eyeing the window fifty storeys high, a small grey tinge covering the warm yellow soul. He still has the will to not take the step. The child knows that it is the greatest defeat to disappear from the world with regrets.
In a narrow corridor outside a room with a closed door, a child sits on the floor with its back against the wall and its knees drawn up and its face covered with tears of deliberation. The deliberation that they are not the kind of person who Breaks. Its soul is a deep and bruised violet, the colour of a beaten down creature, who deep inside knows that it is close to breaking but endures nonetheless. A social worker passes without changing pace. The smiling child looks up through the tears to see a sheet of paper fall, oh so slowly. In dark red ink “AGED OUT” is plastered over the smiling face of the child. A violet mist rises.
There were no strangers in this Town.
The Town knew this. The Painter knew this, which is why it worked so carefully, always moving through the street before and after the child, painting grey over azure, grey over purpur, grey over green, grey over amber, grey over ochre, grey over violet. The plethora of colours disappeared, covered by the lonely grey, a peaceful grey. The way a wound is covered by temporary coagulation.
The Painter had been at this work for the longest time.
It was a master at it.
And yet,
The grey was thinner than it used to be. The Painter moved with commitment, but it was strained, like a deflated, wrinkled balloon which has long since gone over the warranty. Some colours bled through, no matter how hard the Painter coated them. It worked and worked and the Town had remained whole and lovely as the child kept walking and the smile stayed on its face, that quivering smile that kept constant through the hospital corridor, the gap between buildings, the card table, the schoolyard edge and the corridor outside the closed door. The smile, which had been for the longest time, the only thing still going.
The child walked alone through the muddied streets of the Town.
Passersby ran along, grey and whole. Colourful hats, beautiful dresses and fashionable suits all adorned their cold bodies, and all of the children’s eyes were empty, all of their souls glossed in vibrant grey, as if the Painter’s brush only knew one palette.
The child passed the schoolyard, filled with silent, faceless figures. The amber flickered within. The child slowed down, feeling something deep within. A semblance of a memory which had no good or evil within, only pain. The child squatted and from the grey dust picked up an amber molar. Putting it in the pocket, it looked around. Even now the shadows lay still.
It kept walking.
It passed the park bench where a faint shadow of ochre still hung, the last bits of warmth emanating from something that had once been there. A small ochre seed caught the child’s attention. A reminder that at some point, perhaps there was someone in this lovely Town who saw the child.
It kept walking.
It passed the building with an office on the fiftieth floor with large windows. Perhaps there still was a silver soul nodding behind a desk to a smiling shadow wearing yellow. From the grey sky a silver feather fell, with streaks of yellow adorning the shaft. A memory of fallen hope, in a world where it was never heard, echoed before the child before being put away and painted over.
It kept walking.
It passed a narrow corridor and saw a small violet pin sticking out of the wall holding a faded document. It felt the weight of the passing eyes and the crushing wheel of despair and the will of a person who was willing to exist. A peaceful grey replaced that feeling too.
It kept walking.
The smile stayed in place.
That was the remarkable thing about the smile. The child did not realise it, but it had survived all of it. From the winter morning to Monday morning, it had survived. Over the years it was no longer an expression of hope, but a foundation. An axiom on which the child depended unknowingly.
Turning a corner, the child saw a lovely clown.
He stood at every intersection within the Town. He was tall, wearing all black, except for that welcoming smile. His smile was fully formed and unresponsive to anything within the environment. He held out his scarred hand in an offering, something small, impossible to name within the grey of the Town.
His soul was dark and still.
The child did not see the clown’s hand, did not see the dark stillness and did not see the small object. But it looked at the clown’s smile and recognised it. Much in the way someone recognises the brand of clothes they wear on someone else.
The child passed him by, hurrying towards an apartment block labelled “6” whilst the clown’s eyes followed him, the smile not fading for even a second.
The yellow apartment block was not in any way special.
Four floors. Five rooms each. Four white corridors. Five steel doors. A staircase on the right. And a staircase on the left. The rooms ran from 0001 to 0020. Soft, padded white walls. Rounded tables. Plastic utensils arranged with care. Nineteen rooms having crayons, toys and puzzles.
The first three floors were dusty grey. The Painter’s old work. The child climbed past them all.
Floor four was newly built. A new white hallway. New bright, white hospital lights lining the hallway. Five new steel doors, each equally spaced with a small slit to drop in packages or food.
The child stopped before the fifth.
It pressed its hand against the steel and felt the already too familiar cold. Behind the door something breathed. A steady, patient beating rhythm of something that had been waiting for the longest time could be heard by everyone but the child.
It pushed open the door.
The room was the same as always. All white, one chair, one table, one bed. A shattered Mirror on the wall. On the table a beating heart lay. Pierced by three mirror shards it beat in a steady rhythm. All irregular shards, they looked so natural within the beating heart. As if the heart had grown around the shards and not the other way around.
Ba-thump, a child walked towards the bed.
Ba-thump, still in street clothes and shoes the child lay on the bed.
Ba-thump, under the blinding lights of the room the child fell asleep.
The Painter stood in the doorway for a long moment, brush in hand, looking at the child and the heart on the table. It had followed the child through every corridor and building. It had been there for the winter morning and the Monday morning and every morning in between. It had painted, painted so hard, with such fervour, and the smile had stayed in place while the child walked. The Painter had believed, needed to believe, that the grey covering the lovely Town was enough.
It had not been enough.
The Painter lifted its brush, and the grey droplet on it reflected that everlasting smile. With one swift motion it raised its hand and painted it over, before closing the door and leaving.
To keep the ugly Town lovely, to keep the colourful Town bland and to keep the Broken Town whole.
Various colours danced through the streets, before being quenched in the grey. The lost azure, a starfish purpur, a hollow green and a stifled amber all disappeared one after another. Faceless shadows kept on walking, grey children kept on playing, passersby kept on marching with their eyes hollow to the world. And within it all, a broken soul with a broken smile woke up to a new Monday morning in a Grey Town.
