Coloyry
(The Weight of Color)
written by: G. Rod Hamilton
Summit Metropark, Akron OH. September 3, 2031
As I stroll through these blueish woods on the trail of the metropark, my skin looks so strange, it’s almost a glowing orange in the daylight of the past few hours. It’s early afternoon and I’m just looking for a good picnic table to eat my lunch. I feel like I’m on another planet, but I must admit these wild color fluctuations are quite humorous.
I went to a bonfire a couple of days ago with my girlfriend Emily, where we had a pretty good time drinking and chatting with friends. It’s saying something that her beauty withstands her face looking like a grape in that strange twilight. Her blond hair looked so dark, and her sweet smile was aglow. It was also humorous watching our friends’ tinted faces in the flicker of blood-red flame. They joked about the different colors being projected on their cars and how they might get them painted as such when the world goes back to normal. We also played “what if” and one of those being: if this is the end of the world. We talked about many aspects of this cosmic event. But ultimately, we all just want answers.
The comet C/2028 X2 or better known as the Collier-Raye comet, has been a spectacle in the eastern sky for six days now. It’s affecting the stratosphere somehow making hues of everything in natural light slide down the color wheel. People, buildings, and objects outside appearing off by a few shades of the spectrum and it gets more absurd every day. The science experts at media outlets theorize sunlight refracting through the comet’s ice crystals to be the cause. They also said the comet has no orbit and with its trajectory passing so close to the Earth, within 1,200 miles, it will partially eclipse the sun tomorrow over a twelve-hundred-mile swath from southern Ontario down to the Florida panhandle. According to NASA, we should see it here in Akron, at 9:01am. It will be a violet shadow with a rainbow-colored corona from what they say. It’s gonna be wild for sure.
I found a picnic table that was relatively clear of bird droppings and began eating my lunch. Ham and turkey sub with mustard and ghost pepper sauce, so spicy and tasty, yet the red bread is not visually appealing. I snicker at that despite a growing feeling of unease. For me, it’s kind of far-fetched to think that this world could be coming to an end. I however must admit my psyche feels like it’s on borderline meltdown. I’ve gone from the initial enthusiasm of having amazing color displays for a couple of weeks to ugly thoughts of the apocalypse. This sense of foreboding has sent shivers through me many times.
While our president claims it’s nothing to worry about, social media sites are inundated with so-called ‘proof’ videos of an eminent doom from this event. Most of them cite a former Columbia University professor, Dr. Randall, who has been pushing a notion that at its closest flyby, transparent ice spots on the comet could magnify the sun and scorch the earth to devastating result, not unlike a magnifying glass that concentrates heat in a laser effect. There are others who think the earth’s gravity could pull the comet apart and hurl chunks of it back at us causing a worldwide catastrophe. Both theories seem legit to many followers on social media, who act like they are bracing for the worst.
I guess the more unnerving part of this whole phenomenon for me is the fact that I keep seeing these phantom people around me. They make no noises nor have voices; it’s as if they walked off the set of a silent film. I can’t figure it out. Maybe I’m just seeing things my eyes aren’t meant to see. Yesterday, for instance – I saw a woman in a ragged white dress in the bathroom mirror. The room she was in was huge and not what the reflection behind me should have been. Her face was too distant to see clearly, but I know she gave me a half-hearted wave to which I reciprocated. I guess that should have spooked me, but it was nothing I lost any sleep over. Also, I woke up the other morning to see a child sitting near my closet. With his wide stare, it appears I scared him, rather than the other way around. He stood up and walked into my wall like it was a spectral threshold. I’ve lived in this house for seven years and have never seen these strange occurrences before now. Before this alternate light was thrown at us by a stellar prism. It was later that morning I saw a word on my tile floor in black crayon that read: COLOYRY. I guess the phantom kid put it there. I have no idea what that word means, I spoke it into my translator, and it couldn’t find a language. Perhaps it’s just a corruption of the word “coloring” like a kid might misspell.
It is weird how none of these encounters distressed me as much as I thought they should. In fact, I haven’t really been emotional about anything lately. My senses seem dulled, my drive feels drained, it’s hard to be energetic or feel joy or even lust…and that’s just not who I am!
I do kinda like my sub sandwich while reflecting on all this, as I chomp off a mouthful and slowly chew. Its taste seems to get blander with every ensuing bite.
I wonder about my relationship with Emily. It’s been falling off a cliff since the bonfire. She has grown paranoid about seemingly everything I do. She texts me nearly every hour, wanting to know where I am, what I’m doing, etc. She gives me such a worried look when I leave her for any reason. I guess I am to blame for this because of my muted senses, and that’s making her think I’m losing interest in her. Her fear is not unfounded, but involuntary on my part for sure.
These days are certainly bringing out the worst parts of our personalities from where we have them so deeply hidden. This apathy inside of me is torturous, and it must stop. I suspect Emily, too, must be seeing these phantoms that I’ve encountered, but she doesn’t want to believe it. She only tells me she’s had extreme nightmares of late. When I ask what they are about, she only says she can’t remember them. I know if they were about me, she’d say so.
I take a gulp of my soda and sit it back down, staring at the condensation as it trickles down the can, dripping on the pinkish-tinted table.
After this comet event will we all be colorblind? It’s already driving people out of their minds, your eyes kind of ache as if you were staring at a black light poster for too long. I don’t think our eyes are built to endure all this hue fluctuation. My buddy Mick and his wife left Akron to stay with his aunt in New Mexico to get away from it, apparently, it’s not affecting that part of the country as much as it is here.
I notice there are so few people on the streets during the day in the normally busy downtown area, and some people stay in their homes with the curtains closed, not wanting to deal with it. I shouldn’t let it get the best of me, the warmth of the sun is the same, as is the breeze shuffling the treetops, and once white egrets are still dipping their beaks in the pond. This will all be over soon anyway…one way or another!
Emily is texting me again: Hi Babe. Where are you? You out to lunch-miss you! And a minute later: Hayden? Everything okay? Why don’t you answer, ☹ are you there?
I start to text her back when I see movement from the left of the picnic area in the woods. Oh my, there are three of them, two women and a boy, so close and staring at me. They motion for me to come to them. These phantoms with their colorless faces are chilling to see not through the filter of a smudgy mirror or bleary morning eyes.
I get up from my picnic table and walk closer. They are mouthing something. “What?” I say, pointing at my ears. They mouth it slower, and it looks like the word: “Suffer.” The taller woman reaches out for my hand and I’m reluctant to give it. She mouths the word “Please” from her dark blue lips. None of them move past the tree line – are they trapped in the deep shade?
I respect all people and want to help them, but I worry they are dead, and want my strength to ease their torment, or worse, want me to join them in agony. It isn’t that I fear death, we may all be on that brink. Even so, there is fear of becoming like them. Caged in the rows of these wooden bars, or stuck in mirrors and walls, perhaps living in sorrow for perpetuity. It sure isn’t bliss I see in those faces. Even so, if there is one ember that still glows inside me, it’s my compassion.
I reached out my hand, and she held it. I feel breathless as their stares grow intense and unblinking. My heart feels like it’s in the grasp of icy fingers making it beat faster. I then see them in real colors, as they once appeared in past times. They are pleasant to see like this. “Come,” she says, I hear her now. She released my hand, and they all turned back into the deeper shadows of the wooded area. I watch them fade out like a hazy sunset.
I can see it now, a veil has been lifted by this event. They don’t want to feed off of me, they wish to save me. “COLOYRY,” or Collier-Raye is our doomsday, that’s what is going on here, isn’t it? My eyes are open. In my mind, I see our military shuffling to send nukes after it, but it won’t work.
I returned to my table and saw Emily had called three times. I throw away the rest of my sandwich and call her back. She answers, “Hayden!” Her voice is stressed.
“Emily,” I reply.
“Omigod, you’re okay! I was so worried, honey,” she says with a nervous jitter.
“I’m not okay.” I say glumly. “None of us are.”
“Hayden! What’s wrong, where are you? I’m going to come to you!” She says, growing frantic.
I wish so much that I could comfort her, to just say anything to her that’s not false hope. “Not okay anymore, but…I love you, I will see you again.”
I toss the phone back on the table. I can hear her raised voice crying out my name and then screaming as I walk out into the deep wooded shadows.
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