Grey. Not the most appealing of colours. Nobody wants
grey, nobody asks for it. Yet, in a world where things are seldom black and
white, it is an unavoidable colour. There are exceptions on the colour spectrum,
as there are in life. There is the occasional moment of bliss, of overwhelming all-encompassing
joy, and the moments of deepest despair, but they are only moments. The rest of
what we call life tends to fall somewhere in the middle of the scale, somewhere
in the turgid world of grey.
These are not the summer days, nor the winter nights. This
is the grey existence. Grey clouds that swirl above the grey city with their
own graceful majesty, each a portrait simultaneously uniquely beautiful while
exactly the same as every other. Below the far off tempest, life commutes. Grey
cars drive along the grey roads and alongside the grey buildings. The sidewalks
are filled with grey suits distracting themselves with their grey phones.
Glazed grey eyes fill the subways beneath the city streets, each set clinging
to its own shade, content with its individuality, while never straying too far
from the greyness. Conformity. Some lives are more grey than others, and in
more ways than others. For some it may be personality, for others a landscape.
For us, it is a name. Theodore ‘Ted’ Grey.
It was an unassuming morning. The alarm went off and Ted lay
there, hoping that if he kept his eyes closed, the universe would grant his
wish of an extra five minutes in bed. This continued for twenty seconds or so
before he let out a sigh, embracing the futility of the exercise, just like he
did the morning before. He rolled over, blinding reaching for his phone until
the noise could be silenced, only to be replaced by the dawn chorus of traffic
five floors below.
He stumbled around his small downtown apartment, rushing
out the door with a half-eaten slice of toast in one hand, and his tie in the
other. Not one for waiting, he took the stairs and emerged onto the street
ready to be seen by a world which never noticed. It’s certain that there was a
more productive use of Ted’s time than the 5 minutes spent in front of the
mirror in order to make his mop of brown hair the best degree of messy, the dream
being that it looked as though he had done nothing it all. He was sure it was
worth the time as he nodded at his neighbour as they passed in the hallway,
blissfully unaware that his neighbour didn’t care at all. That said, Ted had
failed to notice his neighbour’s new coat, so it all balances out.
Ted set off for work in his grey suit, on his way to an
office job he neither loved nor hated. It paid enough for him to afford a small
downtown apartment, and that was all that mattered. He was 24, two years out of
college, where he had been a solid B student. He had a few close friends, but
they were back home in another distant city. His was the quiet life. Delightfully
unremarkable in just about every way. He was grey, and that was okay. This is
why he was most surprised when he stopped off for his morning coffee that day.
As he went through the threshold, it was as if a spell
had been broken, or a trance had been lifted. He would remember this moment for
years afterwards, well aware that it changed everything, yet he would never be
able to explain exactly why. It might have been sheer shock. There was the
deafening silence which engulfed the place, and everything in it. But, what he
suspected was that it was the colour. The handbag of the girl standing against the
wall, and the shirt of the man lying on the floor. Her lipstick, smeared on the
side of the cup of coffee which had fallen, and his blood, splashed on the
counter. Everything screamed red.
