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Mystery and magic and things unexplainable start flitting through my mind, words that I don’t understand, thoughts that scare me, noises that are so loud that I fear I might go deaf. I can’t breathe, I can’t move, and this color…this purple leaps from the girl’s shirt into my eyes. I feel a pressure building in my throat so powerful that it’s impossible to ignore. Everything slides back into focus as I release it and speak without thinking.

“Purple. The color is purple. It’s the incomprehensible, the magic, and the beauty. Deep things that mean nothing to us which cannot be explained. Purple.”

Eve doesn’t say anything. She’s quiet for a very long time, simply staring into my eyes. I’m afraid she’s going to be angry, that she’s going to call the guards and have them hit me. I don’t know why. But instead, she nods slowly.

“Yes, Canvas. Purple. I think you understand,” she says softly.

As if snapping out of a trance, Eve shakes her head, scribbles a few things onto her clipboard, and then slides it back into her bag. “You are a very interesting person, Canvas. You have something I can’t exactly describe. I look forward to talking to you again tomorrow.”

“Ms. Eve…” I croak hoarsely, suddenly exhausted, as the girl stands. “Can you teach me more colors? Like the ones you said, green and blue?”

She gives me a kindly look with her perfect purple eyes, and nods. It’s only after she’s gone that I realize I’m sweating furiously. My heart is pounding in my chest, and my hands tremble something terrible as I try to stand up. I stumble to the corner of the white box and look down at the name scratched into the wall. Canvas.

My name is Canvas and I love the color purple.

12-Apr-2012 08:14:18

[#QYQ24UHXT]

Posts: 318 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I wake up eagerly the next day. Snatching the food that’s sitting on the tray, I gobble it quickly and push the rest away. Then, I sit down on my cot and stare at that corner. And I wait. It isn’t long before my ears rise to the sound of the bolts sliding open. In strolls the purple girl, with a pleased look on her face. We talk for a long time about me and colors, and she pulls something out of her bag. It looks like a stone, but it shines like the lights that don’t hurt my eyes anymore.

She explains that it’s called a sapphire, a gemstone, and that its color is blue. It’s incredible to experience. Only recently, I did*’t even know what a color was, and now here I am learning about TWO colors!

Blue is almost like purple, but slightly different. It’s something deep and powerful and mysterious much like purple, but that course of static power that I had felt before isn’t there. Instead, there’s something quiet and peaceful that comes from the gemstone that makes my heart become slow and heavy. It’s a silence completely unlike the silence in the white box. It’s something glorious and ancient that fills my chest with majesty and megalithic size. It’s a pulsing vibration that thrums in my lungs with graceful force and limitless compassion. Blue stays with me for a long time after the purple girl leaves.

And so every day is like this. Wake, sleep, and await Eve’s arrival. Each visit is new and magical.

She brings me a small round object that looks like nothing I‘ve seen before. She confuses me by saying that it’s an orange, and that its color is orange. It takes me awhile to grasp the concept, but I suppose that since colors are so beautiful, there’s no harm in naming things after them. Orange is alive and full of zeal. It’s a boundless energy that makes me want to run around and yell at the top of my lungs. It’s freedom. Its youth.

12-Apr-2012 08:15:03

[#QYQ24UHXT]

Posts: 318 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The next day, she brings me something smooth and glossy, and Eve calls it an apple. Its color is red. Red is close to orange like the past two colors were close to each other. But its energy is something deeper and more terrifying than orange. It has a malignant aura that can’t be explained. It’s life itself; it is turbulence and pain, and it is fear and anger. It’s pure existence with all its vitality and anguish. I like the color red, but at the same time I’m deathly afraid of it. It has a strength and lustful allure that I dare not test.

I learn so many things from Eve. Every day now has something new. It has a purpose, a purpose that isn’t counting steps or sitting or eating. Now, every time Eve leaves the white box, my heart is heavier and heavier all the while she’s gone. But even then, I keep something that I did*’t have before. I’m no longer just Canvas. I’m Canvas, and I have colors. My mind is fresh and alive, and I’m starting to hate white.

Eve shows me a lemon, tells me that it’s yellow, and its radiance is joy and contentment and being carefree. It feels warm and comfortable, casting a glow that the white lights never could.

She shows me something called chocolate which tastes so amazing that I ask to keep the bar. I eat it slowly over the days as I remember its color: brown. It’s comfort and protection; strength and firmness. It’s like a guard, but one that shelters and guides instead of hitting.

She shows me a balloon, a mesmerizing translucent sphere that bobs and bounces so much like its color, pink. Pink is nothing short of fun, and it makes me smile. There’s no seriousness or consequences. It’s laughter and ecstasy, companionship and love. Some of the things that these colors make me feel don’t make sense, but Eve always explains them to me.

12-Apr-2012 08:15:33

[#QYQ24UHXT]

Posts: 318 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

One day she brings me something that changes everything. It’s flat and elaborate, and she tells me it’s green. I fall in love with green. There’s a clean, fresh smell sleeping inside the color, a boundless wisdom and perfection that none of the colors have even come close to. A feeling of excellence and softness emanates from the regal color. Then Eve tells me that it’s a leaf, and that it comes from a tree. I ask her to tell me about them.

“A tree is a sort of plant. It’s like a tall, solid pillar with rough skin and thick branches that come off its sides. It stretches upward and the tips of its wood are covered in these leaves. Sometimes there aren’t just leaves in the tree though. There can be apples, or oranges, or even lemons!*

*What about chocolate? Can trees have chocolate, too?” I ask excitedly.

She laughs a beautiful, scintillating laugh that feels like pink. “Well, not exactly. There can be beans that make chocolate on trees, but not chocolate bars.*

That disappoints me slightly, but I still really like the idea of trees, and all the colors they contain. I ask her where one can find trees. She tells me that trees grow outside.

I had heard Eve speak many times of ‘outside’. I don’t know what it is though, only that it’s where she comes from. I imagine it’s a beautiful box that’s covered with all these colors that she has shown me. It’d be full of lemons and gemstones and balloons. I tell this to her, and she laughs again.

“No, that’s not quite right either. Outside isn’t a box, because it doesn’t have walls or a ceiling.”

I thought I had learned so much from this girl. But when she explains to me what outside is, I’m staggered. Colors had been one thing for sure, but no walls? No ceiling? That made no sense! Where would the colors go? Where would one write their name? What told a person where they could and couldn’t go? I relay these queries to Eve. Thankfully, she’s now quite good at explaining.

12-Apr-2012 08:16:01

[#QYQ24UHXT]

Posts: 318 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“Outside is nothing like the inside at all, Canvas. This here is inside,” she elaborates, tapping a foot on the floor of the white box. “Outside is beyond these walls and floors. It isn’t restricted or restrained. The only thing above anyone is a sky, and it’s so high up that one never minds it. There are no walls except the ones we make ourselves. The outside has forests full of trees and oceans full of water, and towns full of other people.”

“A town? What’s a town?”

“A town is a place where many different people come and live together in houses. They have friends and family. They talk to each other, buying things, sharing things, having parties and working as one. There are many towns all over.”

“So…people live in houses? Are those like boxes too?”

“Well, almost. They have a wall and ceiling, but they usually have several colors and aren’t always square. They’re all different, and they make up a town.”

“I don’t see why anyone would want to live in a house when outside sounds so amazing. But what town do you come from?”

“It’s a small place called calls Seers Village.”

“And you have friends there? Other people with colors?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about them.”

And so she did. Each day now, instead of colors, Eve regales me with tales and stories of her friends, and of their adventures together. She tells me about her little brother named Erik, who’s always there when she needs him. Scowling playfully, she tells me that sometimes he was rather lazy, but I don’t understand why anyone can be lazy in a world where there are so many colors to see.

As Eve finishes taking her notes one day, she stands and faces me.

“By the way Canvas, I pulled up your file. I found out what it is you do, what your symbol means.”

I grasp my neck instinctively, knowing the strange symbol that was beneath it. I had never understood what it meant myself. It’s a little stick with a wisp on it that’* white. I don’t like it at all, not anymore.

“Canvas, you were an artist. A painter.”

12-Apr-2012 08:16:34

[#QYQ24UHXT]

Posts: 318 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

She leaves me alone. I think about the symbol, and stare at the walls.

A painter.

That word means something to me, like my name. It means something like the colors mean something. I want to be outside more than ever now, to meet these people, to see the trees, to bask in the colors.

But instead, I just sit where I am.

On my cot.

In the white box.

Inside.

Since Eve’s visits started, I’ve experienced more joy and relish for life than ever before. Questions, wonders and thoughts barrage my brain, and everything feels alive and vibrant. I want to ask Eve so many things, and I’m eager to begin talking when she walks out of the doorway in that corner. But before a single question can leave my lips, I stop. The purple girl seems...different.

Her normally sparkling eyes and upturned grin are now dark and cold. She doesn’t greet me, she doesn’t ask me how I’m feeling. She just sits down, silent, and takes out her quill and clipboard. Before I can even open my mouth, she asks me:

“Do you know why you’re here?”

I’m surprised at the question. I had already heard it once before, hadn’t I?

“I’m here because I’m a criminal. Don’t you…”

“No! That’s wrong.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Around a week ago I told you that you were a painter. Do you remember?”

“Of course. But what is a painter?”

“A painter is someone who uses a brush and paint to make pictures with colors.”

My eyes widen with excitement. This was the most wonderful news I had ever heard! Although I had never heard anything about brushes or paint or pictures, the words seem more familiar than anything, like they’re something I had known in my heart and only now by hearing them can I remember.

“Yes, you’re a painter. You make things with colors and you draw pictures. But you aren’t an ordinary painter. Because the things you paint come to life. You have a power that no one else has, a power that’s so immense and filled with potential that you were brought here.”

12-Apr-2012 08:17:38

[#QYQ24UHXT]

Posts: 318 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“That’s incredible! I want to learn more about being a painter!”

“But you know about being a painter! You knew everything before you were brought here!”

“What do you mean, before? It’s always been like this, and I don’t know anything about painting. I’ve never even heard of it before!”

Suddenly I see a side of Eve that I had never seen before. Anger. She bolts upright and stomps toward me, pressing her eyes close to mine.

“Don’t you get it?! This isn’t all there is! You haven’t always been here, just think! Everyone here is exactly the same, they’re all like you! They all have talents, they all have reasons for being here, but it all comes down to one thing! Clarity, the albino, he can copy talents when he sees them used! Any talent! Forte, she can motivate people with speeches and her ideas are revolutionary and unheard of! And Smooth Song, his music touches something that can’t be expressed; he creates feelings strong enough to instill thoughts that could cause complete chaos! And you! Anything you paint, anything you make becomes real! Can’t you see the connection? Why don’t you understand? Why don’t you remember?!”

Panting hard, she slowly backs away, her eyes filled with an unspeakable fury and frustration that feels like red. Hot, raging, and unpredictable red. But more so, all the ideas, all the thoughts and wonders that had been poured into my mind over the time she had been here are starting to solidify. I’m scared.

No, I’m terrified.

12-Apr-2012 08:18:19

[#QYQ24UHXT]

Posts: 318 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“I’ve been coming here for months, trying to make you remember who you are. You’ve been locked in this cell for I don’t know how long, being tested and tortured and experimented on and whatever horrible things these people have done to make you forget. To make you lose your mind and talent. But it just won’t go away! So they’re starting over, they’re trying to make you remember what they’ve made you forget! So that you understand what’s happened here and what you are! So that they can start this whole thing over again! Everything is going to be gone!”

Her voice cracks, and her beautiful eyes become rimmed with tears. She falls to the ground, breathing hard. I don’t say a word. Everything falls into place in my mind, and I feel numb.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, she looks up into my eyes.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

I’m quiet for a very long time, my mind blank. And then I speak.

“I’m here because She’s afraid of me.”

And then Eve is gone.

It’s too quiet in this white box. It scares me.

There are no colors here.

Eve doesn’t come the next day. Or the next. Or the day after that. Every time I wake up, I eat my meal, sit on my cot, stare at that corner, and wait.

It’s my fault. All my fault. The one thing that gave me purpose and meaning is gone. I want to weep and moan and feel pain to punish myself. But I don’t do any of those things.

I just stare at that corner.

It never opens. She never comes. But I wait anyways, until I can’t wait anymore.

...

I wonder how many steps it takes to get from the cot to the wall.

Twelve.

12-Apr-2012 08:18:53

[#QYQ24UHXT]

Posts: 318 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I’ve never felt so alone. There’s no one here. No color, just nothingness and void. The white walls don’t move, they don’t let me see the outside or Eve. There is no sky above, there is no ocean or town. There is no forest.

The sun doesn’t shine here.

I think about outside and the colors.

I think about apples and the trees.

I think about Eve.

The walls feel closer than before. And the lights hurt my eyes.

I hit my head against the walls to push them back. They don’t move, and there’s a stain on them now that isn’t white.

I can’t remember what color it is.

I’m scared again.

I wake up after what feels like such a long time.

My head is numb and white.

I can’t think or feel, and my legs barely carry me as I strip the plastic off the food in the tray and chew it. It doesn’t taste like anything anymore. I don’t care. I’m not hungry anyways.

Inexplicably, I’m angry, and that anger burns through the numb whiteness. Damn that girl and her colors. Damn her for showing me her shirt, the gemstone, the leaf. Damn her and her outside.

Damn her for trying to give me meaning.

Damn her for making me remember anything.

Then suddenly, something cold grabs my heart, and the anger gives way to fear. Meaning? Remember?! I drop the food in my mouth and sprinted twelve paces to the corner in the wall, and look down at the corner.

It’* white.

White.

The word isn’t there.

White. White. White.

I hear something in my brain crack. I do something I’ve never done.

I scream.

I scream and I thrash and I kick, slamming myself into the white walls of this box that has kept me here forever. I scream in pain, I scream in fury, I scream in loss.

I scream as my brain feels like it’s ripping itself apart.

I scream for color. But there’s only whiteness.

I scream loud enough that suddenly I’m being carried backwards by thick, strong white hands. The guards struggle to hold me as their whiteness gets closer and I kick and bite and fight them.

12-Apr-2012 08:19:33

[#QYQ24UHXT]

Posts: 318 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I need color. The whiteness is going to kill me.

And then I see a color, in that corner. I see Eve, her eyes full of shock and horror. She’s scared. She should be. Pushing against the guards, everything in my mind goes perfectly white again.

And then it bursts with the majesty of colors.

“I was eight years old! I was with my mother by the fire and she was reading me a story full of pictures and words and colors! Then there was a horrible loud knocking noise! I heard my father scream my name, my mother carried me and told me to run as fast as I could! I ran outside, but it was so cold and there was snow so deep that I couldn’t run any faster! I couldn’t escape! I drowned in white and woke in white! My mother screamed my name but I can’t remember it!”

I’m boiling, I’m red, I’m fury. My hate and my anguish focus on her, fusing circuits in my brain and exploding into a shower of hot sparks.

“ I was eight years old! I’ve been here for twelve years!”

“My mother screamed my name, and you stole it from me!”

There’s no more to say. Everything becomes white, and I fall into nothingness.

When I awake, it’s all gone. The guards, the anger, the strange girl.

I’m alone.

My head throbs something fierce, and I can’t get up because my wrists are cuffed to the bed. There’s nothing. Nothing at all.

The lights really hurt my eyes.

I can’t remember my name.

I am as white as the walls.

I do something I’ve never done before.

I cry.

12-Apr-2012 08:20:14

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