Sunday Story - Achromic by Colbey Pratt

Image courtesy of Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It's lovely day out there today and what better way to enjoy the sun than by reading a story with a cool drink? For this week's Sunday Story we journey back to October's short fiction contest and the winning story 'Achromic' by Colbey Pratt:

Achromic by Colbey Pratt

I live in a world divested of color. 

My senses escape me, lost and separated from the void in which I am trapped. I cannot feel the warmth of the light, nor the icy chill of the shadows. I cannot taste any fragrance in the air, of the dandelions that dance with even the subtlest hint of a breeze. I cannot hear the rustling of the Great Tree's leaves, or even that soft static that always accompanies silence. And, even though I can decipher shapes, I cannot perceive the color they may or may not possess. 

Of my senses I can only smell, but even that is a curse in and of itself. For the only odor I can detect is of ash and smoke, of soot and the lingering essence of death. I am not quite positive of where it comes from, and every theory I've created has been squashed by simple logic...although logic is untouchable from my prison. 

I am completely alone, isolated from any other soul that may occupy this realm as I do. Once, a while ago or so I believe, I thought I glimpsed another being passing by, tiptoeing just along my peripheral. But the instant I tried to look, anyone that might have been there had already vanished, and I was forsaken once more.  I remember endeavoring to call out, but no sound came - and where no sound can be heard, no sound can be made.

I have no memory of a past or place before this province before this never-ending moment suspended in the fabric of time - only a knowledge of what should or should not be in the presence of reality. And that alone gives me the notion that I'm ensnared in the clutches of a world, of a universe, completely detached, severed from all facets of reality. It simply does not exist where I reside.
And that, I suppose, is the most frightening aspect of all. The idea, the possibility, that I am caught between the thriving before and the sacrosanct after.