The Colour of Nothing
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The Colour of Nothing
Francesca Flau
Copyright 2013
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THE COLOUR OF NOTHING
Francesca opens her eyes. The wearisome weight of sleep is replaced by dense darkness; the sun has not yet risen. A crowd of unpleasant dreams has been stalking her for a little over a week now, and she is thankful for the shrill tintinnabulation which has finally drawn her out of her cumbrous slumber.
Throwing a dressing gown over her nightdress, she hurries to answer it. At least she attempts to hurry; inept upon waking, she knocks her knee heavily on the doorframe and tumbles out onto the landing. The din at the door doesn’t desist despite her discomfort, so, ignoring the salient ache, she picks herself up and trots down the stairs.
She hopes to find Freyja waiting for her outside, but finds nothing of the sort. There isn’t anyone or anything at the door, not even an empty space where things should be, not even darkness, just nothing.
Still hazy with sleep, she rubs her eyes and contemplates stepping out to where she would normally find the front garden. Looking down, she notices that the welcome mat which, in her usual priggish manner, she always insists people straighten upon entering, is missing. She runs her hands along the doorframe and then sticks the left one out. Gobbled up by the colourless nothing, the digital pentad ghosts out of sight, but the sensation in her wrist suggests the invisible appendage still exists. Unnerved, she pulls her hand back in and waggles her fingers about in front of her face to make sure all is in order; four and a thumb, normality.
Were she to step over the threshold, she could end up just about anywhere. Togo? The Antarctic? She looks down at her flimsy nightdress, and the bare feet beneath it, it’s plain to see she isn’t dressed well for either. Thinking better of going out, she heads back into the house and closes the front door behind her.
This is all rather disturbing; perhaps she simply needs to sleep off the remnants of a skewed dream. Francesca heads back upstairs, but no sooner has she set her head down on the pillow, when the pealing at the door begins again; this time it is joined by a fierce pounding. She doesn’t head down right away, instead she looks about her room, wondering about what has taken place. She still isn’t convinced of the validity of her surroundings; it hasn’t happened before, but it could be that she has awoken inside a dream. She is well aware of the art of lucid dreaming; it is something Freyja has tried to get her interested in on a number of occasions.
Accompanied by the persistent pandemonium downstairs, she gets up and opens the curtains. Once again she is troubled by what she finds, for outside her window is the very same nothing she had discovered beyond the front door. A nothingness lacking in colour, and yet somehow possessing weight; she cannot decide whether it has devoured all that should be outdoors, or replaced it. It could be that the trees and grass have grown tired of their existence, and simply chosen not to be anymore. She is at a loss as to what to do, so she repeatedly opens and closes the curtains in the hope that the usual view appears. Still, this doesn’t convince the nothing into reacquiring any of the familiar shapes and colours, and in the meantime that rebarbative rumpus has intensified.
Heading down once again, she expects all sorts of monsters, ogres and demons to jump out at her. Hopefully none of them are immune to her weapon of choice, a rolling pin snatched from the kitchen cupboard. She accepts that her paranoia is probably down to her rather unhealthy obsession with Doctor Who, particularly the eleventh incarnation, but if being a brownie in her younger years taught her anything, it was to always be prepared. It was with the brownies that she had pledged to always do her best; she has since failed on this account more than once.
Wondering if Freyja was ever a member, she pulls the door open, keeping the rolling pin out of sight behind her back. Once again, there is nothing waiting for her. She mimics the hopelessness of her experiment with the curtains, opening and shutting the door a number of times to no avail. Once the door is closed, she peers through the spy glass into the same achromatic void, only magnified. She knows it is impossible to magnify nothing, especially the colourless sort, but there it is, right before her eye.
Now certain of her wakefulness, she tramps into the sitting room and flops down on the sofa. Perhaps the television will have some answers; she chuckles at the thought of there finally being a news article on a proper kind of nothing.
After scrabbling around for the remote, she finds it’s been hiding beneath a cushion. Choice nonsense reminds her why she rarely ever flicks her set on; she gives up after trying a number of stations and leaves it on the news, whilst picking up the phone from the mahogany coffee table. She had better call her mother, she always knows what to do. Why, two summers ago, when she was unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on how one looks at it) enough to find a stray quetzal flapping its prismatic plumage about in her sitting room, her mother knew just whom to call. Within a couple of hours the RSPCA sent someone round, a pleasant pale skinned fellow with a lisp, who caught the distressed bird with ease and took it away. He even apologised to her, offered a substantial supply of sorry, as though the whole thing were his fault.
Her mother doesn’t pick up, which is unlike her, especially so early in the morning, when she should be home. Maybe she has gone away on one of those impulsive camping trips of hers; Francesca will just have to work this out on her own.
As far back as her memory goes, her mother would always vanish spontaneously. She didn’t understand it when she was a child, even felt resentment towards her, although she’d usually be left with an amicable aunt.
Her mother’s sister, an avid patron of the arts, had the most delightful collection of original Carringtons and Varos, and even owned a couple of open-mouthed sculptures by Max Ernst. Francesca always looked forward to visiting her curious grotto, where she’d be given the most breathtaking gifts; in particular a mischievous-looking marionette comes to mind. Over time the resentment for her mother has worn off, but to this day she cannot understand what possesses her.
Still tired, she drifts off to sleep without turning off the television. A failsafe recipe for disconcerting dreams, especially considering sofas aren’t the most comfortable places in the world, not when one is lying on a remote control. Thankfully, her rest doesn’t last long and, having dreamt about falling into a large vat of orange juice, she wakes up thirsty. She heads to the kitchen to resolve the situation, and drowsily recalls the nonsensical nothing she had witnessed outside. She often thinks that the best way to deal with things is to ignore them until they go away, but she doubts that will work this time. She decides to check the back door; maybe that side of the house has been unaffected.
She begins to doubt her memory; it has always been untrustworthy, many times it has played tricks on her causing her to imagine all sorts of events which never took place. She has even lost friends on its account. Either it is acting up again, or this is in fact an elaborate dream. But then the deluge of orange juice she dreamt about felt real too, and terrifyingly so, for she isn’t a strong swimmer.
Her mother had sent her to swimming lessons when she was young, but she would bunk them to stand at the back of the building smoking cigarettes and chewing gum with the older girls. She never really smoked, didn’t know how, but she made an accurate enough copy of a real smoker so that no one noticed. She wonders if any of the girls knew how to smoke, maybe she wasn’t the only one
pretending.
Both of her guesses are proven incorrect when she pulls open the back door and is greeted by the exact same nuisance which had awaited her at the front. She lifts an umbrella from the stand and throws it out. She adores her elephant-foot-shaped umbrella stand; Freyja had brought it back with her from one of her trips to West Africa, and had made a rather elaborate gift of it, it had even been wrapped in shiny paper. The umbrella, of course, vanishes just as her hand did earlier.
What she finds most perturbing about the nothingness is its lack of hue. She could understand if a nothing were grey, or black, or even white, but this has no colour at all. Can such a thing even exist, surely all things have colour? But then this isn’t a thing, it’s a nothing, so the rules must be completely different.
She thinks about Freyja, if she were here the nothingness outside would have little significance. But she isn’t, and Francesca is beginning to feel lonely. Flitting between the empty rooms dampens her mood further, so she picks up the phone again. Still no answer from her mother, she’ll try the police for