Grey Read Free

foot and screamed. Then I felt the same blast in my left. The tops of my shoes were cracked open like tiny bombs had gone off.
    My knees buckled as my body felt clumsy and heavy. I shuffled forward trying to stay upright, but couldn't keep my balance. I began to fall and on the way down, felt someone try to grasp my waist. If there was an impact, I didn't feel it, but then my face was flat on the ground. The pain in my hands and feet burned like the white flame of a welding gun. The salty smell of blood filled my nose.
    All around, I heard screams. Joelene shouted the word ambulance several times. A siren began to whine and at first it rose and fell like a perfectly formed and pure white sign wave. A moment later, though, the tone turned harsh and the smooth wave I had been imagining became rough and jagged. The siren began to fade, and the wave shrunk to a single point of green light. It held for a moment then disappeared.

Two
    What appeared to be the same green dot hovered before me in a vast nothing, like a single jade-colored star in a night sky. I wasn't sure if just a few seconds, hours, or days had elapsed, but I felt I might be in a different place. Concentrating on the green point of light, I felt it was me or was just like me—a tiny entity in the middle of nothing. I wanted to reach out to it and comfort it, if such a thing were possible.
    Then another green pinpoint of light emerged and gradually became as intense as the first. I felt glad because the first star wasn't alone. It had a companion.
    Then a third dot appeared, and I hated it. I didn't want it to interfere. But soon more dots bloomed from the darkness. Clumps appeared, then dozens, and finally hundreds filled in. The first two were lost in an emerald cloud that looked like the vapors of a nebula. The cloud became opaque and filled my vision from top to bottom, left to right.
    Without warning, slashes of yellow and gold cut the cloud to shreds. Molten masses of bloody reds and petroleum blacks bubbled up. The brutality and vividness frightened me, and from whatever state of sleep or dream I had been, my consciousness rose a level.
    The mass of glowing dots was actually a huge screen hovering inches above my nose. From the black a lavender froth emerged and then hundreds of orange abscesses erupted like a disease.
    "No," I said, squinting into the blinding light, "stop!"
    Grape vortexes swallowed up the orange and vomited acid greens.
    "Relax, Mr. Rivers," said an amplified voice.
    "Get this thing away of me!" I said. My fingers touched cold metal as I tried to push the screen away, but couldn't budge it.
    "Quiet please. And do not touch the equipment."
    "Where am I? Where's Nora?" The greens mutated into a brittle red, like a giant scab. I slapped the screen and the pain in my hand jarred me further awake.
    This was color therapy! Father ranted about how wonderful it was. I was in some sort of a hospital or spa—which explained the medicinal and alcohol tinge in the air—being exposed to the glaring horrors of photochromism. Then I fully woke, and as if remembering who I was, closed my right eye. The atrocious hues became a thousand soothing shades of grey.
    "Mr. Rivers," said the voice, "open both eyes. The therapy will be more effective! Mr. Rivers do as you're told. Open your right eye, please."
    The giant screen slowly faded to black and pulled away. I relaxed. At least I didn't feel like it was suffocating me.
    Footsteps approached. A bald man in a long emerald coat appeared beside me. I could see thick black hair in his nostrils. Leaning down, he peered into my right eye with a lit device. "Tsk!" he said, as if admonishing me. "Burning the cones is illegal."
    Only those few who are fully committed to grey have the procedure. Last year, without my father's knowledge, I found a neuro-ophthalmologist in Saru Pauro who performed the delicate operation. While I lay sedated, a microscopic sodium laser destroyed all the cones in my right retina. When