CHAYA FRIEDMAN

The Gray World

Sometimes he watched the skies and saw the blank blueness and the clouds and sometimes saw his own face reflected up there in the heavens, godlike and strange. He liked looking up at the sky, even as he walked, his hands swinging solidly and heavily at his sides, the air waving with heat and smoke and dust and smog, he would look up at the sky, he would look up at that great expanse of blueness, dotted with a scattering of clouds.

When he came home, he would feel the heaviness of the world, the gray world, the gray endless heavy hot world, and he would sit on his couch, his fingers trembling. He did not know why the world was so big, why the buildings were glassy and fogged and endless. He went to his window and stared at the cars, their lights red and glowing, thousands of them, always moving, moving, moving. His hand pressed against the glass, feeling its solid coolness. The clock ticked on the wall, ticking ticking ticking, and he felt the wrinkles slowly forming on his face, and the clock ticked and time moved, the cars zoomed the buildings rose to the clouds and the sun began to fall into the horizon, hidden in a cloud of dusty red…

The train was full, and it smelled like metal and sweat and heat. He sat, feeling the grayness, watching the people, the frowning curves of their mouths, the vertical lines like scars between their eyebrows, feeling the heavy gray gray grayness of the world. The doors slid open and closed open and closed open and closed. They sped through the endless graffitied tunnels, screaming names and places and children who had once laughed as they held the spray paint cans in their hands. He wondered where they were now.

He waited for the light, watching the red hand intently, hearing the muttered conversations of those around him, feeling the flutter of a pigeon’s wings above his head.

The interview was short.

He left knowing he had not gotten the job.

The world was very gray.

His hands trembled, and he watched them, pale against the hard brown wood table, trembling uncontrollably. The door tinkled faintly and he was vaguely aware of someone else entering the shop. He drank the coffee, sour bitter stuff that scorched his throat, watching the blurry street outside, the lampposts throwing pale strips of light upon the ground, and the car’s headlights luminous in the dark.

When he came home, he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, the light harsh and bright white on his eyes.

His face was very gray.

Again the train. This time he stood, his hands sweating slightly as they gripped the metal pole. He heard the soft ticking of a woman’s watch, ticking ticking ticking ticking. He felt the trembling run through his entire body, through his veins and pores and blood and flesh and bone.

He walked, watching the taxis and the high heels and the cardboard signs that screamed for help. He walked, feeling the sun pounding on his head, the sweat that ran from his forehead to his chin. He walked, going nowhere, having nowhere to go, smelling the aching dust and the the endless monstrous glass structures that towered above him, those great beasts, beautiful wretched beasts, filled with offices and offices and hard shiny shoes and paperwork and cleanliness and keyboards clacking and pens scribbling and the constant low ringing of distant phones…

He brushed shoulders with a thousand people, all of them gray faced and going nowhere, going nowhere, sweat polishing their faces and pooling into the frowning creases of their mouths. The lights changed slowly, yellow red green, yellow red green, until it became a rhythm of color, always changing, endless changing color. He looked up at the sky, he looked up at the sky so that he would not have to see all the grayness, so that he would not have to stare into the faces of a thousand faceless strangers, so that the urge to scream inside him would lessen into a dull roar in the back of his head, like the speeding of a train along the tracks…

His apartment was empty and gray, and he heard the ticking of the clock, suddenly incredibly loud, echoing in his ears and in his mouth and nose and eyes so that he could not breathe. He ran into the bathroom, locking the door, so that the sound could no longer reach him, and saw his face in the mirror, blank and gray, his eyes like empty dark sockets in his face. He thought of the storage boxes in his closet, the paintbrushes now old and dusty and hard with old paint, the canvases blank and white and staring.

Moving slowly, as if in a dream, he left the bathroom, his legs heavy heavy heavy, pulling his unwilling body forward. He lifted the clock from the mantelpiece, his hands white and trembling, and he heard the ticking, incessant in his ears…the train roared through his head squealing and shrieking with rage…his arm moved, pulling back and then lunging–

The clock shot through the glass, whining and ticking, soaring through the air and then plunging and crashing, so that time was broken and lost inside its mechanical workings, so that he suddenly saw himself as an old old man, faded and gray, so that the children he never had flashed through his mind, laughing and pink cheeked, so that he knew it was over, it had been over before it had ever begun, and he clutched his hands to his ears and raced forward, the gaping hole in the glass window like a sharks eager mouth, awaiting its fresh prey…

They found the body dead on top of the clock later that night, when the rain had already washed the blood away.

They searched the apartment, under the bed and inside the cupboards until they found a stash of freshly used paint brushes still dripping wet, and a painting of a blank faced man, drinking his coffee…

The world was very gray.

Chaya Friedman is a young writer who lives in Brooklyn, New York.