Colors. Colors everywhere. Crawling up walls and spilling onto the floor, coating corners and enveloping objects, clambering up trees and filling the cracks in the pavement. Colors, reaching up to the white ether, filling it with a deluge of extravagance. In the sky colors reached for one another, creating a masterpiece upon the white backdrop. Celadon intermingled with shades of sunny yellow. Muddy browns merged with electric oranges; psychedelic greens crawled from the heavens to reach pale pinks at the treetops. Waves of indigo washed upon a lilac beach, amaranth at its edges. Viridian spilled over immaculate meadows, gold veining through tree trunks, winding up into silver branches. Every color in every existence was blending together, creating a web of startling intricacy and ebullience.

It was horrible.

Aureolin stared in horror as her friends melted into the backdrop around her. What once had form, a form Aureolin cared for, was painted across the walls, flowing off the chair and into the room, moving unnaturally, like a glob of sap granted sentience. She watched, mesmerized by the terror of it all, as Skobeloff splashed across the wall, running across it like liquid pouring off a table’s edge. Aureolin’s dread only grew as she turned to see the last of Vermillion sink into the couch, leaving behind a striking shade. Aureolin began to cry, tears slipping down her cheeks as she stumbled out of her house, attempting to leave the execrable scene behind. Outside her eyes
were assaulted by an amalgamation of everyone she had ever known, cared for, or met in passing. Jade was spilling onto the grass, rivulets of her falling into the gutter, blending with Russet, his color having rained down from the rooftop he had been sitting on mere minutes ago. Ash was dripping from an open car door, splashed over the steering mechanism and the window. Her idyllic world was corroding under the weight of everyone.

Aureolin felt something viscous drip onto the back of her hand; stiffly, she turned to look. Upon her flawless eggshell skin, a single splash of intense color was sprawled. Trembling, she reached her hand up to her face, feeling the tears upon her cheeks. The same color marred her fingertips. Aureolin let out a strangled sob and scrubbed at her face, smearing color over her nose and into her eyes. She screamed, squirmed, scratched at her face and arms, a futile effort to clean herself of the abrasive shade. Her nails raked over her skin, cutting into the porcelain surface. No blood appeared, only more of the same color. Aureolin screamed, her fingers tearing at her hair, her knees scraping against the cement as she lurched forward, a distant static making its way up her throat and hands. She turned to face the sky, its once white brilliance now scored across with hues of every color unimaginable, and Aureolin screamed at it too, at what it represented, at what it had stolen from her. Her scream became a gurgle as thick color spilled from her throat, leaking from her nostrils and the corners of her eyes.

She fell silent, fighting against the urge to gag, fury and terror battling for dominance in her eyes. The static crawled up her arms, and she couldn’t feel her hands anymore. She was shrinking, falling to the ground without moving a muscle, dissolving into the backdrop. Her legs vanished from under her, the static fading to an empty nothingness. The crawling sensation of disappearing moved up her torso, enveloped her chest, and curled over her shoulders, a demented hug of death pulling her into an abyss of colors. The smell of burning left her, and then the sound of the wind through the trees. The plastic taste of acrylic melted away next. It was terribly silent, terribly… nothing. The last piece of her that faded was the sight of that horrible, horrible sky, and then she was left a pool of aureolin.