The Still Ocean Of A Grey Mind

You never really think about the air around you until it’s running out; much like so many vital things that go on in the background, you never really notice it until it fucks up. Concrete, unlike dirt and sand is’t filled with oxygen; you can, to a limited extent, breathe dirt and sand, the same is most decidedly not true of concrete.

Remaining calm in a hopeless situation is difficult, but panic does you no good. It took an effort of will to keep my heart rate and breathing slow and even as I gnawed through the supernatural cement, each mouthful renewing the bone deep cold spread throughout my body. If I allowed fear and panic to take over, I’d begin hyperventilating and would only waste my already very limited supply of air all the faster.

Eventually I fell into something of a meditative state or trance, lulled into semi-consciousness by the rhythmic, repetitive motions of ever so slowly crawling forward as my teeth took tiny layer after tiny layer out of the homogeneous wall of grey all around me. My fur was so filled with dust at this point I was more grey than black, the same dust filling the space behind me at the same rate I opened up space before me. I was a moving bubble of increasingly more carbon dioxide than air moving through a still ocean of featureless grey.

The thought that my little pocket was slowly filling with poison was even more claustrophobic than just being in this lightless grey hell, as if the very air was turning on me. The thought of even my breathable air getting pushed out threatened to drive me to a panic that would only kill me all the quicker if I didn’t immediately distract myself.

There is nothing here to contemplate save my incoming death, the unnatural cold sapping the energy from my bones, and the unending grey walls of whatever wretched substance Alxhaustra conjured up in that twisted mind of his. The only thing to see is a grey so deep and so empty as to strain the eye in an instinctive attempt to see further into the nothing, as if the flat wall were some thick fog rather than the solid obstruction it was. As if those depthless grey walls were an ocean my mind could fall into and be swallowed by unseen horrors lurking beyond the gaze of the gods of men.

I suddenly had the impression of gazing into a churning sea from a great height and my mind began to conjure monstrosities that could lurk in those grey depths beyond the mists of madness. The longer I stared at that grey sea stretching out beyond eternity before me, the more I could swear I saw vague, shadowy shapes shifting about its vast depthlessness; I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched by unblinking grey eyes blended in with the grey ocean.

Grey…

Grey is a strange colour. Staring at something for several hours tends to give one perspective on it and I’ve had nothing else to stare at. The dull not-colour was pervasive, seeping into my fur and seeming to creep under my eyelids so all I could see, even with them closed tightly in some vain attempt to block out the writhing monsters of the false sea, was more of the damnable colour. Grey is the colour of mediocrity, of misery and cloying despair. It isn’t the hot rage of red or stark terror of black, not the cool consideration of blue or the raving madness of orange or the power of purple, not the purity of white or hope crystalized in gold; grey represents all those nasty little emotions that blend together with a bottle of gin and a twelve gauge to result in one less miserable sod and one more broken family.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Grey is light and unobtrusive, and yet it seems to consume everything else into its sway. Grey is an emotional sludge, a cloying, clinging, choking yet oh so minor feeling of discontent, of sadness too mild to be called misery right up until everything goes grey and the sidewalk a hundred feet down starts looking oh so inviting. Grey is insidious and creeping, slithering into your dreams and whispering grim truths and miserable possibilities. Grey represents an acceptance of mediocrity, of bright and vibrant colours fading to a homogenous mass of indistinct and uninteresting normality. Grey is the colour of an empty mind, a broken soul.

Grey is driving me fucking insane. I hate that damned colour! I’m half tempted to cut myself if only to have some other colour to fill my eyes than this maddening sea of unchanging grey! Except even my very blood is being stained by the filthy colour, coming from my veins the same featureless grey as the walls! My luxurious black fur has been stained by the not-colour of nothingness! At this rate I’m sure the crawling, creeping colour will stain my bones, my very soul the same bland of boredom made manifest!

By all the gods I don’t believe in, I have to get out of here before my wonderfully pink brain is marred by this foul lack of colour! I won’t join you oh sea of not! I won’t fade into the walls and become just more grey in this land so oversaturated with its desaturation! You will not have my mind oh scion of misery, oh prince of nothing, oh malady upon creativity! Ye vile colour won’t corrupt my thoughts, oh malaise of broken dreams and empty souls! I am beyond your influence, vile corruptor, wicked homogeniser, crusher of hope! I will shatter your hammer of banality beneath the might of my towering-!

Hot air rushing in to fill my space and swiftly cooling against my dusty face startled me out of the grey sludge pit my mind was spiralling into. So caught up in my increasingly insane rant was I that I didn’t even notice the empty space Paranoia saw until I bit into the wall and my teeth pierced right through, so consumed by the grey was I that even open air was stained by the colour until it looked just like stone in my mind’s eye.

It took me a few moments of blinking uncomprehendingly at the crack in the wall before me before the external heat cracked and boiled the grey from my mind and it clicked what was happening. WIth a sudden infusion of fresh air to rout the ache in my brain and push out the swirling grey from my increasingly misty thoughts, a new clarity came over me as if a breeze had come to blow the suspiciously grey fog from my mind.

I breathed deeply, sucking down smoke tainted air with desperate glee, claws and teeth working with greater fury than ever before to widen the gap. My patience, limited as it always has been, was strained even further by suddenly feeling claustrophobic, as if the walls were closing in; I couldn’t stand to be in that hole even a second longer.

I sucked in my gut as much as I could, which was surprisingly far considering even my bones are oddly flexible, and squeezed through the hole as soon as my head was able to fit through. Out in the semi-open air once again, I simply sat outside my unendingly grey prison for what felt like hours but was probably more like minutes just breathing the smokey air.

Of course, said smokey tang reminded me rather quickly of why I can’t just sit here. With a deep sigh, I heaved myself up to my feet, ignoring the bone deep weariness seeking to keep me laying in the dust. I glanced about the tunnel I had emerged into; I have no idea which way I came from or even if this is the same tunnel the spider had claimed or if I had managed to dig my way into a completely different passage in this fucking labyrinth.

Tunnel Sense +1

While the notification made me noticeably more comfortable down here (which i’m not wholly convinced is a good thing), it did little good in telling me which way leads to safety; though, at least I did get the impression I was in the tunnel that had replaced the one that collapsed on me. With some straining of my eyes, I could faintly see light coming from one direction; strangely, not the one my nose told me the smoke was coming from.

With a shrug, I headed towards the light; whether it be flame or the phosphorescent glow of some wretched sea creature drawn to the surface and mutilated until it could stay here, at least it’s something. A glance at the still far too grey walls sent a shiver down my spine; hopefully, I’ll find somewhere with less of the vile not-colour.