She’s sitting in a cot in a cold, white box. Everything here is white – even her own hands, pale and spidery, which rest on her white coverlet as she stares out the window at the world of color she once knew. She sighs. Here, every day is colorless and the same.
A knock sounds at the door. She waits. The orderlies always knock, as if it matters, but they come in whether she answers or not. Sure enough, the door clicks open, but the voice that says hello is unfamiliar, so she looks.
A man stands in the doorway, smiling at her. He’s not very tall, and his hair is so raven-dark, his eyes such a bright blue, that he could be her brother. But he isn’t. He’s a stranger.
He tells a joke, but it’s lame and she doesn’t laugh. Grinning, he shrugs and admits that it was no good. An unwilling smile creeps across her face. It grows wider as he tells another joke, less lame. Then he reaches into his pocket and produces four balls, dazzling her with color. All the colors that for the past month have only existed outside her window light up the room: Tree green, sky blue, red as the petunias growing in the window boxes, gold like the dandelions and the sun and her lost freedom.
The man begins to juggle slowly, only the green and blue balls. They swing into the air in a graceful arc, lazy at first, then faster. The green and blue blur together in an oceanic whirl. The woman watches, entranced, as he adds the red ball and tosses the balls higher and faster. Faster and faster and faster still, so fast that she doesn’t see when he adds the last ball, just sees the flash of gold like the color of freedom. She watches for a long time, until finally he pulls a goofy face and sends the balls tumbling down on his head.
She knows it was planned, but she can’t help it: She starts to laugh. The man’s face splits into a gap-toothed grin. He joins in, adding explosions of deep belly laughter to her long, merry peals. They laugh for a long, long time, the first time she’s laughed in years, it feels like. Finally he picks up the colored balls, tips them into her lap, and bows, sweeping an imaginary hat from his head. Then he says goodbye and heads on to the next patient.
She smiles down at the colors in her lap, tree green, sky blue, petunia red, and gold, the color of freedom, until an orderly enters and asks, How do you feel today?
Good, she replies, surprised; How else should I feel?
The orderly says, …the cancer.
And suddenly she’s back in a white box, four cold walls and a metal cot, because she remembers.
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140,812 Literary Works • 673,694 Reviews
This was SO good! I almost felt like the main char., and even found myself grinning like a retard at the screen at this part:
The ending was very powerful. Great job
Hey!
I love the title
I'd suggest re-wording this a little. Maybe to something like -
'The orderlies always knock, as if it matters; they come in whether she answers or not.'
It just gives the sentence a little more flow.
So, I think this was a brilliant story. It was short, but sweet
I liked how you kept referring to gold as the colour of freedom throughout the story. It was a nice theme and you did it just enough times that it didn't become too repetitive or annoying.
The story had a powerful and poignant plot. On the surface, it just seems to be about someone who is cheered up by someone juggling, but when you read further into it, it becomes a story about someone battling an illness. Someone who sees the world as a lonely and uniform place. Lacking life almost. And then, when they are visited by the juggling man, all life rushes back into their world and they feel human again. Until the orderly brings them back down to reality. For a short story, it had a lot of meaning and emotion. I felt sympathy for your protagonist which is good, as it means you've managed to make them seem real enough for me to care about.
Thanks for the read!
xDudettex
Enjoyed it, as usual.
Powerful images, great style... I don't really have much to criticize here. The only thing I could mention is that to me the phrase
seems a bit unnatural. Maybe a confused face from the orderly would be more in touch with the small amount of dialogue in this piece, but then of course you'd have the problem of getting the message and solution to the whole situation across. Difficult, I have to admit. Still, maybe worth thinking about.
Lemikita
Hi, Tomm here to comment.
I love the first sentence:
Really mysterious. Makes me want to read on. Good job.
Good description here. But, spidery? Hmm, I don't get that. Maybe I'm missing something. Don't worry.
I like the ending how the narrator reveals that the kid has cancer. I feel sad, after that. After the color and joy in the middle section.
I liked it a lot!
~ T.K
Hey Blue! I really liked your story. I don't know why no one else has critiqued it yet, because it's quite good. From what I've seen, definitions of flash fiction vary. Some people say it has to be under 300 words, while others say that it can be higher, even up to 1,000. I don't think that this story should be classified as that, though. It doesn't have the extreme brevity that flash fiction does. It's just a very short short story. (If that makes sense, and it probably doesn't.
)
Anyways. On to the review. I really liked the way you described the colorlessness of the room. At first, I wondered if she was sitting in an insane asylum or something, so I was a little surprised to find that she actually had cancer. That's not a bad thing, it was just a little unexpected. A mention of an IV or something like that might be helpful to clue the reader into the fact that the character's in a hospital, but it's not absolutely necessary.
There's a lot of repetition of the word "lame" here. I would replace at least one of them with a synonym.
I really like this last sentence. It's a powerful ending.
I really can't find much to critique with this piece. You have a great style, and I like that you don't have any dialogue until the very end. I do agree that it needs a better title, though. "The Color of Freedom" might be a good fit. It's definitely more... I don't know, attractive than the title you're using now.
Overall, nice job! Thanks for the entertaining read.
Magnus