Synesthete
an excerpt

Chapter 1: The Saint

“Do you see the colors too?” she asked.
They were in the Gray Room, and all was pale and lifeless. The man said nothing, but acted as if she had said nothing at all.
“ I see them all the time,” she sighed, looking to the floor she whispered. “I see them when the world makes a sound. people have color too.” She looked up at the man again. He was clothed in what remained of a tattered gray suit. Pale charcoal threads dangled from the hems, a pocket was torn and exposed his dull silver undershirt. “Your color is a golden brown, like amber. It’s--”
“Shut up, witch!” the man exploded, slapping the girl across the face, sending her to the ground. “Do you want to die?!”
The little girl wept, dusty chalk from the floor staining her dress and face. Her tears cut passages like canals down her face, pushing the pale powder from her face. A spot of red grew in color on her left cheek, the only subtle change in the whole room.
“What did I do?” the littler girl choked. “I was just--”
“Not another word!” he bellowed, catching the attention of others around him, causing them to move as far as they could. Fights were not uncommon in the Gray Room, but not everyone wanted to be a part of one.
“Hector!” a new voice sounded in a harsh whisper. “Leave her alone, she’s just a little girl!”
A woman from among the mass of tightly packed people stood to her knees, looking over the hoards of sitting gray captives.
“She was talking about colors!” Hector hissed back, jabbing an accusing finger at the chalk-covered girl.
“What’s wrong with that?” spoke the girl again, smearing the dust and tear mixture with the back of her hand. “My mother and father told me to never be ashamed of who I am or what I saw.’
“And where are they now?” asked Hector in a tone most begrudging.
“...I don’t know.” replied the girl with sadness.
“They’re probably dead, fools that they were, telling you things like that. Don’t speak of what you see, the people hear will kill you too if they hear it.”
The girl’s eyes opened wide, but that only seemed to aid the flow of tears. She was frightened out of her wits. Here she was, by her self in a room packed with strangers, one of them had just hit her and told her that her parents had died. She couldn’t have been older than 9 years. The blow dealt her was one of mortal damage. She would break.
“Hector, don’t talk like that, you’ll scare her!” spoke the woman again; crawling towards the girl, pushing past gray clad prisoners.
“If the truth frightens her, she has reason to be scared.”
“What truth?’
“The one we are all bound to.”
“We are bound to no truth. It does not exist. It’s just one man’s set of morals.”
“Think what you will, but if you talk like she was talking, you will be killed no matter what you believe.”
The woman reached the girl and snatched her up in her arms, pressing her filthy face to her pale charcoal breast. The child would not stop crying.
“She’s too young to know of things like that,” the woman whispered, trying to cover the girl’s ears. “You’ll make her a (word for the medical condition where you cannot sleep at night) or give her night terrors.”
“There are worse terrors then those of the mind. she is awake now, it’s about time she stopped dreaming and faced the nightmare we all have to deal with.”
“Are you saying you see them too?”
“Of course not!”
The woman eyed him with a knowing glance.
“Just take her away before she caused more trouble.”
“And what am I suppose to do with her?”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you saved her.”
“Hector!”
“Take her or I’ll call the Saints and tell them about her little friends.”
“I hope you get what you deserve, Hector, and you know better than I do what that punishment is.”
“Hell is a place for Synners, not for Saints.”
“Then there must be something worse in store for you.”
“Take the girl, Ellen.”
Ellen gathered up the thick fabric of her skirt and laboriously crawled back to her original spot. The overflow had filled her little sitting area, so she had to push and shove her way back, fighting for even a tiny section of the concrete floor.
There was no seating in the large room. It was an empty shell. The floor was cold and hard, covered in a chalky gray substance that took the hassle out of cleaning spilled blood. The walls and ceiling were high, stretching high up into the sky. It was vaulted like a basilica, and might have been beautiful had it been used for other purposes. The front and back walls were plain, gray concrete with two doors at each end as the only distinguishing features. The walls on the left on the right held six acrylic windows hostage, putting them to work for lighting. The windows were tall, eight feet wide the rose to the ceiling, curving into a graceful half circle at the top. The light brought no comfort to Ellen.
She held the child in her arms, whispering sweet lies of comfort and safety. The girl continued to cry until her eyes ran dry, and the chalk began to sting.
“There, now are you okay?”
“Why did that man hit me?” her voice was still cracked.
“Because he was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of you.”
“How could he be scared of me, I’m just a little girl!”
“I know sweetie, I know, I don’t understand it either.”
Ellen patted the girl’s head and stroked her hair.
“You’re prettier than he was anyway.” said the child snidely.
Ellen laughed. “Oh, well I should say so!”
“Your eyes match perfectly, the shade and everything, it’s just like the rest of you.”
Ellen stopped combing the girl’s hair. She was head to toe in differing hues of gray. Dark grays and light grays, pale grays and hard grays, but her eyes were blue.
“Yours is such a pretty color blue. My mommy told me the ocean is blue, I bet it’s the same shade.”
Ellen pressed the girl to her again, trying to silence her yet again, her eyes wide. It seemed she too feared this child.
“Sweetie, sweetie, don’t talk like that.”
The girl wrestled her face from the woman’s arms, “Why not?”
“Shhh! Only talk of gray here,” she said mechanically, “no other color should be mentioned. Only speak of gray.”
“But why?”
“Shhhh! Just don’t talk about them.”
“Why did that man call me a deviant? That’s what the Saints call the...”
“Yes, yes, that’s what they call the Synners.”
“But, I’m not a Synner am I?”
“Only if you want to be.”
“But if that’s the way I was born --”
“Then you pretend. Pretend you are a Saint. Everyone does it; just pretend.”
“But I don’t want to pretend, I want to be what I am.”
“No, no, no, you can’t do that, not hear. You need to be what they want you to be, nothing more, sometimes less. Just for a little while, pretend you don’t see the colors.”
“But--”
“Just do like I do, and pretend you can’t see them!”
Ellen didn’t catch herself in time. She tightened her hand around a wad of her dress and hoped the child wouldn’t pick up what she had dropped. But she did.
“You see them too!” she whispered in excitement.
Ellen cursed and then whispered, "No, I don’t see anything but your dirty face.”
“You do see them. I can tell.” The girl’s tone had changed, she sounded almost like an adult, a horrible, sadistic adult, like Hector.
“Come on, let me clean you up.”
“Just tell me. Please. I’m alone here, I’m different, you said so yourself. Let me know I’m not alone.”
“Darling, you are alone. It doesn’t matter what I see or what I don’t see, nothing will change that.”
“Just tell me.” There was that odd tone again, it scared Ellen, and she submitted to the girl’s request.
“Alright, alright, I see the colors too. Whenever someone talks I see them, different shapes float around them like little insects as they speak. You cry little yellow circles whenever you speak. They don’t like it when you cry, and neither do I. So just, just keep yourself under control.” The girl smiled, looking again much older than she was. “That’s all I needed, thank you.” She stood up.
“What are you doing? Sit down!”
She walked through the crowd a few paces, her back to Ellen then she pulled a small devise from her small pocket. She raised it too her mouth and turned to Ellen.
“What are you...”
Static emitted from the devise. It’s angry red color buzzed like angry red bees before Ellen. She recognized that sound.
“Oh God.”