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The Chromovore
The festival? Our village used to thrive on it.
Normally, we had dull green forests and grass. Dull brown mud huts and soil. Dull grey rainy skies and streets. Every farmer had dull eyes.
Ah, the festival. When I was a lad, we lived on that day. Laughter, chasing, eating fresh meat, listening to the crackling fat, watching the fire under the spit, dancing with all the grown-ups. Oh, and how the skirts used to twirl, the finery shake and shout on the men, each always trying to look flashier than the next…
But I woke up one year. I eagerly looked out the window.
Nothing.
Imagine a village without color; you might think black-and-white. Nope. Even black and white were colors, though odd ones. Even they were all gone.
I don’t know how to explain it without going to the cities and finding some egghead, but here goes: The world looked like a sketch, only we walked through it. No surfaces, just lines everywhere. Everything which had been… well, drained, I suppose… had nothing between you and whatever was inside. It was like walking through an X-ray.
We walked in a daze.
“What’s happening, Rich?” Julie followed me out the door. “What’s happening!?”
“It’s aliens,” said Old Bill. “Them’s aliens invading!”
“No, you old fool,” said George the blacksmith. “It’s Judgement Day. The Lord’s here to pack up Creation!”
“Don’t be daft,” said Maisy the grocer. “It must be government, pollutin’ our village with nucular waste…”
Yet as I watched, the people became frames. One moment, I saw Julie, and Old Bill, and George, and Maisy. The next, I saw… four frames. They were human-shaped, but not human. Like they’d been switched off.
They spoke, but now it was just waves and numbers in the air. That was what sent me running from the village. I could see through their heads, into a mass of lines – their brains, I think – and I could see words being built. I could see their thoughts, like clockwork.
The festival wasn’t there. No bunting, no children, no spit-roasts, no dances. Just lines.
I ran as far as I could. The hill nearby turned to lines as I rushed, and then: I saw it! The colors rushing away like water. I fell to my knees, shocked. Aliens, spirits, demons, something even crazier?
But I thought of Julie, reduced to lines and numbers. That moment, I found my courage. If there was the slightest chance I could stop this…
I followed the colors. They ran uphill and into a cave that wasn’t there yesterday. I crept inside.
I saw… I’m not insane. What I saw was a dragon.
Or maybe not. Color rushed around it, leaving lines. Then it all shot up like a waterfall going backwards, rushed into its snout, rushed into its fanged mouth.
I stared.
It spotted me. That grin…
“Color wasn’t meant to exist,” it said. “Color has no place in reality.”
“Says who?” I said before I could stop myself. I was dead. Whatever I did, I knew I was dead.
“Your kind has probed reality from the furthest stars deep in the sky, to the strangest particles in the heart of an atom. Where in all those equations of yours can… color exist?”
“Well, it… it exists in our heads, right?”
“Ha! There is no color there. You delude yourselves! Color is just a primitive delusion! It breeds ill thoughts. It sickens you.”
“I can’t let you do this.”
“Let me? Let me!? Ignorant ape!”
It leapt right at me, crashing through the cave. I felt its hot breath, only going away from my skin. I saw the color leaving my arms…
But that’s the thing about color. It’s the pigment of imagination.
I thought I was going to die. I thought desperately of the old festival colors, of the laughter that had its own ineffable quality, of the rosy hue of my wife Julie’s cheek on the pillow –
Then the dragon screamed. All the color in its body trembled. I think now it was trying to obey my mind.
It tore the dragon apart.
And that was how I brought color back into our village. No one can take color from your mind unless you let them. Let nobody say that they’re not real. Color makes you you.
No, I ain’t had too much to drink, you cheeky monkey! Your old man could do with another pint, though! If Julie hasn’t hidden the bottles yet…
Normally, we had dull green forests and grass. Dull brown mud huts and soil. Dull grey rainy skies and streets. Every farmer had dull eyes.
Ah, the festival. When I was a lad, we lived on that day. Laughter, chasing, eating fresh meat, listening to the crackling fat, watching the fire under the spit, dancing with all the grown-ups. Oh, and how the skirts used to twirl, the finery shake and shout on the men, each always trying to look flashier than the next…
But I woke up one year. I eagerly looked out the window.
Nothing.
Imagine a village without color; you might think black-and-white. Nope. Even black and white were colors, though odd ones. Even they were all gone.
I don’t know how to explain it without going to the cities and finding some egghead, but here goes: The world looked like a sketch, only we walked through it. No surfaces, just lines everywhere. Everything which had been… well, drained, I suppose… had nothing between you and whatever was inside. It was like walking through an X-ray.
We walked in a daze.
“What’s happening, Rich?” Julie followed me out the door. “What’s happening!?”
“It’s aliens,” said Old Bill. “Them’s aliens invading!”
“No, you old fool,” said George the blacksmith. “It’s Judgement Day. The Lord’s here to pack up Creation!”
“Don’t be daft,” said Maisy the grocer. “It must be government, pollutin’ our village with nucular waste…”
Yet as I watched, the people became frames. One moment, I saw Julie, and Old Bill, and George, and Maisy. The next, I saw… four frames. They were human-shaped, but not human. Like they’d been switched off.
They spoke, but now it was just waves and numbers in the air. That was what sent me running from the village. I could see through their heads, into a mass of lines – their brains, I think – and I could see words being built. I could see their thoughts, like clockwork.
The festival wasn’t there. No bunting, no children, no spit-roasts, no dances. Just lines.
I ran as far as I could. The hill nearby turned to lines as I rushed, and then: I saw it! The colors rushing away like water. I fell to my knees, shocked. Aliens, spirits, demons, something even crazier?
But I thought of Julie, reduced to lines and numbers. That moment, I found my courage. If there was the slightest chance I could stop this…
I followed the colors. They ran uphill and into a cave that wasn’t there yesterday. I crept inside.
I saw… I’m not insane. What I saw was a dragon.
Or maybe not. Color rushed around it, leaving lines. Then it all shot up like a waterfall going backwards, rushed into its snout, rushed into its fanged mouth.
I stared.
It spotted me. That grin…
“Color wasn’t meant to exist,” it said. “Color has no place in reality.”
“Says who?” I said before I could stop myself. I was dead. Whatever I did, I knew I was dead.
“Your kind has probed reality from the furthest stars deep in the sky, to the strangest particles in the heart of an atom. Where in all those equations of yours can… color exist?”
“Well, it… it exists in our heads, right?”
“Ha! There is no color there. You delude yourselves! Color is just a primitive delusion! It breeds ill thoughts. It sickens you.”
“I can’t let you do this.”
“Let me? Let me!? Ignorant ape!”
It leapt right at me, crashing through the cave. I felt its hot breath, only going away from my skin. I saw the color leaving my arms…
But that’s the thing about color. It’s the pigment of imagination.
I thought I was going to die. I thought desperately of the old festival colors, of the laughter that had its own ineffable quality, of the rosy hue of my wife Julie’s cheek on the pillow –
Then the dragon screamed. All the color in its body trembled. I think now it was trying to obey my mind.
It tore the dragon apart.
And that was how I brought color back into our village. No one can take color from your mind unless you let them. Let nobody say that they’re not real. Color makes you you.
No, I ain’t had too much to drink, you cheeky monkey! Your old man could do with another pint, though! If Julie hasn’t hidden the bottles yet…
Pics
Alternate Title: I'm High as Fuck, Boy!
I had to sit down and really think about this one. Not because its story was difficult to understand on a surface level, or even because I suspect there's a deeper meaning to all of it, but because... how do I put this...?
"The Chromovore" is a high fantasy story; it's high in that there's a dragon involved, but it's also high in the sense that it was seemingly written by someone who just came back down from a crazy-ass trip and was eager to tell all the world about this newfound pseudo-philosophy.
When I started reading it, I thought it was set in like a rural town, maybe one of those quaint establishments you come across once you head west of Philadelphia and start taking in the scenery. Certainly there's nothing that would contradict this at first. The narrator could be someone I know, honestly. He seems like a swell guy.
But then the wack shit starts happening, and there's a dragon that devours colors?
What? What the fuck is that?
See, this wouldn't be too out of place in something like Grendel, that postmodern fantasy novel that you may or may not've read in high school, which also involves a dragon, except that episode fell within the context of a world that had already been established as fantastical.
The fact that this whole story is framed as the narrator drunkenly telling the reader a story only makes things more confusing. Did this really happen? Did he really wander into a cave that appeared out of nowhere and defeated a color-eating dragon with the power of his fucking mind?
This is some weird shit, author. I'm gonna remember this one, even though I'm not entirely sure if I even liked it. I suppose it's one of those experiments whose eccentricities are only more pronounced with brevity.
I had to sit down and really think about this one. Not because its story was difficult to understand on a surface level, or even because I suspect there's a deeper meaning to all of it, but because... how do I put this...?
"The Chromovore" is a high fantasy story; it's high in that there's a dragon involved, but it's also high in the sense that it was seemingly written by someone who just came back down from a crazy-ass trip and was eager to tell all the world about this newfound pseudo-philosophy.
When I started reading it, I thought it was set in like a rural town, maybe one of those quaint establishments you come across once you head west of Philadelphia and start taking in the scenery. Certainly there's nothing that would contradict this at first. The narrator could be someone I know, honestly. He seems like a swell guy.
But then the wack shit starts happening, and there's a dragon that devours colors?
What? What the fuck is that?
See, this wouldn't be too out of place in something like Grendel, that postmodern fantasy novel that you may or may not've read in high school, which also involves a dragon, except that episode fell within the context of a world that had already been established as fantastical.
The fact that this whole story is framed as the narrator drunkenly telling the reader a story only makes things more confusing. Did this really happen? Did he really wander into a cave that appeared out of nowhere and defeated a color-eating dragon with the power of his fucking mind?
This is some weird shit, author. I'm gonna remember this one, even though I'm not entirely sure if I even liked it. I suppose it's one of those experiments whose eccentricities are only more pronounced with brevity.
>>No_Raisin
Wot 'e said.
I'm very thrown by the tone in this story. Because it's very casual the whole way through, despite the amount of whatsit that goes down. It feels like it should be heavier, or perhaps funnier? But our narrator is very nonchalant, as if telling us a children's fable. But what is the moral of that fable... To never let someone stop you from seeing colour...? Hm. Peculiar.
And since your tone is so subdued, I can only assume that this really is just some drunken schmuck lying through his teeth, and that kinda sucks. But if that's not what you're going for, I recommend adding in something, at least a glimmer, that points to it being true. Like he has leftover qualities from the confrontation or something.
Thanks for writing!!
Wot 'e said.
I'm very thrown by the tone in this story. Because it's very casual the whole way through, despite the amount of whatsit that goes down. It feels like it should be heavier, or perhaps funnier? But our narrator is very nonchalant, as if telling us a children's fable. But what is the moral of that fable... To never let someone stop you from seeing colour...? Hm. Peculiar.
And since your tone is so subdued, I can only assume that this really is just some drunken schmuck lying through his teeth, and that kinda sucks. But if that's not what you're going for, I recommend adding in something, at least a glimmer, that points to it being true. Like he has leftover qualities from the confrontation or something.
Thanks for writing!!
First off, the title manages to rub me the wrong way. I explain: chromo- is a Greek prefix/name. -vore is a Latin suffix/name. You just can’t glue them together and get away with murder. Either you want *chromophage, which is all Greek, or *colorvore, which is all Latin. But *colorphage or *chromovore are bad neologisms.
Chromophage is swanky, though.
Anyways. The story is pretty drab, eh. I mean, it’s in the same vein as The Beast, a very literal and straightforward way to write about the picture you used as inspiration. The takeaway is a very classical one: don’t give up to {despair, evil, hate}, if you stand fast and draw on the power of {hope, good, love}, you’ll win.
Besides, the theory that transpires here, namely that colors are figments of our imagination, is not true. I mean, it is true that the harsh reality is light wavelength. But color is a perception. As all perceptions, it takes places inside the brain, and can sometimes be the result of internal stimulation, like when you dream your eyes are closed yet you see images. That doesn’t make it a figment: color exists as a stimulus, insomuch as a stimulus is a flow of neurotransmitters hopping from axones to dendrites via synapses in your brain. It’s a very real phenomenon. Sever the visual cortex from someone's brain, and there’s a good chance that every sensation of color will be gone, despite imagination still working.
Now I agree that this process takes places at a non-verbal level, whereby it would remain unchanged even if we called red green and green blue, etc.
* The (*) before a word is a sign conventionally used by linguists to tag words that are not attested, be they fancy formations or simply because they existed in a langage that was not written, like Gaulish or Indo-European, for example.
Chromophage is swanky, though.
Anyways. The story is pretty drab, eh. I mean, it’s in the same vein as The Beast, a very literal and straightforward way to write about the picture you used as inspiration. The takeaway is a very classical one: don’t give up to {despair, evil, hate}, if you stand fast and draw on the power of {hope, good, love}, you’ll win.
Besides, the theory that transpires here, namely that colors are figments of our imagination, is not true. I mean, it is true that the harsh reality is light wavelength. But color is a perception. As all perceptions, it takes places inside the brain, and can sometimes be the result of internal stimulation, like when you dream your eyes are closed yet you see images. That doesn’t make it a figment: color exists as a stimulus, insomuch as a stimulus is a flow of neurotransmitters hopping from axones to dendrites via synapses in your brain. It’s a very real phenomenon. Sever the visual cortex from someone's brain, and there’s a good chance that every sensation of color will be gone, despite imagination still working.
Now I agree that this process takes places at a non-verbal level, whereby it would remain unchanged even if we called red green and green blue, etc.
* The (*) before a word is a sign conventionally used by linguists to tag words that are not attested, be they fancy formations or simply because they existed in a langage that was not written, like Gaulish or Indo-European, for example.
I liked the low-key horror vibes this gives, especially with the bit describing the de-colored people, and the MC's worry about Julie.
But to be honest, I did have some trouble with the voicing of the narrator/MC. From the first couple of paragraphs, I thought this was supposed to be set in middle ages Europe. But then there's aliens and X-rays. And then, we learn that they live in a society where a town blacksmith would know the grocer? At least here in the States, I think Mom and Pop grocery stores were pretty much all gone by the time X-rays and sci-fi were part of popular discourse. It might be different in England(?), but I'm still just having a tough time figuring out the setting, and it's somewhat distracting.
The ending feels, well, kind of odd and anti-climactic to me. The dragon's voicing sounded bland to me, and it really seemed like you ran out of words half-way through their confrontation. Unfortunately, the fact that you can't devote a lot of words to this part makes the actual act of beating the dragon felt vague and kind of unimportant. I know that word count is the hardest thing to manage in a minific, but it is probably also the most important.
So while I think there's some neat ideas on display here, I'm having trouble with the execution on a couple of levels.
But to be honest, I did have some trouble with the voicing of the narrator/MC. From the first couple of paragraphs, I thought this was supposed to be set in middle ages Europe. But then there's aliens and X-rays. And then, we learn that they live in a society where a town blacksmith would know the grocer? At least here in the States, I think Mom and Pop grocery stores were pretty much all gone by the time X-rays and sci-fi were part of popular discourse. It might be different in England(?), but I'm still just having a tough time figuring out the setting, and it's somewhat distracting.
The ending feels, well, kind of odd and anti-climactic to me. The dragon's voicing sounded bland to me, and it really seemed like you ran out of words half-way through their confrontation. Unfortunately, the fact that you can't devote a lot of words to this part makes the actual act of beating the dragon felt vague and kind of unimportant. I know that word count is the hardest thing to manage in a minific, but it is probably also the most important.
So while I think there's some neat ideas on display here, I'm having trouble with the execution on a couple of levels.
But that’s the thing about color. It’s the pigment of imagination.
This story introduces the means of the villains defeat -- which was not previously foreshadowed at all -- in the same breath as the villain's defeat. It's a Deus Ex Machina that doesn't resonate with larger themes in the story or relate to the protagonist's character in any way. From a narrative perspective, you might as well have had the dragon explode because of the power of love, or friendship, or cool hard jazz.
Some of the imagery in the story is nice -- it could make an interesting horror short -- but without a way to tie it all together, it feels less like a story and more like an acid trip.