Achromatopsia

15 Minute Write

There was a perceptible difficulty opening his eyes as if he were suffering from conjunctivitis. Sticky, the lids almost popped open and it took a few long seconds for the scene in front of him to pull into focus.

“Grey?” he muttered the single-word question to himself, finding his voice surprisingly missing - or was it present and his hearing gone?

Before him, the scene was one of almost total greyness, although, the reality was slightly different. There were subtle hues of brown and taupe but you’d be hard-pressed not to think you were looking in monochrome.

A breeze from the east chilled his arms and made him shudder, which felt partly painful. It was as if he had been in a fight or accident - had he? The one thing he was sure about was that he had no idea where he was or how he got here. Was he suffering from amnesia? Surely were this the case he wouldn’t recognise such a condition? Where did he live? Brooklyn. That much he knew. The ground floor flat in the Brownstone, the mid-century furniture that he’d painstakingly collected and restored - the huge watermark where his girlfriend had put her wet glass the first time she’d come around - what was her name? Maria, Mariah, Mary? Something like that.

This wasn’t Brooklyn, though. It looked like somewhere on the coast, a cliff, boulders strewn around, and what remained of a tree—a young tree, grey, no sign of life, no greenery, nor coloured bark—most of the trees in his street were Manchurian cherry, with their distinctive copper-coloured bark that peels into paper-thin slithers that glint in the sunlight.

He remembered a flash. Did he? Had he been exposed to some sudden light that temporarily affected his eyesight? Was this the cause of the black-and-white view? There were drones in the sky. He remembered they were puzzling—or did he? Perhaps that was just in the news, or something all over the internet and TV.

Why was he unsure of where he was, who he was or his history? What could have caused this problem with his vision? Is it a known condition? A symptom of something bigger? He began to get worried. What if this was permanent, what if he had to live with it, going around unable to see colours anymore? What if he couldn’t see the orange of a sunset, the blue of an azure sea, the yellow of a New York City taxi cab? He felt a chill, and it stung, was this the wind or fear?

And then an overwhelming rush of pain, needles, scalpels, razor wire, the edge of a sheet of glass run across flesh, his head was on fire, wet, tacky. Instinctively he reached up with both hands to put his fingers to his temples and had to immediately release them, the intense pain like touching boiling water. His eyes looked down to his fingers in front of him. Red, deep Aliz Crimson the consistency of acrylic paint.

For the briefest of moments before he passed out his dopamine levels spiked with the thought: at least I can still see colours.

Charmouth, Dorset. December 2024. Nikon d750