BOTTOM OF A PUDDLE

I woke up in a shock. Another nightmare. I've been getting a lot of them these days. The consistent beeps of the monitor with green, red and yellow lines with numbers to its right made me feel paranoid. Also, everything and everyone I saw was gray nowadays. Everyday I opened my eyes, their gray turned darker. My hands, my legs, my toys, even the pipe which was fit in my nose was gray. I don't know why.

Mom talked to the doctor, and told me I can come home. The raining had stopped now, and we'd take my toys and the big file mom had into a cab waiting outside. As I walked out slowly, I saw that the cab was gray too. They used to be bright yellow, like my school bus. I don't know what happened. As we were moving out of the hospital, I saw through the windows which still had water droplets on it, that every building was gray. I didn't feel good. I don't know who painted them gray, but they must have had a lot of gray in their backyard.

The cab dropped us at the end of the street, and I held mom's last two fingers to get out of the car. I'd fallen down once before. Not a good experience. Everyone must hold their mom's or dad's fingers while getting out of a cab. And wear shoes. My shoes used to be white, but nowadays they looked gray.

But then I saw my favorite thing on the side of the road. Puddles. As I've been seeing, only the puddle looked to have some color. It was brown.

I looked at mom with a face I knew she could not deny. It was my own secret weapon which mom didn't know about. But this weapon never used to work on dad. Whenever I saw puddles, I used to look at dad with the same eyes, but he never agreed. He had the same expression as always, grumpy. There always were lines in between his eyebrows. I think it's called rinkels. I'm not sure, the spelling is difficult for me. Dad never wanted me to go near a puddle. He always stopped me and rudely said it would make me sicker. He said if I fall, I will hurt my knee. And that always made me wonder what the bottom of the puddle looked like. I would keep thinking that, and we would reach home, and I would always fail at jumping into a puddle. But my mom gave a small nod. I looked at her, smiled, left her fingers and ran towards the puddle. In front of me I could see three puddles one by one. Soon as I reached the first one, time seemed to stop. The world seemed to fade a little. As my foot started moving downwards into the puddle, my mouth started opening slowly. My right foot hit the puddle first, and the muddy water started its splash. Then my left foot went in, very slowly. The water now had given way and I could finally begin to see what the bottom of the puddle looked like. As the water splashed away, I saw that the bottom was nothing like the bottom of the swimming pool in our school. It was uneven and black. From the corner of my eye, I could see streaks of yellow to my left. But I was too busy looking at the puddle. "Ha!" I shouted. I had finally stepped in my first puddle. I was feeling proud. Soon, the splashed water started coming back and slowly filling the puddle. In a few seconds, the water had filled up in the puddle, and the the bottom was hidden again. I jumped out. The blue whale design in my shoes was wet now. My shoes were, also, looking white again, along with a little brown. Then came the next puddle. I jumped in the next one. "Number two!" I whispered beneath my breath, happily. Soon as I jumped in, I saw a streak of pink to my right. But I didn't look away. Puddles were the only thing I would lay my eyes on. I jumped out. The shoes looked more brown now. I didn't care. I jumped into the third, without saying anything. Soon as the water splashed and I saw the bottom of the puddle, streaks of green started shining at the corner of my eyes. As I jumped out of the third one and looked for more puddles, I saw that the grass was now green, the gray building on the left was yellow and the one on the right was pink, just as mom used to tell me in the hospital before I slept.

I saw two more puddles to the right of the road at a small distance. But they were a little further than the gate of our home. I was scared a little. What if dad saw me? He would be very angry with mom. And then the rinkels again. I didn't like it when dad looked at me like that. But I took a risk. I ran fast towards the two puddles. As I ran, I saw my hands. They weren't gray anymore, they had a peach color, but they were almost white. But I didn't care. Suddenly, I hit a big stone and fell down. Everything started fading again. Turning gray again. I didn't want that. So I got up, and ran towards the puddles, now faster. And I jumped and I jumped. I could see the colors of the sky now. They were four different colors. Mom had taught me directions as they were on the back of dad's old t-shirt. To the north, sky was fiery orange, to the east, dark blue, to the south, light blue and to the west, white.

We cleaned up before meeting dad at home. I had to hide my shoes before we went to the terrace. I saw dad, he looked gray, because he came to the terrace to work, and hadn't looked at the sky. Not even once. I looked out to see all the colors I could imagine. And from somewhere came the fruity smell of freshly cut pineapple. To my surprise, the moon had the same color as the pineapple. I trotted towards the edge of the terrace to look down. I saw so many street lights lighting up, most of them white, but some were a pale yellow. Another similar cab passed from one of the streets, and I could see it was yellow. The color of the sky was changing now, I wished dad could look up and notice. So, I started moving towards him, but it became difficult to move now. It was getting harder to breathe, and I couldn't see clearly anymore.

The floor came closer, and hit me in the head. I felt dizzy, but I wasn't able to tell anyone. Everything blurred out, but everything was colorful, and now dad was too, who didn't look up, because he looked straight at me, and I ended up looking at the sky.