When the Sun Shone Grey

By Quinn Doyle ’26

Two eyes opened like flowers to behold the newborn daylight. Starved, they were, of their food already. In a vigorous leap without legs, the body jumped, and the bright sun illuminated the trees and held the calm birdsong in its warm breast. The body stretched in the kind rays, but the mouth was frozen stiff, no longer able to chant its daily hymn to the natural beauty beyond the window. The stickers on the chiffarobe prompted a twitch of a grin in the mouth, with their weirdness and history captivating the head. As the legs shifted the body out of bed, the little baby blue blanket, the one that the child had nestled into since they were a babe, returned the favor that day, with a tight wrap around the shoulders almost in consolation. 

Sliding onto the little smooth pale feet came slippers lined in soft plush that banished the pain of stubbed toes in times of need. The walls gave wide berth to the child as they practiced their rituals, and seemed to make faces of pity in the creases of the rough plaster. Friendly beings of the wood, stalled in their movement, laid pasted to the walls, playmates for the head in its peaceful deep dreaming. On a regular day, the great many smiles held welcome and the attached limbs almost danced in the light filtering through the tree branches outside, but on that morn, there was an anxiety in the stripes of their faces that brushed a blackness over the stickered murals. 

The buff colored carpet gave way to crisply cool finished wood that came in the marvelous orange-brown which dominated the house’s floors, and the child beheld the hypnotic patterns of the grains for a while, melting into the hot hue of the boards. The small unused switch next to those for the lights flickered on and off with its blood red glare as it always did, but this time more menacingly. 

The swirls and shapes in the bright foam mats on the floor across the hall called attention to the toys beyond, trucks and trains and Legos and Lincoln logs. As the child took a step forward, the hall began to grow into a passage of dark liminality. The welcoming shapes of the playsets sat on a table that came into view, the child’s prized police station, garbage hauler, and gold mine, all beckoning with their promises of imaginative enjoyment. But the creek of the soft slap of flesh on planks disturbed the scene. 

“Quin. Come here.” A lecture proceeded that confirmed their sense of dread which had built over the months. The death of faithful Bode, chieftain among beasts in the house. Gentle, smooth haired sun-colored Bode. The news came like a phantasmal force to the heart, and the spectral militant then grappled the brain. It had been just a year prior that the child had experienced their first loss, Stanley the goldfish. That day at school, they had to leave class to cry. That night the child pondered and finally allowed themself to understand that while their inanimate companions would never pass, save for by future mistreatment, the days of a living being are ever numbered. 

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