The Tinted Painting

The soft, white artificial lights of the jail’s halls turn on at the same moment every morning. They do this to signify some sort of change from night to day, since there’s no way to know how much sun is outside the windowless walls of our cells.

Apollo stared at the off bulb outside his cell, laying on his stomach on the top bunk.

He leaned over the top bunk to look at his cell-mate in the bunk below, Miraj.

“How much longer before morning you think?” Apollo asked.

“Any moment now,” Miraj replied from the bottom bunk. Time is almost an abstract concept in here, since neither of them have a clock.

Apollo kept staring at the dead bulb. An insect started crawling over it.

The guards make their morning rounds as soon as the lights turn on, where they hand out breakfast to everyone. Apollo and Miraj are expecting a special gift along with their meals this morning.

The bulb finally sparked with light. Immediately Apollo sat up in his bunk, patiently waiting. He could hear the guards having begun their rounds down the hall, pushing the cart of meals along with them.

“What color do you think we’ll get today?” Apollo said.

“I’m hoping for Red,” Miraj replied.

In this life where humans can only see in black and white, color has become the main form of entertainment. The drugs that allow them to see in color are called Tints. The type of colors depend on the exact tint.

The more expensive the tint, the more colors in it. But Apollo and Miraj can barely only afford single color tints. Their friend from outside pays the guards to sneak them in.

Only the rich get to use Tints daily. Imagine getting to see in color every single day, with no one stopping you.

“I hope it’s Blue,” Apollo said. Blue is one of the colors his father always showed him when he was a kid. His father’s favorite was blue while his mother’s favorite was yellow. When his mother passed, his father showed him a new tint almost every week.

“Blue, what a surprise!” Miraj sarcastically said. “You know, I read that in ancient times, when the world was abundant in every color, Blue was still the most rare. You could only see it in the oceans.”

“What are oceans?” Apollo asked.

Just as Miraj was about to reply, the guards came to the cell. They opened the cell for a brief moment, where they dropped two trays of food to the ground. They moved on without saying a word.

Apollo immediately went to the tray, and lifted the plate of plain oats that was on it. Nothing.

He then lifted the plate on Miraj’s tray, revealing a small plastic bag the size of half a bill. He turned and gave Miraj an excited look.

Miraj got up and grabbed the tint from him. The tint bag was filled with a black powder, which he then has to aggressively mix into water for about ten minutes straight. He began preparing it while Apollo began to ready their space.

Whenever they take a tint they like to set out all of their things all around the floor. Looking at every individual item in color provides variety for the experience.

Apollo meticulously set out every item they own between the two of them. He spread clothes, scraps, and books evenly apart around the floor and left an empty space in the middle. That empty space was for Apollo’s most prized asset.

He pulled out a blank medium-sized frame from underneath his top bunk. He went to the middle of the floor, propped up the stand on the back of the frame, and placed it gently down. He then sat back down with the frame perfectly facing him.

The frame happens to be the only remnant Apollo has left from his old life. His father was a painter, and created many tinted paintings for the rich to enjoy. A tinted painting is invisible to the average colorless viewer. However, when looked at with tinted eyes, the new colors reveal the secret painting embedded onto it. The best part is, there’s multiple layers of multiple colors on one tinted painting. Depending on what color Tint you use, a different painting reveals itself on the canvas.

Apollo received the painting the day his father vanished. One day he came home to his father having disappeared, and this painting left in front of his old room’s door. This was about a month before Apollo was caught pickpocketing on the street and sent to this very jail. About two years have passed since then. The mystery of his father’s disappearance has always stung.

Maybe that’s why Apollo doesn’t mind being stuck in this cell. Because life outside already feels like a jail cell without his family.

Might as well just sit inside and look at tints whatever chance you get.

Apollo has still not seen all the different images possible on his father’s painting. Three of the past four times they’ve found a tint, it’s been the color yellow. The color yellow always reveals a painting of his mother’s face. He’s studied that face with all his might at this point, memorizing it as hard as he can so that he may enjoy it in his own mind when he doesn’t get to have it in front of him.

Miraj was done mixing the tint into their water cups. The tint had turned the water black.

They nodded to each other, and swung the liquid in.

Then, they simply waited.

Apollo looked around the tiny cell, at the black and white dullness of it all. The neutrality it exhibits eventually disgusts you. When the human eye evolved to only see in darkness, it was as if all of life was now to be lived in a shadow.

Suddenly, his eyes started feeling a little pain. Apollo started stretching his eyelids and raised his head. He started blinking more and more furiously.

Within the blur of the blinks, some flecks of color started emerging. So small at first he could not even place it. But they kept growing until he could not turn away from it even if he wanted.

Next thing he knew, the light from the bulb was completely green. This green light shined through the cell bars and covered his entire spectrum of vision. Apollo had never seen this color before and didn’t even know it’s name.

It was completely new to him. It was soothing. Refreshing, even. As if this color was made specifically to help people rest their eyes before looking at the rest of the colors.

“Green!” Miraj exclaimed.

Green? Apollo thought about the word. This color must have come from a different planet.

The inside of the cell was eventually entirely green. Everything he looked at was steeped in this enriching, energizing hue.

He took his sweet time to look at every detail around him, starting first with the curvatures on the walls and then the roof.

Then, he made his way to the items on the floor. He enjoyed looking at all of them. They looked like they were their own living, breathing creatures from a different world.

He then put his eyes on his father’s painting.

To his shock, it wasn’t a painting this time.

It was a letter.

Apollo couldn’t contain himself. His breathing intensified and he looked over to Miraj, who had already began copying down the letter’s words into one of his books for future use.

He was almost too afraid to actually read it, until eventually finally forcing himself to.

Dear Apollo,

I don’t have time to explain why I had to run away. You knowing anything would put you at risk. My cover has been blown, and now I need you to find a way to survive for the next six months without me. I’m truly sorry for putting you through this. If I survive the next six months myself, I’m going to go to a safe house your mother and I prepared years back. You can find the coordinates of it at the bottom of this letter. I will be waiting for you there as long as it takes, and I’ll explain everything then. I’ve hidden this letter in this painting so that nobody else finds it. I used the color green because it is a combo of blue and yellow. I know you love tints too much not to look at this painting in every color possible.

See you soon,

Dad.

Apollo couldn’t believe his eyes.

“We have to find a way out of here,” Miraj said.

“How?” Apollo replied. He had fallen to his knees at this point.

“We’ll find a way,” Miraj said. He rested his hand on Apollo’s shoulder.

“We don’t even know if he’s still there,” Apollo said. It’s been almost four times the length of time that his father had asked of him. Apollo was on the verge of tears.

In an instant his entire image of his life was flipped. His father was not just a painter, but something else. Something that warranted abandoning your son.

They didn’t speak for the next thirty minutes. Apollo decided to keep enjoying the green color still imbued over his vision while he could.

The green slowly started to lose it's boldness. It started dulling. It started rotting away. The black and white colors started taking back over.

Apollo looked at the letter closely again, touching it. The words eventually faded away.

“We have to get out of here. We have to go to these coordinates,” Apollo said.

A new form of hope was now within him. His father is out there, waiting for him.

“I’m devising a plan as we speak,” Miraj said.

The green color started to dissolve away for good, and with it Apollo’s old self. The light from the bulb turned back to it’s dull white. He peacefully watched it go. He looked at the last pieces of green in his vision like the last few embers of a warm fire.

Life is about more than color. It’s about action. For the first time, Apollo felt ready to leave the colored world of the tints behind and tackle the black and white reality.

The darkness creeped over his eyes more and more, until finally the color shrunk into small flecks. Those flecks kept reducing, until they became nothing.

He sat next to Miraj, and began planning their escape.