(Inspired by Bob Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", 1965)
The first tendrils of grey appeared not in the sky, but in his perception. It started subtly. A Tuesday morning, maybe two months deep into his tenure as a Technical Support Specialist.
He looked out the office window, idly. He was waiting for the caffeine to kick in. He noticed the sky seemed… flatter. Less blue.
Then, at lunch, the cafeteria pasta, usually a palatable beige mush, tasted like wallpaper paste. Bland, utterly devoid of flavour. He shrugged it off. Stress, maybe a cold coming on.
That evening, flicking through channels, the vibrant hues of a nature documentary felt jarring, almost offensively bright. He gravitated towards an old black and white movie. The muted tones suddenly appealing.
Even his carefully curated playlists grated on his nerves. The melancholic indie rock that had soundtracked his teenage years, they were just wrong. He switched to a generic electronic beat. A repetitive pulse that resonated with the low hum of the office servers, something… functional.
Weeks blurred into months. The grey in the sky thickened. It mirrored the growing unease in his gut.
Food was a chore. Spices became his desperate allies. He’d douse everything in chilli oil, hot sauce, anything to elicit a reaction from his numbed taste buds.
Then, just as suddenly, his palate swung again. He found himself craving the clean, almost sterile taste of raw vegetables. The gentle sweetness of fruits. He went vegan for a month. Convinced it was some kind of cleansing ritual, a way to recalibrate his senses.
Music followed suit, a dizzying pendulum swing. The monotonous beat became soul-crushingly boring. He veered wildly towards jazz. Complex and chaotic, full of vibrant dissonance.
Then, just as intensely, towards the brutal, primal energy of heavy metal. The sonic equivalent of a screaming release. He felt like he was constantly chasing something. A sensation, a feeling he couldn’t quite grasp.
He was searching for the right frequency, the perfect time. In a world that felt increasingly out of tune.
He wasn’t alone. He saw it in the faces of his colleagues. Etched in the weary lines around their eyes, the forced enthusiasm in their voices.
It wasn’t generational. The seasoned veterans, the fresh-faced graduates, all seemed to be experiencing a similar flattening. Sarah from HR started wearing neon clothes. Colours so loud they practically vibrated.
Mark from accounting, usually mild-mannered, began blasting death metal from his headphones. It was a subtle, creeping contagion. A shared desensitization.
To escape it, or maybe just to feel something different, his weekends began to morph. Initially, it was simple. Weekend trips to the beach.
The pale sun on his skin, the muted roar of the waves – a slight change of scenery, a whisper of a break. But even the salt air felt less sharp, the sand less textured under his feet.
The beach weekends quickly felt… insufficient. He needed more. Next came the mountains. He started hiking, then actual climbs.
The physical exertion was real. The views from the peaks were undeniably expansive. But the vibrant greens of the forests, the stark blues of the distant ranges, seemed… toned down, as if viewed through a filter of grey.
He craved a more immediate rush. He tried rappelling. Sliding down sheer rock faces, suspended by a rope, the wind whipping past his face – a jolt of pure adrenaline.
For a fleeting moment, the world sharpened, the senses flared. But it faded quickly, leaving him craving more.
Bungee jumping followed. Leaping off bridges, plunging into the void, the elastic cord snapping taut, yanking him back from the brink of oblivion. The stomach-churning freefall, the violent rebound – it was intense, undeniably.
Yet, even as his body screamed with sensation, a hollow echo resonated within. It was like shouting into a vacuum.
The physical wasn't enough, it seemed. One night, restless and adrift, he found himself at the racetrack. The pounding hooves, the roaring crowd, the flashing odds – he placed a bet, a small one, on a whim.
The fleeting thrill of the gamble, win or lose, was a novel distraction. Then the track felt too tame. He found himself drawn to the glittering allure of the casino.
The clatter of chips, the spinning roulette wheel, the desperate hope and quiet despair hanging heavy in the air. He played cards, chasing a phantom jackpot. A different kind of sensory overload, a gamble not just with money, but with something deeper, something undefined.
The greyness outside intensified. The city, already choked with smog, seemed to bleed into the sky. It blurred the line between earth and atmosphere.
He started going out at night. Drawn by the artificial brilliance of the city lights. The bars were loud, crowded. Pulsing with a manufactured energy.
He’d drink too much. Hoping to loosen the knot of unease in his chest, to drown out the growing silence inside. The neon signs were brighter, yes. The buildings cast long, sharp shadows.
But when he looked up, past the glare, the sky above the city was undeniably, undeniably darker.
This day, the alarm blared its usual unwelcome symphony. He slapped it silent. The rhythmic beeping dissolved into the persistent ringing in his ears.
This week had been… a week. Support tickets had piled up like digital mountains. Each one a variation of the same frustrating themes. Forgotten passwords, software glitches, user error.
He’d gone through the motions, the pre-scripted responses, the patient explanations. All on autopilot. He couldn't even remember the faces of the people he'd spoken to. Their voices fading into a homogenous drone.
He’d been a machine, a function. Processing data and spitting out solutions, all day, every day.
He dragged himself to the window. The ingrained habit of checking the sky pulling him forward. And then he saw it.
There was no grey cloud anymore. There was no blue sky fighting for dominance. There was just… black.
Not the black of night, stars twinkling, a velvet curtain drawn across the universe. This was a deeper black. A swallowing void. A negation of light itself.
It wasn’t just the sky anymore. It was everything above the rooftops. A dome of absolute, impenetrable darkness pressing down on the city.
And in that moment, staring into that abyss, the truth hit him with the force of a physical blow. He wasn’t just desensitized. He wasn’t just tired. He was dead.
Not physically, not yet. But something essential, something vital, had been extinguished. The colours, the tastes, the emotions, they were echoes. Phantom sensations in a world that had already turned monochrome.
He had been sleepwalking. A program running on loop, in a city consumed by shadow. He hadn't been living. He had been a zombie in the apocalypse.
And the apocalypse wasn't fire and brimstone. It was grey, and then it was black. And it was happening in slow motion, ticket by ticket, day by monotonous day. And he, and everyone around him, were already gone.
