ABOUT: Yet another story based on a song. I'm so unoriginal. This one is from "Grey Street" by the Dave Matthew Band. Click here for more stories.
Grey Street
The old wooden chair creaked beneath her as she shifted her weight. He’d been ranting at her for about twenty minutes now and she was beginning to lose feeling in her right leg. She wasn’t crying yet, but she could feel the back of her throat tightening up and her eyes beginning to burn and well with tears. She refused to cry in front of him, so she hoped he’d finish soon and leave. But for the time being, she just sat in the rickety chair and listened to his abuses.
She knew he was wrong. He usually was. But there was no reasoning with him, no arguing or discussing. The only thing for her to do when he got like this was to just listen to what he had to say and never say a word about what she thought. She just stared past him at the dulling yellow walls of her studio apartment.
Earlier that morning she’d been happy to finally have a new idea for a painting. The vibrant colors across the pristine canvas made her feel good. It had been a long time since she’d really been able to paint anything. Now that she could, she was thrilled.
However, painting had taken her mind off the one thing she’d needed to do that day. She needed to take his suit to the cleaners so he could have it Monday for a very important meeting. The cleaners closed at five, and when he stopped by the apartment at six his suit was still there. She, however, had nearly completed a beautiful painting.
So, for the past twenty minutes, he’d been berating her about any and everything he could think of. He repeatedly pointed out how useless she was and how she couldn’t do anything right. He reminded her that painting was going to get her nowhere, especially if it took precedence over the things that were more important in life. In his rage, he smeared together all the different colors of the painting until it had turned into one big mess of grey. He knocked over her shelf of paints, sending the glass jar smashing to the floor.
So as he finished up his ranting, she just thought about the times when it had been different. The times when he hadn’t always yelled at her for things, and the times when she’d been able to paint whatever and whenever she pleased, receiving only support from him. Those times were long gone, though, and it made her sad. She just stared out at the dull beige sign on the street below that was labeled “Grey Street”.
She was scarcely listening to him now as she wondered how it had all come to this. She wondered when he’d stopped being the sweet romantic she’d met and become the monster she now knew. A few years ago, when they’d first been together, she’d dreamed of traveling the whole world. He promised they would. She dreamed about it thousands of times, but she’d never been able to leave that sad little apartment.
She used to be happy with him, in those days. Now she was just…empty. A strange kind of empty, a guilty kind of empty. She wasn’t alone, technically, so she didn’t see any reason for her to feel as empty as she did. But in reality, she was alone and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it. All she knew was that she would do just about anything under the sun to get rid of that feeling. That was why she painted, to fill in that empty feeling. But as he angrily flung open the door and slammed it behind him, she was left alone again in the odd silence.
Rising from the chair, she approached the now-destroyed canvas. All the bright colors that had swirled around the pure off-white material were now meshed together to a disgustingly grey-brown color. She’d worked so hard, so long on that painting. She’d felt so good to get it out. It broke her heart to see it destroyed. She lifted the canvas from the easel and set it by the door, colors facing the wall, for the trash the next morning.
Her attention turned to the broken jars on the floor beside the easel. Shards of glass protruded randomly from the swirls of bright colors. Some of those colors she’d mixed herself, they were just the perfect shade. But nothing was salvageable now, because reds were swirled in with blues and greens, and it was all a mess. She flattened out her skirt as she knelt down on the ground and began to pick the shards out of the paints.
While on her knees, she began to pray for things to be different. She prayed almost every night. She just wanted everything to be better. She didn’t want to be alone anymore; she didn’t want to be stuck on Grey Street anymore. She wanted to go somewhere else where there was color and happiness and not this drab sadness she was surrounded by everyday.
She laughed to herself when she realized what she was doing. The noise of her voice sounded odd in the hollow room. Whenever the topic of God came up in conversation, she always denied his existence. She told of how she’d always prayed and nothing ever showed her that he listened, so he must not exist. But no matter how much she tried to convince others of that, she could never really believe it. Deep down, she still had a hope that he was up there listening to her. There must have just been some reason why he hadn’t answered her yet.
She stood with the shards of glass in her hand and dropped them into the trash. As she went to the sink she reminded herself that, no matter how much she prayed, they always fell on deaf ears. She wondered if she was supposed to just take it upon herself to leave that place. She turned the faucet on and let the warm water rush over her fragile hands.
The room was so empty and lonely it was almost unbearable. She thought about humming to fill in the silence, but her voice echoed off the walls and made her feel even more hollow. There wasn’t much else she could do, so she just let the water rinse the paints from her hands and into the bottom of the sink.
The tiny shards of glass had pierced her skin, leaving tiny trails of red blood seeping from the wounds. It kind of made her smile, to see the red mixing in with all the other colors in the sink. Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly empty and distant, she wondered if her blood wasn’t ice cold and blue. Seeing the warm red drip into the sink relieved her. She was still alive.
But her smile faded as she watched all the colors swirl together in the sink and seep down the drain in a similar shade of grey to that on her marred canvas. It had been so nice to see the colors swirling together but remaining bold and bright, and that dull, disgusting grey just broke her heart.
She picked up a hand towel from the rack beside the sink and held it between her injured hands. The tiny wounds stung slightly, but she didn’t pay much attention to it. She just resumed her seat in the creaky old chair and stared through the mess of paints on the floor. After a moment, she heard a voice outside her door. It wasn’t his voice, but it seemed familiar for some reason. Still, it caught her attention and she looked up towards the door as though the stranger’s identity could be determined if she stared long enough or hard enough.
It sort of scared her that the stranger seemed to be speaking directly to her. He told her to take what she could from her dreams and make them real. It was the only way to be happy. Besides, it made it much easier to accomplish what she wanted when she could turn dreams into reality.
As she clasped the towel between her hands, she contemplated calling the police to report the man. She’d tell them that there was a crazy man outside her door, creeping around and speaking to her. Maybe they could come and take him away. However, she decided against this. She couldn’t very well call the police and tell them that she lived on the corner of Grey Street and the end of the world.
The man went away and she was left again in silence. Until now, she’d never noticed how completely hollow the little apartment was. She’d never felt so alone and empty, and she didn’t really know what to do. Any attempts to make herself feel better just made the room feel more cold and empty. It was deeply depressing.
She replaced the towel beside the sink, taking a moment to look at the dots of blood that stained its otherwise pure surface. They were a deep, dark red color - similar to one of the colors she’d mixed with her paints before they were lost. It again filled her with a short flush of energy to be reminded that her blood was indeed red. Sometimes, it felt like cold blue ice when it pumped through her heart. She hadn’t wanted to become that way. She wanted to be the happy and carefree girl she’d once been in the outside world. Not a cold and sad girl lost in a drab place she didn’t belong. Seeing the red gave her the hope that things could change, and all was not lost.
Flattening her skirt again, she sat on the floor beside the swirled paints. She dragged her slender finger through them and across her floor in fluid motions as her mind drifted. With her eyes closed, she envisioned herself breaking out of this life. She even seriously considered taking drastic actions. She could kick holes in all the windows to let the refreshing air of the outside world into the hollow apartment. She could set fire to everything in the tiny room - the paling yellow walls and the dull pink bed sheets. Everything would burn and be destroyed, and she could leave the apartment in a giant blaze to start a new life.
She saw herself, with a brightly colored wardrobe walking happily down Green Street, just a few blocks away from her former life. Instead of being a dull, dirty blonde, her hair had gone back to it’s once bright and golden blonde. Her eyes were a piercing blue, instead of the dull murky ocean color they’d become. Her once pasty skin glowed with the color of a sandy beach. She was herself again, she was bold and bright and colorful and everything was going to be ok.
But when she opened her eyes, she was disappointed to realize that she was still in her sad little studio apartment with the dull yellow walls and the pale pink bed sheets sitting neatly on the futon. She’d drawn a sad abstract of herself on the wooden floor, but instead of being the colorful one in her dreams, all the colors were in shades of grey. This was her. A grey girl stuck inside the apartment forever, with no chance of escape.
The image of herself in the daydream had filled her with such a joy that she hadn’t felt in so long. But now all the bright colors mixed together in her drawing on the floor and became varying shades of that same disgusting grey. And it broke her heart.