A Story Avoiding Genre
The day starts as any other, another mundane weekday, another gulp of water as they roll out of bed. They take their vitamins, the usual. They make a cup of coffee, the usual. They get dressed, the usual. They leave home and begin walking to work.
Everyday is the same for them, hardly anything changes and plans and routine dominate the day, spontaneity is tacky and shunned. They see the same people, do the same work, get the same paycheck, spend the money on the same things. Life is systematic, planned, mechanical, and dull.
The day is gray. Overcast. The colorless clouds blanket the earth holding rain just waiting to fall, there are no shadows, there is only just enough light to make out the off-white concrete path they walk on. The path winds adjacent to a muted river, dulled from human intervention and industrialization, it is unremarkable despite it’s size and power. The reeds that hug the bank are uninspiring browns and beiges eroded from the river, even the green grass seems dusty. However, they continue to trek through the filtered world and they are ecstatic. The wonderland of washed out colors intrigues and excites them, swaggering down the street in a gleeful jaunt, a skip in their step. The in-between and the transitions of contrast, saturation, and value from something to near nothing is a pleasant sight to them. The lack of anything is a rare sight to see.
The town’s home days festival is in the midst of being up for the summer season once again. Bright reds and sharp whites line the cloth roofs of tents, suspended by poles and trees alike. Stark blue and violet flashing lights spin and flash on a mechanical ride that would surely make anyone’s stomach twist. Fresh green bills from children’s pockets are exchanged for unnaturally yellow lemonades and pastel pink candy floss. Metallic orange carts ride high into the newly lit sky accompanied by the deep black support beams to keep the rider’s safe. They happen to cross paths with the festival as they commute. The vivid livelihood disgusts them. A crinkled nose, a turned cheek, and a lifted chin locked onto them until the sights and sounds of the festival are well out of view. Back to the mundane. Back to the same. Back to the comfort. This is how they like it.
Reimagined
- Slice of Life – a story about a non-binary person simply walking to work, nothing of note truly happens except the mundane world is intriguing to the subject of the story and the bright and vivid world is seen as wrong and uninteresting
- Mystery – a story about someone (something?) traveling through a gray universe, everything dulled and boring to outside readers, but in this world, color and vividness is rare and disapproved of, the reader must find out why as the story unfolds
- Horror – a story about a creature who can only see the world in grays and genuinely despises anything joyous, a twisted and evil thing that aims to destroy saturation in the hopes to make everything gray, to make everything comfortable, to make everything the same, to give no one a choice
- Science Fiction – a story about how a futuristic/parallel universe earth is shrouded in a “disease” of gray, where people are drawn to the mundane and resistance forces are using value of traditionally beautiful and fun things to try send remind those infected in hopes to restore the world to a better previous state
- Historical Fiction – a story about a person in the past who was colorblind or who genuinely detested colors and vivid forms of life, a highlighting of their crazy outlook on life and how it impacted them and others