An Undesired Truth [Short Story]

This is a short story that I wrote for a competition that only allows stories no larger than 500 words, so I did have a few difficulties writing this. Also, I would consider this as a massive, MASSIVE spoiler for an upcoming story I have in mind, so if you easily cringe at spoilers, be warned!

Now that everything's said, please enjoy this short story as much as I did with writing it!

***

Dmitri had a good feeling about painting that Saturday.

During the start of the weekend, he was almost halfway through his artwork, and he would admit that painting was tedious work – on some occasions, it tested his patience, but it’s worth the wait when it was completed. His eyes weren’t taken away from his gaze of the canvas, avoiding any form of distraction.

His artwork comprised of what would usually be in Dmitri’s works: a series of colourful shapes and of all kinds, regular or irregular, large or small, floating in nonsensical, yet picturesque space. It was almost like a kaleidoscope, his mother would say, but you didn’t have to look through a peephole to see the beauty of it.

After his last few strokes on the canvas, Dmitri decided to take a rest from painting, before continuing in the late afternoon. He cleaned his brush with a quick rinse from the jar half-filled with water, murky from the acrylics used on the canvas, before drying it thoroughly with a tissue.

Dmitri sat up straight to evaluate his work so far, before growing a satisfied smile upon his face. He was admiring every precise detail of it, and of course, he was proud of his own work. It was Shakespeare to his eyes, really: infinite in faculties, expressive and admirable – and truly, it was the quintessence of dust, or for Dmitri, imagination.

But slowly, his grin was taken away when he took a closer look at his artwork; there was something unusual about the colours. He couldn’t quite pinpoint why the colours were completely out-of-the-ordinary, yet it was an uneasy thought to shrug off.

He stood up from his seat; his perceptions weren’t somehow right. Dmitri took his eyes off his current work, and looked around the walls of his room, surrounded by his kaleidoscopic creations. Their colours seemed peculiar as well – that’s when Dmitri started worrying.

He looked through the window now, looking upon the rooftops of other houses. The weather was supposedly sunny, accompanied with a blue sky, but Dmitri knew that there was something wrong. The outdoors weren’t getting any brighter and…

Dmitri just simply knew what was wrong.

Feeling immediately saddened by the reality through his eyes, he dropped to the floor, completely bounded and overwhelmed by more than just fear and anxiety – his imagination was being suppressed by the undesired truth he had to face. Like Hamlet, it was far too difficult to avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

“Oh...god,” he whispered in an upsetting tone.

Clenching his fists, he covered his eyes with his hands for a long time, not wanting to take a peek through the spaces between his fingers. His breathing was heavy and suffering from his sudden depression, but he had to accept his undesired truth.

Hesitantly, he opened his eyes, his tears escaping down his face. His voice was quivering, but he managed to speak through the dreary barriers of his sorrow.

“I’m…colour blind.”