The idea was a door slammed open, Pressing air into our faces and dust into our eyes As it presented a growing blackness beyond.

The knowing was the fire that ousted the blackness, Pulling us forward into truth with unstoppable force As the door slammed behind us.

The realization was taking in our new surroundings And finding that we had not been pulled into the same room.

I knew you had not entered my room, And you knew I had not entered yours. Alone, we sat together, And in that moment, silence was a priceless gift.

“Whoa.”

Garrett’s eyes were fixed on the small, round window at the other side of the rec hall. I followed his gaze.

“Whoa,” I echoed. I squinted my eyes. “Am I seeing that right?”

I heard a snort to my right. “What, is this your first landing? Come on, it’s your turn. Just fold already.” Yasinski gestured at the card game on the table between him, Garrett, and me. Garrett looked absentmindedly at the game, then back at the window. Without a word, he got up and moved toward the window. He had left his cards face up on the table. A star and four rings. Yasinski looked at him incredulously.

“What the hell, man!” He shoved his chair away and followed Garrett, who had only made it a couple paces. He grabbed his shoulder roughly. The chatter at nearby tables quieted, and eyes had fixed on them tensely. Several off-duty cadets looked ready to jump in if something were to start. It wouldn’t be the first time with them. I rolled my eyes.

“Yasinski, it’s fine, let’s just start another round - “ I started.

“You’re just saying that because you had shit cards,” Yasinski shot back at me. My eyes flicked to my hand. He had a point.

“No, Garrett here had to ruin the game over a fucking planet. Every planet’s weird looking, dude. Get over -“

Garrett turned to Yasinski and brushed his hand off easily.

“There’s no color,” he said quietly.

“What?”

He grabbed Yasinski’s by the face the way a mother scolds a toddler. I sucked in a breath - Yasinski was a head shorter and a fair bit skinnier than Garrett, and he didn’t like being reminded of it - but before Yasinski could protest, Garret had swiveled his crewmate’s head so he was directly facing the window

“Just look.”

Yasinski swatted Garret’s hand away, but he did look. And then, miraculously, he was silent a moment. All the fight seemed to rush out of him as quickly as it had flared up as he stared through that tiny hole in the wall, warped by translucent plexifiber strong enough to withstand 100Gs. Light gasps and exclamations spread throughout the rec hall as people followed Yasinski’s gaze. Some looked back to Yasinski, questioningly. I did too. He may be a hothead, but Yasinski was no idiot. Rumor had it that he scored higher on the math portion of the admission exam than Hallow had. Certainly higher than I had. I cringed inwardly as the image of Hallow’s disapproving face swam up in my mind unbidden, fluorescent lights turning his white hair blue as he shook his head. I shoved the memory back down and focused back on Yasinski.

Finally, he scowled, rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.

“Maybe it’s just really bright,” Anders offered, seated two tables over. The broad-shouldered maintenance chief was sipping a drink across from Park, the resident doctor. If you handed Anders a gadget from another planet, he could fix it by tomorrow morning. But the science? People said he was a waiver recruit whose physical test and specialized skills made up for dismal exam scores. “It’s got to be - I mean, maybe it’s just… overexposed, like a photo, so everything just looks kind of black and white like that,” he said slowly. “Yeah,” he said, more assuredly now. “I mean, this sun is damn close, right? And if the atmosphere is too thin to reflect light particles back at us…”

There was silence for a moment, and then -

“Then it would be dark.” Callende, a young cadet a few tables over, had spoken up. Someone snorted. A subtle red crept up Anders’ neck and cheeks as he slumped back in his chair. “Just a theory,” he muttered.

Yasinski began speaking to himself again. It was it all took to regain the room’s attention.

“Any light reflected is reflected on the electromagnetic spectrum, and that spectrum emits color. A world without color would simply be a world with equal amounts of every color,” he said softly, and then looked up, as if just now processing what he had said. The room stared back at him.

“So, every single thing on that planet is the same exact mix of every color?” Callende asked.

Yoseph twitched his head. “More like, every single thing is reflecting back every single color on the spectrum.”

The room was collectively silent for a moment.

“Seems impossible,” Garret said.

“And yet…” I responded. I wasn’t sure what I had meant to say after that. I looked back out the window again.

Beyond it lay a truly greyscale world.

I pulled the curtain back from window in my 435-square-foot Central London flat. It was raining. Not much, but anything is enough.

I don’t go out in the rain.

Not anymore.

I wrapped my sweater tighter around my slight frame and put a pot of tea on, taking care to double-check the lock on the door before settling into the couch with a book. It was Dune, this week. What can I say? I’m an escapist. And there was something about their dry, desert planet that spoke to me. Comforted me.

My living room (which was also my kitchen and bedroom) was airy and cheerful, despite the light patter of rain on the window. Books lined the walls like insulation from the cold, and the shelves with green ivy cascading down them made it feel bright no matter the weather. Sunny, my German Shepherd, lay dutifully at my feet.

Most people don’t appreciate the comfort of a small space. There’s nothing hidden in this apartment, and there’s nothing for anything — or anyone — to hide behind. I can see every corner from every other corner. I can see the double bolt on the door and make sure they’re both locked. I checked again. They were.

Besides my basic precautions, Sunny was my best alarm system. She may be “sunny” when I am, but when it comes to someone else getting near the door, approaching me, or even eyeing me wrong, Sunny becomes very “stormy” indeed. Now, she could tell that I was on edge because of the rain, so she leaned firmly into my shins, which she knows I like. She looked serene, but I knew she was on alert for me. Good girl. I gave her a pat on the side.

I know, I know, a big dog in a small flat sounds like a recipe for disaster, but Sunny gets more exercise than anyone. We walk miles around the city every day. The thing about a big city is that you can get lost in it. Not “lost” lost, just — you become part of the many. One of nine million people who live here. No one could find you if you didn’t want to be found.

In general, I don’t mind being a “someone” — I have a job, I have friends. I go to the same coffee shop on weekend mornings. But here, the parts of my past that I like to bury — they stay buried. No one from that part of my life would be able to find me here.

Not even him.

The Umbrella Man.

I wasn’t always this way, with the locks and the guard dog and the paranoia. But when I was younger — 21 — someone found me, and they took me. Closing shift at the bar. I was walking to my car alone — and then, suddenly, I wasn’t.

I was in a warehouse. A cold, empty warehouse, in late October. Naked. I won’t get into the details there, but let’s just say it is what you think. I was your run-of-the-mill kidnappee. I was freezing, I had no idea where I was or who had taken me there. I didn’t even know how long I had been out. Judging by my protesting bladder, I figured it had to have been hours. I could’ve been anywhere.

So, I took a piss in one of the dark corners and got to work. Funny, how the banality of body functions don’t stop when your life gets turned upside down.

“Got to work” is me being generous. There was a lot of screaming and crying and panic that filled those first hours of sick realization. And, to be honest, they never really stopped. But they became expected, comforting even, to feel that my tears were still warm and my voice still scratched when I screamed. I was still human. I was still me.

The first thing I did was tour the perimeter — look for anything that might help in some way. The warehouse was, essentially, a concrete box. The doors were like a giant sliding garage door, and no amount of shoving or lifting got them to budge, but they did thunder when I prodded them, which I worried might give me away to — whoever was out there, if there was anyone. The lowest windows were 12 feet up, but I tried climbing to them anyway. All it did was bloody up my fingers and toes and knees where they scraped along the concrete walls. And there was some old machinery left in the center of the warehouse — like giant printers, maybe. They stood in the center, blocking my view from one end of the warehouse to the other. Everything had been cleared out — likely on purpose, to prevent me from doing exactly what I was trying to do: escape. Fight. Kill. Anything.

And so I sat. And shivered, and cried, and slept (but not much). I thought of death often. I had been left with a Dasani water bottle, a bag of Wonderbread, and a bucket. I wondered disinterestedly if I would die when I ran out of food. Hoped it, maybe.

I lived that way until the 6th day.

When the man came.

He never showed his face. He simply announced his presence by shoving the giant tinny garage doors open, face wrapped in a scarf, collar turned up to the wind, and umbrella in hand.

He only came when it rained.

Those were the worst days, when he would come to me in the rain. Always with his collar turned up, always with an umbrella. Face hidden, trench coat dripping wet as it fell awkwardly over his plump, soft body. He smelled like old sweat.

At first, I was docile, too afraid to fight back, worried he might do something worse. But eventually, I decided nothing could be worse. One morning, when I woke up to a gray sky and the soft pattering of rain, I worked up the courage to unscrew a bolt from the machine in the center of the room. It’s hard work, unscrewing old, rusted metal with your fingers. It felt like it took hours. When it finally came undone, my nails were bloody and torn. I wiped the blood on the underside of the barrel on the machine and hid the bolt in a matte in my hair, at the nape of my neck. I thought it was pretty clever.

My heart thundered with the great rattling of the door as it opened. His umbrella announced his presence looming darkly and slowly as he entered the room. His voice was scratchy, the type of high-pitched voice a man might be embarrassed of and try to disguise, but this man did no such thing. He spoke, and his piping voice echoed horribly around the concrete room.

“Nice weather we’re having.”

He rarely spoke during his visit, but when he did, I found it was best to play along. I did so now, sweat beading on my palms and brow as I fought to keep my voice steady.

“Yes, lovely,” I managed.

He barked out what I guessed was a laugh. There was no humor in it.

“Simmering bitch,” he muttered, all the while advancing toward me, slowly, his lumpy body squishing horribly under his wet coat as he moved. “Everybody hates the rain.”

And with that, he lunged at me, catching me by surprise. His hands caught my shoulders, then my neck as he pushed me back against the wall. I tucked my chin so the back of my head wouldn’t hit the concrete and reached my hands up, past my throat, up to the nape of my neck to find the screw. It was now or never.

My fingers clawed furiously at my own neck as they fought through the tangles of my mangy hair, searching. But the thing is, when someone chokes you, they usually expect you to try to stop them — grab their hands, fight back — not reach for your own neck. And this wasn’t this guy’s first rodeo. He noticed my hands and yanked them down, pinning them down by my sides with one hand while the other groped roughly through my hair. His body pinned mine against the wall as he yanked and raked at my hair. Frustrated, he began ripping at the mattes, tearing out chunks at a time. I screamed, praying that it had fallen out in the scuffle.

It hadn’t.

Finally, he let up on the yanking, only to hold up the short, thick, rusty bolt not two inches from my face.

“You think you’re so clever, huh?” He asked me. I shook my head.

“What did you want to do to me with this?” I could see the shape of his twisted smile through the scarf. I remained quiet.

“Answer me!” He bellowed, so close that his breath rustled the strands of hair hanging in my face.

“I - I don’t know…”

“Thought you might… hit me with it hidden between your fingers?”

Tiny lights exploded in my vision as I felt a blow to the side of my head.

“Scratch my eyes out?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my head just in time to feel the scrape of the rusty bolt as it cut my left eyebrow and forehead.

Then, his voice a whisper in my ear now, “Or did you think you might escape?”

“No, no I…”

“That you’re too good for my hospitality?” He gestured toward the Goldfish and water that sat in the corner.

“No, I never -“

His eyes narrowed until they were like blades, and he stared at me thoughtfully, murderously, for a moment.

“If you want to escape…”

All of the sudden, the pressure of his weight lifted, and he yanked my hands around to my back, holding them there as if arresting me for something. Then he was shoving me towards the door. We reached the threshold and surprisingly, miraculously, he pushed me through. For a moment, a brief, ridiculous moment, I thought he might really let me escape.

The light, even though it was gray and dim, nearly blinded me, and the rain cascaded down my face. It chilled me to my bones, but it felt lovely. I was outside. And, as I looked around, I realized I was outside on some kind of farm. There was a shed, to my right, and what looked like an old farmhouse, lit dimly from the inside, a few hundred yards away. I assumed it was his. There were no other houses or properties in sight. The edges of his land, as far as I could see, were lined by woods.

He continued walking me, my bare feet squelching in the mud, until we reached the shed. Holding me with one hand, he opened the door and leaned in, reached around, and grabbed a chainlink leash and collar.

“No, I’ll go back -“ I started, but he slapped me harshly across the face and forced me into the collar and leash. He padlocked both with the padlocks he had used on the garage door, and connected the leash to a nearby tree.

“There, you got what you wanted,” he said. “You’re free.”

Without another word, he turned and walked back to the farmhouse. I watched him go, hunched under his umbrella and trenchcoat, and screamed.

—-

No day was darker than that one. No day colder, no day more lonely. I huddled under the dead leafless branches of what looked like a young oak. For awhile, I picked at the bark around the leash where it looped around the tree, as though I might cut it down, little by little, with my fingernails. I wasn’t thinking straight by then, I don’t think. Just screaming, and yanking, and wailing. Like a starving dog in a cage. But eventually, even that fire in me dampened as the icy rain cooled my flesh, my bones, my mind.

I don’t remember it, but sometime around dusk, I went to sleep.

I awoke to red and blue lights and a tin foil blanket covering my body and a whole lot of questions I could hardly parse, let alone answer. Then, I was helped into an ambulance, and I went to sleep again. I woke up in the hospital days later. I remember not being able to believe how bright the lights were. They burned my eyes. That was my first thought, when I woke up in safety. That my eyes hurt. The second was “where is he?”

The police told me later, once I had begun to regain some of my strength. Someone from the next property over had heard me screaming and come to investigate. My captor, likely seeing the man with me and the lights and sirens shortly after, didn’t stay for the show. He was nowhere to be found.

In the rain, I hadn’t been able to see to see through the treeline, but it turns out that it wasn’t incredibly dense, and the next property wasn’t far off — there was another farm through the trees behind the shed. The owner had been checking on his butterflies at that side of the property, preparing to release them so they could migrate South, when he heard me off in the distance. He took his German Shepherd with him to investigate and called the police when he found me.

He stayed with me, too. I hardly remember him, my savior, but I do remember his German Shepherd. It laid with me, there, in the cold mud and grass, warming my legs and torso. When a cop or paramedic approached, he would tense, and I’d lay a hand on his side to let him know it was all right. The softness of his fur — that was the first time I had felt something soft in two months.

That’s how long I was in there. Sixty-seven days. I don’t have much of a gauge as to how long that is. In there, it felt like an eternity. Out here, it feels like a blip of darkness in a long string of normal life. That’s half a semester. Two membership payments at the gym.

And so, I treated it like nothing. Sure, I made a few changes — I got Sunny as soon as I left the hospital, and I moved to my fourth-floor flat in Central London. I paid a locksmith for special bolts on the door and a therapist for some intensive sessions, and I took extra care to make my space feel like a warm, bright home.

Now, eight years later, it does.

I don’t think about the Umbrella Man much now. I live a normal life, except for a few oddities and scars. My fingers subconsciously went to the puckered skin above my left eye, where the eyebrow never completely grew back. I think it looks kind of badass now. I smiled lightly to myself and was about to turn back to Dune when I heard a low grumble in Sunny’s throat.

I looked down at her where she lay by my feet. Her ears were straight up, and the hairs at the back of her neck were beginning to stand on end.

“What is it, girl?”

Sunny stood and moved towards the window. She looked out and growled again. My heart beat faster, but Sunny wasn’t immune to getting spooked by a weird-sounding car or a cat meowing. I calmed my breathing and moved to the window.

“It’s okay,” I reassured her, and bent to scratch her ears as I pulled the curtain back.

Directly below me was the top of a black umbrella. A trench coat just visible sticking out the bottom. My heart beat faster, but I reminded myself that it was London and it was raining — black umbrella and trench coat wasn’t really a unique combo.

“It’s just the rain,” I said to Sunny, and I moved to go back to the couch when the umbrella began to move. It tilted slowly upward, and upward, ever so slowly, until it was almost perpendicular with a ground, and a face began to emerge from beneath it.

The bottom half was covered in a scarf. The top half of his face was bare, but it didn’t matter. I would’ve known him from a mile away. His eyes locked with mine, and I dropped the curtain.

I ran to the phone and dialed 911.

“8213 Carraway Place, flat 4A, fourth floor — there’s a man outside -“

The woman on the other end sounded unimpressed. “A man outside?”

I dared a glance through the slit in the curtain.

He was gone.

“No, he’s - he’s a criminal, he kidnapped me once before, he’s back -“ I could hear the panic in my voice and tried to calm it. Then, ever so faintly, I heard someone coming up the steps.

“Please, he’s coming up,” I said in a frantic whisper.

“All right, ma’am, someone’s on their way now. Please stay on the line.”

I kept the phone live but dropped it to my side as I looked for something — anything — to defend myself with, cursing my paranoia-driven tiny apartment. There was nothing to use. Nowhere to hide. For lack of a better idea, I grabbed the biggest knife from my kitchen. It had a pink handle. I almost giggled madly at the thought of using a pink-handled knife to murder someone. I swallowed the laugh and almost threw up instead.

Sunny was growling loudly now, but even her rumbling couldn’t mask the sound of the footsteps as they ascended the stairs. They were only one level away now.

I couldn’t run to the neighbors. I couldn’t hide. I couldn’t jump out the window —

The fire escape! I had completely forgotten about it. I dashed over to the window, beckoning Sunny soundlessly, frantically, so I could hoist her over my shoulders and climb down, maybe even just down one level and hope the downstairs neighbors would let her in.

Just then, I heard a knock at her door. I froze, heart a beating lump in my throat.

Then, from outside the door —

“Lovely weather we’re having.”