Oliva’s stomach broiled every time she heard her parents break the news to her. Her face would turn red, and she would shake horridly. In elementary school, she would write goodbye notes to the friends she managed to make in a year, but that quickly stopped. What’s the use? They were just going to move once again. Just so her parents could find their “perfect” house.
This is the sixteenth house they’ve lived in. To Olivia, this house was just another house they bought to turn down and search some more. To her parents, it was a piece of art.
Her parents were quite right, it was quite a piece of art.
This new house was owned by an artist, who cannot look at anything colorless. The walls were tiled, with different designs on each tile. The walls that were not tiled, which were few, were covered in flowers, trees, and other plants with exotic colors and shapes to them.
On each tile on the kitchen and bathroom floors was a different color and pattern, to some people, it would look like a unicorn threw up, to others it would look like a successful artist’s work.
The areas that were carpeted had so many paint stains on them, they looked like they were supposed to have stains in them.
It just so happened that Olivia, a person who only likes shades like black, grey, and white, came to live in this house with her parents. Of course, it gets worse, she got the most colorful bedroom, if there was such a thing.
Upon their first day of living there, Olivia put tarps all over the walls and floors of her bedroom. She did it in an attempt to hide the vibrant colors, and stop the throbbing of her head they brought.
“Mom,” Olivia said a month after living there. “We cannot live here. My room is a giant color circle thingy, and I cannot have those tarps there anymore. I need walls to put stuff on!”
“I’m sorry dear, but we can’t handle that currently, we’re working on the family room and our bedroom right now,” Olivia’s mother replied.
Olivia stomped upstairs, nearly cracking the tile on the ceiling in the basement.
“What’s gotten into her?” her father asked.
“She claims she wants to get rid of the tarps in her room,” her mother said.
“She can if she wants,” father said.
“Except she won’t until we are ready to rip out the lovely tile,” mother said.
Meanwhile, upstairs, “Ugh! I hate this house! Of all the houses we could’ve chosen, we had to choose a house an artist lived in! I swear if this dizziness of color doesn’t go away soon, I’ll have terrible grades in the upcoming school year! Even worse, it seems like mother and father really like this house this time, of all houses!” Olivia raged, jumping onto her bed and screaming into her pillow.
“I don’t think she likes this house,” father said from downstairs, overhearing Olivia’s rant.
“I agree with you. However this is the one house we like,” Mother said.
“She can suck it up and behave. We’re the parents, we’ll buy whatever house we want,” father said.
“I have a bathroom in my bedroom that I won’t use because the toilet’s purple! I mean come on! Why would someone do that to a poor toilet! They go through enough pain and smells already!” Olivia shouted.
A few dull days passed, and Olivia spent the entire time outside, so as to not be forced to stare at all those dizzying colors.
“You sure like to go out here,” a boy said walking by Olivia in the park.
“Oh, uh no, I don’t usually go out here. I just want to stay out of the house because there are too many colors,” Olivia said.
“Oh, so you’re the person to live in that artist’s house. How is it? No one’s been in there in a while,” he asked.
“Dizzying, too colorful, scratch that, way too colorful,” Olivia sighed.
“Really? I saw the images online and the house looks amazing,” the boy said.
“To most people, yes. To Olivia, no. Oh boy, look at me, talking in the third person. I must be going crazy!”
“I’m Brandon by the way,” the boy awkwardly, putting his arm out to shake it.
“Olivia,” Olivia said, shaking his hand.
“Did you know that name means olive tree?” Brandon asked.
“I did not know that. I do hope the meaning of names doesn’t match with the person’s personality because it does not match mine,” Olivia said.
“Meaning?” Brandon asked.
“I hate nature and colors. I mean, too many colors make me dizzy, and nature is so itchy,” Olivia replied.
“Sorry to say it, but you live in an artist’s old house,” Brandon pointed out.
“I know. This artist must’ve been really dedicated to his job to have purple toilets,” she said.
“You’re kidding?” he asked.
“Nope. I never used the bathroom in my bedroom because of it,” Olivia said.
“You should give it a shot, not everybody has a bathroom in their bedroom,” Brandon suggested.
Olivia shrugged. “That’s not my fault.”
“I gotta go, soccer lessons,” Brandon said.
“Nice knowing you!” Olivia cried as he walked away.
“You too! Maybe we can be friends one day,” he called back.
“Maybe!” Olivia shouted before Brandon left her sight.
That night, Olivia got the courage to use the bathroom in her bedroom once and for all. It seems as if Brandon lit the courage candle inside her, lifting the dizziness of color in that bathroom for the time being.
“It can’t be all that bad, it’s only the color purple, a pretty dark color,” Olivia said, peering into the purple toilet. “Let me just flush it to make sure it’s safe,”
When Olivia was younger, she used to think toilets would eat her. Just a little she was still afraid it would, although she ignores it.
The toilet was normal when flushing at first until the water became a teal blue with sparkles inside it.
“Uh… that’s not normal,” Olivia said paling.
Then suddenly, the water level began rising fast.
“Uh… that’s not normal at all!” Olivia shouted.
The water rose and rose, and just when she thought it would overflow, it didn’t. Instead, the water rose above the toilet and engulfed her inside.
“This is disgusting,” Olivia thought as she floated in the water, uncertain if she was in the bathroom anymore. “I feel like Alice in wonderland, when she fell down that rabbit hole.”
“I heard Olivia shouting again,” Her Mother said from downstairs on her work laptop.
“Probably in one of her moods,” said her father.
Meanwhile, Olivia was swimming in sparkly blue toilet water, not knowing why or how it all happened.
The water swished her around and around. After what felt like a week of this happening, it was over all of a sudden.
Olivia was lying on soft, bright green grass, groaning.
“That was very strange,” she said standing up. “Where am I now?”
She was in a huge field, from what she can see, ahead of her about a mile and a half away was a mountain, and all around her off into the distance were woods. Squinting proved some of the trees were pink, yellow, red, and all sorts of colors.
“I’m not in Kansas anymore, am I?” Of course, she didn’t live in Kansas, she was just using a quote she heard someone say at school last year.
“Hello!” a green creature said, walking up to Olivia.
“Um… hello?” Olivia replied.
“We don’t usually have humans around here, just that artist, who lives here now. What’s your name?” it asked.
“Olivia,” she said.
“Nice name. If you would follow me, I’ll explain where you are, and lead you to the city of color!” it said.
“Alright. What’s your name?” Olivia asked.
“Green Leaf, I’m a hamster. As you can probably see, this is a realm of color. Here everything is a different color than it’s supposed to be. Our realm has a bit of a time problem, after each day, the day repeats over and over again. Only people like the artist can remember what the day before was like. Take us for example, everything and everyone in this realm except you and the artist forget about the day’s repetition. We’re forced to do the same things every day, over and over again.” Green leaf explained.
“Okay,” Olivia said slowly.
They kept walking in silence. Once they were halfway there, Green Leaf said, “This is where things speed up a little. Every time you’re halfway to The City of Color, you magically start running super fast uncontrollably. We do it this way so it doesn’t take too much time to get somewhere,”
As if on cue, the second after Green Leaf explained this they started speeding up real fast.
“Woah! This place is crazy!” Olivia shouted.
It took no time at all for Olivia and Green Leaf to get to The City of Color.
The city had a ton of vibrant colors, pink, blue, orange, yellow, any color you can name, it’s here.
They passed through the front gates, then stopped right when they got inside the city.
“Welcome, Olivia, to The City of Color!” Green Leaf announced.
“Too… much… color!” Olivia shouted, covering her eyes.
The dizziness was too much for Olivia, who wanted just to go home.
“Let me take you to the artist,” Green Leaf said, concerned.
Olivia covered her eyes the entire time they walked to the artist’s home, Green Leaf leading the way, however she missed a lot.
As they walked, they passed many different colored animals, buildings, food, and more. They even got a following of animals behind them, these animals were curious to see another human here.
The buildings had the shape of medieval homes and shops, but the quality and color of the buildings were different and better. Some of the buildings were pink, green, purple, blue, orange, red, even in some cases grey.
The building quality was way, way better than the quality humans do, no one knows why, that’s just the way it is.
Some shops sold clothes, toys, food, ice cream, housewares, and everything else shops sell.
Overhead the city is a railway station made of glass to let the sunshine through. The station is floating, with the magic of this realm holding the station up. From underneath the station in the city, you could see animals going to and fro from train to train, from ticket station to train.
“We’re here,” green leaf said, as they got to the artist’s house. “Artist, this is Olivia, she’s the new person to live in your house,” Green Leaf said.
“Huh, I thought other humans like me had faces, not hands for faces,” the artist said as they came into his house.
“She claims she gets dizzy when she sees too many colors, sir,” Green Leaf said.
“Oh come on, I never heard of such a thing,” the artist said.
“Well it’s true, I had to put tarps all over my bedroom, to hide the horrible bright colors on my walls,” Olivia said.
“How dare you hate my colors! Please excuse me, I got a little carried away. Would you care to sit down?” the artist asked, indicating a chair at a table.
Olivia opened her fingers to get a peek at her surroundings.
The house looked just like a replica of her new house, the walls had the same patterns, the floors too. The table in the middle of the room had paint splats all over it, they were in the dining room.
Olivia sat on a paint-splattered chair, then uncovered her eyes, but kept her eyes on the table.
“You don’t like looking at colors, do you?” the artist asked as Green Leaf left the house.
“No, I don’t, they make me dizzy. Do you know the way home? I would like to leave this dream,” Olivia said.
“Oh this is not a dream dearie, you flushed the purple toilet, yes?” he asked.
“Yes, and then I passed out from the dizziness, and now I’m dreaming. I just wanna go home!” Oliva shouted.
“Fine, go home,” the artist pouted.
A silence passed.
“I can’t, I don’t know how,” Olivia said.
“Then wake up, if this is a dream,” he said.
Olivia pinched herself in the arm, the pain felt real.
“You’re not dreaming, then, this is real,” the artist said.
“I… guess so,” Olivia answered.
For the next few hours, Olivia and the artist talked about his house, Olivia’s life, and the realm they were in. Apparently, the artist retired to the realm, to get away from the drab, colorless realm of humans.
It turns out, despite their differences, Olivia and the artist became great friends. Each day after school Olivia visited the artist. She was no longer dizzy, and she became friends with Brandon.
The Writer Reader 