Jude stood in the huge ballroom. The detailed gray tiles on the floor contrasted the ornate carvings on the gray wooden walls beautifully, he thought. He admired the high ceilings, with its shining silver chandeliers which were casting a dim light throughout the place. He realized he’d never seen such opulence and he felt out of place in such an immaculate setting, wearing beat-up gray sneakers, sweatpants, and a T-shirt. He hadn’t known when he’d rolled out of bed that morning where his day would take him. If he’d known, maybe he’d have picked out something a little nicer to wear. 

Jude had been walking down the street on his way to school, just like he did every day, nothing unusual. A group of boys had followed him, probably just wanting to pick on him or start a fight again. 

That wasn’t so unusual either. 

Jude just ran, not in the mood to deal with them. They’d laughed and started to chase him, so he had dashed into one of the big abandoned buildings that were all over the city. And now, here he was.

The young boy stood in the entrance to the room, all alone. He turned, slowly, once again taking in his surroundings. Lining the walls were doors, lots and lots of doors covering the base of each wall, perhaps a foot or two apart from each other. Each one was uniform, looking exactly the same. Tall, plain, and light gray, like everything else. 

Except for one.

As Jude stepped through the entrance, there was one thing that stood out to him like a sore thumb. One thing that was unlike any other thing he’d ever seen. It was like someone had taken a hammer and shattered the fabric of his reality. It was hard to describe. The closest he could come was the feeling of the sun warming your skin or the feeling of being excited but not angry. It’s like that weird feeling when you’re happy for absolutely no reason at all.

It was yellow.

Of course, Jude didn’t know that. All he’d ever known was gray. Gray with the occasional black and white mixed in for variety.

You see, Jude lived in a colorless world. A monochrome, grayscale world where leaves weren’t green and the sky was never blue. He’d never cared though, nobody did. They’d never known anything different! The tintless lives they led were no worse than the lives of anyone as far back as history could remember. Their Earth had never been the Blue Planet, it was more of a dull grayish planet.  

But now, Jude stood, beholding this marvelous thing called color. He had to squint to look at the door. It was like a pair of sunglasses he’d been wearing his whole life had just been ripped off, and his eyes could barely handle it. What was this? What was this place, and this weird door thingy?

He walked closer to investigate, his beat-up sneakers making soft noises on the marble-tiled floor. 

As he approached the door, he reached out and turned the handle, hesitating only a moment before pushing the door open.

The incredible burst of light and color that came through the door as it swung open was truly overwhelming. 

Jude’s brain felt like it was short-circuiting, his eyes watered from the overload of information they were processing, and he had to take a step back in surprise. As his eyes adjusted to the light and the color, he noticed where the door led. As soon as he realized where he was, he felt incredibly disoriented. The door led to the front steps of the building, the entrance that Jude had come through. But he’d thought he was on the other side of the building by now, wasn’t he? 

This couldn’t be the same place from which he’d entered the building, could it? But it looked exactly the same! The cobblestone streets and the tall, unfriendly-looking buildings that lined the alleyway were the same. The only thing missing, which he wasn’t sad about lacking, was the group of bullies running toward him.

But what was much more disorienting than the setting was the color. The incredible, overwhelming amount of color which saturated every inch of the world. He didn’t know how to describe any of it very well. All he knew was that the sky was a weird cool color that looked like the sound of waves and would’ve looked calming if it didn’t seem like it was glaring down at him angrily. The sun was a different thing altogether. It reminded him of the door he’d just walked through, but more bright, if that was possible. It glowed like it had in his greyscale reality, but it seemed so much warmer now. It was like you could actually see the heat radiating from it.

Jude stepped through the doorway. He looked down and his eyes widened in surprise- his clothes weren’t gray anymore! He walked a little way down the cobblestone street. He understood the cobblestones. They were gray. He knew gray. But he wasn’t looking down at the street, he was looking up and all around at the buildings and lampposts and birds and especially the sky, which seemed so much more pleasant now that it wasn’t gloomy. In fact, he was so preoccupied with the world around him that he very nearly crashed into someone.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!” the young lady said in disapproval.

“Oh- I’m so sorry!” Jude said hastily. The woman just shook her head and kept walking. Jude rushed after her though.

“Wait! Excuse me, could you tell me what color that is?” Jude asked, pointing at the sky.

The woman gave him a strange look, like she thought he was playing a joke on her. “Um, blue?” she said in a slightly irritated tone.

Jude nodded curiously. “And that?” he pointed down the street to the door through which he’d come.

“Yellow?” the woman answered, giving him a quizzical look, before walking away.

“Thank you!” He tried to call after her but she was already gone.

He walked back over to the yellow door, which stood out to him even among the bright colors of the rest of the world.

When he walked back through and entered the gray ballroom it suddenly didn’t seem very extravagant anymore. Jude sighed. He would be lying if he said he didn’t wish that he could stay in the colored place, with the blue and the yellow, but he didn’t know if it was safe. He didn’t know what was happening with the whole teleporting to the front steps thing, but he thought it was weird and didn’t like it.

Now that he was back inside, he grew curious as to where all the other doors led. Upon investigating, he learned that every single door opened up to the same scene: The front steps leading down to cobblestone streets. As gray as they’d always looked.

‘That is not normal,’ Jude thought. He didn’t like this place, something was definitely not right about it. Luckily, when he’d first entered the room, he’d forgotten to close the door, otherwise he never would have been able to tell which door he’d come through and which door would lead to the correct front steps. 

He hurried out the door, down the steps, and started running home. Something disconcerted him about that place, but he couldn’t keep what he saw a secret. He looked up at the cold, gray sky.

‘That’s not what it’s supposed to look like’, he thought. ‘It looked better the other way.’

…

When Jude reached his home, he ran into the living room to find his mom.

“MOM,” he yelled excitedly, “You’ll never believe-”

“Jude? What are you doing here, you’re supposed to be at school!” she cut him off.

“I know, but just listen!” Jude said and his mom sighed, waiting for him to continue. “Those boys from school were chasing me again so I ran and hid in a random building, but it was so weird, I was in this room that was full of doors that were all, like, exactly the same but there was one that was really weird and it was called Yellow or something and when I went through it the whole WORLD was yellow and blue and colors and stuff,” he said all in one breath at lightning speed.

His mother just looked at him blankly, probably only having registered about half of the information he gave her. 

“So, a group of boys chased you into a building and you went through a door that led to a weird alternate dimension,” she repeated, clearly not believing a word that he said.

“Yep!”

“And you said the door was… what again?” she inquired.

“Well I asked a random lady and she told me it was called yellow,” Jude answered.

“Yellow…” his mom said quietly, and a flicker of recognition flashed across her eyes before they returned to their blank look. She shook her head and sighed.

“Enough nonsense. You need to get to school,” she said after a second.

“But-”

“You heard me.”

So Jude groaned, picked up his backpack, and trudged to school.

…

The next morning was a Saturday, and Jude got up bright and early to go investigate the strange building some more. 

The air was crisp and cold that morning, and the gray sky was overcast and drizzling slightly. 

Jude walked up the steps and turned the doorknob of the plain gray door, standing straight and tall like a guard watching over whatever secrets were held by the room within. He pushed the door open, letting a gust of the biting wind blow into the building. Stepping inside, he was glad to be out of the cold, gloomy weather.

Of course, the first thing that caught his eye when he entered was the Yellow Door, standing proudly against the opposite wall.

The second thing he noticed was that he wasn’t the only person in the room. Pacing the floor in front of the many doors was a man. He appeared to be some sort of guard. After a moment, he turned around and noticed Jude.

“Hey! You’re not allowed to be in here,” he said gruffly, walking toward Jude.

“Who are you?” Jude said rudely, and the guard’s face hardened.

“I’m guarding insolent children like you from trespassing on government property,” he said coldly.

“But I was here yesterday, and-”

“We had a little issue with our security yesterday.” Jude turned around and saw another man coming through the same door he had. The man gave the guard a pointed look before continuing, “It seems our guard was slacking off.”

The guard looked rather sheepish, but Jude’s focus was now on the other man. He had an air of importance, dressed in a formal gray suit and tie.

“What is this place? Who are you guys?” Jude asked in confusion.

“Nothing that concerns you. We keep what goes on here under wraps.”

Jude pretty much just stared at the man blankly as he continued.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to swear to secrecy now. We try to refrain from punishing people who stumble upon this place and don’t know that they’re supposed to stay away. We had a small lapse in our security yesterday, but usually our guards are more competent.” The man gave the guard another pointed look. “We’ll let the trespassing slide this time, as long as you promise never to come back or tell anyone anything about it,” the man said sternly.

“Uh, ok, I promise,” Jude said uncertainly.

“Good, now go away,” he said, shooing Jude back through the door.

…

Jude, being the naive irresponsible child that he was, did not keep his promise. He went back to the abandoned building a few days later, at night, when he thought there might not be anyone there. 

He opened the door the tiniest crack and peeked in. Not seeing any sign of the guard or the other man, he opened the door the whole way and stepped inside. He started walking over to the Yellow Door again, but just when he was about halfway across the large room he heard someone else come through the door.

“Hey!” someone yelled, “Get back over here!”

Jude whipped around and was met by the guard from a few days ago standing in the doorway looking angry. Jude looked at him with a little guilty smile and laughed nervously, walking back over to the door.

“Come with me,” the guard snapped, grabbing his wrist. Jude didn’t really know what else to do than obey him. He followed silently as the guard dragged him out the door and to one of the other buildings across the street.

The guard led Jude up a staircase and into a small room. Inside was a desk littered with newspaper clippings and documents. A small black case was set on top, and sitting at the desk was the man in the gray suit from a few days ago. The man looked up and gave Jude a cold stare. He gestured for Jude to sit down in the chair on the other side of the desk. Jude sat, and the guard left.

Jude looked down at the desk guiltily, suddenly very interested in looking at the newspaper clippings and not at the man in front of him. One of the clippings read, “New Scientific Studies Show Effect of Color on the Human Brain,” which he assumed was about whatever was going on in the other building. He didn’t have time to read further, however, as the man started speaking.

“Jude. Care to explain what you were doing, trespassing again?”

How this man knew his name, Jude had no clue, but he decided to ignore that.

“Uh, I just wanted-” But the man interrupted him.

“You were given a chance, and you squandered it. This time there will be consequences. We cannot allow this insubordination to continue,” the man said harshly.

“It won’t happen again!” Jude assured him hurriedly. He didn’t know what the consequences of his actions would be, but judging from the angry expression on this man’s face, they wouldn’t be good.

“Once trust is broken, it cannot be so easily mended. You had your warning, and now there will be punishment. Almost a century ago, our world turned black and white and nobody knows why. Scientists have been working on a way to fix the problem ever since, but now that they know, we want to know what the psychological effects might be for the people. We’ve tried to keep it under wraps because if we had people crossing between the doors it could mess with the results of the experiment. If the people in the colored world learn they’re in a test, it could change everything. Unfortunately, you have proven yourself untrustworthy. I’m afraid we have to wipe your memory now.”

“Wait, WHA-”

Jude didn’t have a chance to finish before the man pulled out a syringe from the black case and injected it into his arm.

He slumped over, unconscious.

…

The man in the suit and the guard both escorted Jude home. They walked in silence the whole time, the two men wearing hardened, cold expressions and Jude with a blank, dazed look. 

When the three of them reached Jude’s house, the guard knocked on the door. A few minutes later, Jude’s mother came to answer the door, looking confused and tired. As it was the middle of the night, she’d just woken up and didn’t seem completely alert.

“Hello, ma’am. We found your son wandering the streets. He must’ve been sleepwalking or something, but we wanted to make sure he got home safely. He showed us the way, we wanted to make sure nothing happened as he walked back. It can be dangerous outside at night, you know,” the man in the suit said. Jude’s mother still looked kind of disoriented, but her expression turned grateful.

“Oh, thank you so much, gentlemen, that was very kind of you. He must’ve walked off after I fell asleep,” she said, smiling in relief at Jude, happy that he was safe.

“Oh, it’s no problem at all. He seemed to be having some sort of weird dreams. He kept muttering something about a made-up color… yellow, I think. And something about a door?” The man chuckled, “Children sure do have incredible imaginations.”

“Yellow…” both Jude and his mother mumbled quietly at the same time. The man chuckled again, but with no warmth.

“Anyway, if you hear him muttering about something like that, it’s probably just from the dream. He seemed a bit disoriented when we woke him up.” the man explained, and Jude’s mother nodded again, her expression more blank and confused than before.

“Well, goodnight, ma’am,” he said, and the two men walked away as Jude and his mother went inside.

“I remember that woman,” the guard said after a few moments of walking in silence.

“Yes, we had to wipe her memory a few years back, I think. I guess curiosity runs in the family,” the other man said.

“Why did you mention yellow and doors and stuff to them at all?” the guard inquired curiously.

“Sometimes the memory serum takes a few hours to kick in completely. I didn’t want the boy babbling on about everything and triggering a memory for the woman. Much better for her to believe it’s all just from a child’s imagination and forget about it by tomorrow.”

The guard nodded in agreement. After a few more seconds, the other man continued.

“The boy came pretty close to figuring everything out actually. I shouldn’t have left that newspaper on my desk. He only saw the headline, but if he’d read the rest I think he would’ve found out the truth.”

The guard nodded once more. “We have to be careful with the people through this door. This trial is just so much more nosy than any of the others. I’ve never had a breach from any of the other gray doors.”

The man in the suit looked thoughtful. “It’s certainly interesting. I don’t really know what to make of it.”

“Just more data to report to headquarters, I guess,” the guard said.

The other man nodded. The experiment they were helping to run was much more complicated than what they’d led Jude to believe. They’d tried to hide the truth from him as much as they could.

They didn’t want Jude to realize that the one who was really in the experiment was him.

The End