Trial of Color: Manish

Part I: Greed - A Child’s Fancy

Manish walked through the inky black and found himself in front of his house. Or, no, not his house. His garden? No that’s not right either. His bedroom? The dining room? It was as if the scene shifted every time he looked around. They blurred together and separated in each corner of the space he found himself in. After a disorienting few seconds, Manish focused on the center of the space. There, laying still and gray, was Dwayne.

Manish dashed forward and slid on his knees next to her side. “Dwayne? Dwayne are you okay? Oh geeze, oh no. What do I do? How do I help?” But there was no response. He looked around for Seta, but he was alone. He had to figure this out on his own. “Okay, okay, no I can, uh, I can do this. I’ll just, um. Okay, you’re all uh, gray? Can I fix that? Maybe something around…” He trailed off as a glint of yellow caught his eye in one of the corners of the space.

He rose to his feet and stumbled over towards the color. He found himself standing outside his house. But he wasn’t alone. Not really. He was looking at himself; a much younger version of himself. A memory tried to make its way to the forefront of his mind. He remembered this. Sort of.

Little Manish was standing in front of his house with a group of other kids and he was so excited. The bus was on its way to pick him up for school. He loved school. The other kids made fun of him sometimes for it, after all, who liked school? School was dumb. But Manish loved it. He liked learning and he liked leaving his house. Besides, it was show and tell day and he had the best thing ever to show. It was weighing down his backpack but he didn’t mind the weight. He was going to show all the kids and they were finally going to like him. Mother told him not to bring it, but what did she know? She was just an adult and they didn’t know anything.

“Pfft, look at him! He can’t even stand still. He looks like he’s doing the potty dance! Does the little baby have to go potty?” One of the older kids mocked him and the group of children all laughed.

Manish pouted and stuck out his tongue. “No! I’m not a baby!”

“Only babies say they aren’t babies.”

He really didn’t have a good comeback for that. But he’d show them. This kid wasn’t in his class so he wouldn’t see his show and tell, so Manish would just show him beforehand, that would be fine. Mother really didn’t want him to bring it to school and told him he shouldn’t talk about it, but just this one time wouldn’t hurt. “You’re just jealous.”

“Jealous of what? A dumb baby?”

“You’re just jealous that I have a super cool bar of real gold.”

“Yeah right. You’re lying. A lying baby!” All the kids started to laugh again.

“I’m not lying!” Manish stamped his foot down. “Look!” he unzipped his backpack and held it out for the others to see. Sure enough, inside was a small, yellow bar of solid gold. The shocked silence of the kids around him was victory enough. “Told you I wasn’t lying.”

“Whatever. You’re still dumb” but the older kid’s words didn’t carry near as much weight as they did before.

Current Manish took a step back from the scene. There was a feeling of dread starting to build inside of him. “I don’t want to watch anymore. I don’t…I don’t want to see what happens next…” But nothing was listening. The scene continued on.

Manish stumbled off of the schoolbus in tears. It was supposed to be a good day but the stupid grownups had to ruin everything. When he took out the bar of gold for show and tell the dumb teacher called Mother and tattled on him. Mother was not happy that he didn’t listen. But she didn’t get it! She didn’t know what it was like. He didn’t even get to fully show off the gold before the teacher made him put it away and sent him to time out.

Manish knew that as soon as he got off the bus and made the trek up the lane to his house that he was going to get yelled at by Mother so he was taking his sweet time actually heading that way. Most of the other kids immediately took off towards their respective houses but Manish stayed at the bus stop a moment longer to put off the inevitable; another thing Mother always warned him against. Go straight home after you get off the bus. Don’t bring cool things to school. Be careful Manish, don’t do that Manish, there were just so many rules!

But he couldn’t put off the inevitable much longer. He took one step towards his house when he heard someone behind him. “Hey kid!” Manish turned to see a couple of grownups walking towards him. He didn’t know them, but he was supposed to be nice to grownups so he pointed at himself and they nodded. “You’re Manish, right? Your parents are Brad and Angie?”

Manish scrunched up his nose. He hardly ever heard Mother and Father’s real names and it always sounded weird. “Yes sir,” he replied, trying to be polite.

“Come here a second. We just wanna talk to you” the man gestured a black car. Manish really really didn’t want to go, but it was rude to not do what grownups said and he had done enough not listening to grownups for one day. He took a few steps closer.

“Please. I don’t want to remember this…” Current Manish muttered, but he was already stuck in the scene.

As soon as he was a little closer, one of the men grabbed his arm and started to drag him towards the car. “Wait! No, please let go!” Manish cried, but he didn’t listen. That’s when he really started to panic. Manish started to hit the man and tried to drop down to the ground, but the man was just too strong. “Let go! Help!” he yelled.

“Shut the damn brat up! We gotta get outta here!” the other man yelled as he got to the back of the car and opened up the trunk. The one dragging him by the arm pulled out a gun and pressed it against Manish’s head and he froze instantly.

“That’s right, kid. You do anything dumb and you can say goodbye to that cushy life you have. You’ll just be a smear on the sidewalk.”

Manish stopped struggling and was guided to the back of the car. “Check his bag. You heard what he said this morning. Dumbass actually brought fuckin’ gold with him.” One man ripped his backpack off of him and the other picked Manish up and put him in the trunk. Manish tried to sit back up but the man hit him across the face. Manish crumpled and curled up on himself in the trunk.

“Ha! Check it out, he wasn’t lyin” the man holding the bag said as he took out the gold bar. “Fucking rich kids thinking that they can just carry this shit around. Didn’t dear old mom and dad ever teach you to keep your damn mouth closed?” he mocked Manish who just stared blankly at him. “Whatever. Biggest payday of our lives. If the brat is carrying this kinda shit on him for fun, imagine what we can get from his parents.” The man tossed the bar on top of Manish and dropped his backpack on the ground. “Time to get outta here.” The trunk was slammed shut and Manish was left alone in the dark.

He wasn’t sure how long he spent curled up in the trunk, but they had been driving for a while. His face hurt where he was hit and his legs were cramped. He just wanted to go home. He would never disobey Mother again if he got to go home. Manish begged silently for anyone to come save him.

After a time he heard sirens, but the car didn’t stop. It sped up. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but he was being tossed around in the trunk. Eventually there was a loud crash and he slammed into the side of the trunk. Then there were gunshots. Manish covered his ears, but they were so loud. Everything was so loud. A stray bullet made its way through the trunk, but he didn’t notice, he just curled up even tighter. It seemed like it went on for forever but there was eventually silence.

It took a while longer, but eventually the trunk opened. Manish blinked around the sudden light but could just make out the shape of a person above him. He tried to scramble back further away from them, but there wasn’t much room for him to escape. “Hey, woah, hey you’re okay kid. It’s okay,” a gentle voice said, “I found him! He’s back here!” they yelled before showing their hands to Manish again. “Hey hon, hey you’re okay. I’m a cop, see? Here’s my badge,” she pulled off her badge and offered it to him. Finally Manish let himself start to uncurl and really look at the person in front of him. She definitely looked like a cop, he had seen them on TV before.

Manish slowly released the gold bar that was clutched in his hand and he took the badge from her hand. “Shit,” she hissed suddenly and Manish started to withdraw again. “No, no sweetie you’re okay. Come here, I just need to get some other people to come over, okay?” she looked away from him for a moment, “we’re gonna need a medic over here. Looks like he was grazed.” What? Grazed? Manish looked down at his arm and saw blood. He couldn’t process it through. That came from him? He didn’t feel hurt, or well, everything hurt. But nothing really stood out to him that much. He looked back at the cop.

“Come on hon, let’s go.” That sounded good. Manish wanted to leave. He let her lift him up and out of the trunk and he wrapped his arms around her neck, her golden badge still clutched tightly in one hand.

Manish watched himself get carried off towards an ambulance. He felt. Well, he felt numb. At some point he stopped processing that this scene was happening to him. Or at least a younger version of him. He watched with mild interest like it was a poorly written action movie. But the scene was frozen. The kid was saved, nothing but a split lip and graze on his shoulder to show for it. Manish wandered over closer to the car and saw a glint in the corner of his eye. He looked down into the trunk and saw it: the gold bar.

If only he had listened. If only he took the time to think. It was his fault this happened, he was too foolish, too eager to please some kids that didn’t even like him, too hard headed to just take a moment and think.

It was like he was moving in a fog as he leaned over and grabbed the gold bar out of the trunk. So much over so little. As he held the bar, he felt it start to heat up, to melt. It dribbled down his arm and the yellow liquid snaked down to the ground and back towards the center of the room. Slowly it made its way up to Dwayne and took its place on her antennae and slightly open eyes.

Manish was in a daze, still refusing to really take in what he had just seen. But at least now he knew what he needed to do to get Dwayne back.

Slowly, Manish stumbled towards another corner of the room to deal with the next memory.

Part III: Pride - A Teenager’s Folly

After the last two, Manish was fairly certain that he figured out the theme of what was going on. Not that he wanted to really participate in said theme, but he knew what he had to do. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for whatever new memory decided to play out for him.

Manish watched teen him dig through Mother’s closet. Technically he wasn’t supposed to be in Mother and Father’s room, and he definitely wasn’t supposed to be in the closet, but he almost fondly recalled when he was a little more rebellious. When he didn’t care as much about what Mother and Father said.

Teenage Manish stood up in a flurry of fur coats and shoes, brandishing his prize: a purple feather boa. It was a gaudy thing leftover from one of Mother’s movies and for a bored teen, it was the funniest thing he had seen. Manish wrapped it around his neck and strutted across the room. “Oh this old thing?” he said to the empty room, “please, this is nothing. Just a little piece I picked up in my many travels around the world. Yes, I know, very fashion. Oh, please, don’t take photographs, I’m not that stylish.” He struck a pose and did another turn, only to come face to face with Father.

“Oh. Um. Hello Father. I wasn’t, um, I was just uh…”

Father raised a single eyebrow and Manish started to back up out of the room. “It’s just that, I wasn’t…”

“Weren’t what, Manish? Use your words.” Father replied, following Manish's slowly retreating form.

“I mean, I was just uh, I was, um…”

“Oh, I didn’t realize ‘um’ was a word now.”

“It’s not…sorry,” Manish mumbled as he continued to walk backwards.

“And now you’re apologizing! Tell me, son, what exactly is it you’re apologizing for?”

“Um…”

“Is it for wearing your mother’s clothing? For being incapable of talking? Apologizing?”

“...yes?”

“Was that a question? Or an answer?” Father grew closer to Manish and reached out to grab the boa.

Manish could only watch his younger self. He knew what was going to happen and knew that he couldn’t stop it. He wrapped his arms around himself and watched as teenaged him continued to back up out of Father's reach until he stepped on the end of the purple feather boa. Teenaged Manish tripped, caught on the boa, and stumbled backwards, right down the staircase.

It was interesting getting to watch it from an outsider's perspective now. Manish remembered that he wasn’t scared of falling. Even as he saw himself rolling down the stairs and Father yelling, Manish remembered that his only thought was that he had managed to escape getting scolded.

Manish watched as Father chased after his prone form that was crying at the bottom of the stairs, arm very clearly broken. He felt a phantom pain the arm but shrugged it off. Even if it did hurt, he remembered the weeks after as some of the best of his life. Mother and Father were both around, doting on him, staying with him. Father didn’t even say anything about Manish choosing a bright purple cast.

Present Manish knelt down at the top of the staircase and grabbed a purple feather that fell off of the boa. As with the other two items, the feather turned to purple liquid and made its way to Dwayne. He took a deep breath and turned towards the final color.