After a recent car accident, I realised that I could taste colours. And not just any colour, but a new one.

I first came aware when my father walked me inside the home. With the bandage around my eyes I couldn’t see anything. The doctor said I would eventually gain my sight back, but the hearing in my left ear was gone for good.

Being a bit clumsy I face planted the door frame. That’s when I discovered my new talent. A myriad of scents covered my lips. The wood, a rose colour behind my eyes. Old, faint but stable. The white paint, smooth and silky, and my father’s scent, musky and faintly blue. The black of the oil from the car that he had changed. It was all there.

It was amazing how each scent exploded in my mind like a kaleidoscope of fireworks.

So, I started tasting everything. That’s when I found the new colour, ∅.

I found it at the bottom of the stairs. Just before the greenish, brown of dirt from outside. It hit my lips and my mind went blank. Not like when you close your eyes and still see the light through your lids. It tasted of nothingness.

It tasted cold, empty. Like nothing had ever been there and would never be there. I found it in a few other places too. At the back of my wardrobe. At the left side of my bed. Each time I tasted it a sense of dread filled my soul.

Over the course of the week, the colour grew. I tried telling my dad what I had glimpsed but he just shrugged and said that it was to be expected from my head injury.

As I was so scared, I kept tasting the colour, waiting to see where my dread came from. That’s when it found me. Something old and evil.

My tongue went numb. No longer able to taste any colours but the ∅. Every waking minute that thing grew stronger. Calling out of me. Letting me know that it was coming and when it did, the world would open to it. Something that had been shut off for eons.

Last night, I lay awake until dawn. My lips coated with the flavour ∅. The water at my bed tasted of loneliness. My bed sheets, of gripping dread.

My breakfast was thick. Tasteless. The colour of my childhood vanished in the presence of ∅.

I couldn’t fight the terror anymore. Knowing it was coming. There was only one thing to do. I waited until my dad arrived back from work until I cut off my tongue with a pair of shears. No one understands why I did it. But I do.

Without my tongue.

Without taste.

Without ∅.