Nightmare Canvas: Green

Everything felt different to her. The room she woke up in today wasn't the same as the one she fell asleep in last night. Everything from the curtains to the carpet was devoid of their original colors and was now pure white. The LEDs that lined the top and bottom of the walls appeared brighter than they actually were and flashed red each time she attempted to open the door. She only made three attempts, but it was on that third attempt that the knob morphed into a blade and left a deep cut on her palm.

With each slight movement, she winced and eventually wrapped her hand in the bottom of her shirt. For a few minutes, she paced back and forth across the room, trying to distract herself from the pain with minor details of the room she missed. At the foot of the bed was a trunk just as white as the rest of the room. Approaching it, she could faintly see the outline of the belts binding it shut. Next to the trunk was an open toy-box filled with plastic bricks, dolls, and stuffed animals. With her uninjured hand, she reached inside and grabbed one of the stuffed animals, frowning at its lack of color.

She gently placed it back into the toy-box and looked back to the door, noticing black letters crawling across the center.

"You are sleeping. Would you like to wake up?"

She squinted at the phrase and as she got closer, what appeared to be small, neon signs appeared beneath the question. One said "yes" in green, cursive letters. The other said "no" in a red, more harsh font. She stared at the neon letters and reached out towards the green "yes". The room immediately went dark and she let out an ear-piercing scream.

When the lights returned, she was no longer in the strange bedroom. This time, she stood in a long, dimly lit hallway. She was hesitant, but with each step she took, a green floor-light illuminated that section of the hallway. Every few steps, she would check the walls for a secret door or vent to escape.

Although she couldn't find an immediate exit, there was still some hope for her. At the end of the hallway was another room with white walls and regular lighting. In the center of the room stood a tall pear tree with white stairs on either side of it. A golden panel nailed to the tree had the words "take one" engraved into it with the Greek letter tau just below it. She was suspicious of it, but climbed the stairs to the top of the tree where a pear was within reach.

With her injured hand, she grabbed a pear from the tree and watched as the color returned to both it and the tree. Upon looking down, she noticed even the soil had regained its color. Hoping maybe everything else would return to their natural colors, she took another pear from the tree and ran down the stairs. The second her foot touched the final stair, the white walls bled a black liquid and pears started falling from the tree in the center of the room. When she checked the panel once more, the word "greed" was now engraved with the Greek letter theta below it.

The tree began to turned black with rot as a rancid smell filled the room. The pears in her hand also rotted, leaking the same black liquid that seeped through the walls. She dropped them to the floor with a splat and screamed as pain overcame her. The cut in her hand repeatedly scabbed up and ripped until she fainted from the pain.

When she came to, she was in a field full of sunflowers, or what should've been sunflowers. The head where the seeds would be was green, as well as the petals of the flower itself. Even the dandelion puffballs she saw floating by were green. As she stood up, she looked down at her injured hand and saw that the current scab wasn't the typical color one would expect. Instead, it was green like everything else.

In a panic, she ran towards the pear tree off in the distance. She was running towards the tree for what felt like half an hour before falling to her knees in the field. No matter how much she ran, the pear tree seemed to get further and further away. In defeat, she closed her eyes and cried softly to herself.

Then there was an unfamiliar beep that caught her attention.

When she looked up, she saw a question written in the air with leaves and the same neon yes or no she saw earlier right beneath it.

"Wake up?"

Just as before, she lifted her hand to the "yes". This time, though, the world didn't go dark. This time, the pear tree appeared directly in front of her with green bark. She stood and took one pear from the tree. After taking a bite of the fruit, the world started spinning for her and eventually went dark. She felt weightless, floating through a void as she shut her eyes and drifted off once more.