The sun didn’t come up today. Morning had broken, but the sun was not there. I drove to work and noticed only black cars, white cars and those coloured cars which are almost colours, but aren’t really. Without the sun my day had no colour. Nothing bright. The trees were dull gray, the ground they grew from black. Their leaves looking like it was covered with dust, drowning out the colour, turning the leaves into the colour of the inside of a disused furnace. The road was blacker than usual, the lines not white, but gray, stretching off into the smoggy distance.

I got to the round-about where I was expecting the colour of Chinese New Year decorations to liven up my bland day, but there wasn’t. Instead, on the off-white grass grew light gray flowers and from the black wires suspended above hung black lanterns. The dome of the mosque was dull, matte gray. Behind it I could see the cloudless sky, but even that was a pale light black.

I drove past the golf course, drab and life less, silt drifting on the golf course lake, making it obvious that beneath the dark black surface there was no light, there was no life. Hope had drowned there before. The parking garage looked like it always does, different shades of gray, devoid of light and dusty. Rubbish lay about, shades of black and white. At the staff entrance plumes of gray smoke drifted slowly upwards, smokers, chefs and stewards in their black and white uniforms, engineering in their black overalls, dragging from their cigarettes in equal slow motion, voices muffled and inaudible, white teeth behind gray lips which could have been smiling. I didn’t notice.

My black shoes made empty sounds on the dull surface of the gray tiles of the dimly lit corridor, neon lights hanging overhead, emitting bright gray rays, accentuating the grayness of the walls. My office had turned monochrome too, like bad reception on the public channel. White noise drowning out laughter and morning greetings, every sound recorded on a cassette tape being played too slow. My gray cup of coffee with the three table spoons of white sugar tasted bland and bitter.

I walked past the Marina on the way to my morning meeting, the dark gray water of the marina basin, although clear, but clearly lifeless and without fish. The fish had left, went looking for love elsewhere. Rubbish littered the corner where rubbish usually litters the corner; chips wrappers, chocolate bar wrappers, empty drinks bottles and unidentified pieces of junk floating about in a black and white collage. The black rocks glimmering in the absence of the sun which wasn’t burning down on my light gray head.

The coconut trees lining the boardwalk, hunched over with their shoulders dropped, their dull leaves drooping, the coconuts hanging in a way tears hang on the eyelids of the sad, waiting to accumulate enough momentum to roll down cheeks. The water of the swimming pool, slowly dripping from one level to another, molasses running down the side of gray waffle.

The morning meeting had many people talking deep and slow, unhappy voices emitting white noise. Moments laps and the tape speeds up, but the colour still devoid the scene. The lobby, full of people, shades of black on the floor, shades of white on the pillars, plants and water dull, slow and gray.

I was busy today, my colourless day – the work kept my mind on work, the absence of the sun didn’t seem to bother me so much when work occupied my mind. The absence of colour didn’t matter when I typed Word documents and read my emails, black letters on white backgrounds, keyboard with it’s white letters on the black background. The mouse is black, the screen is black, even my mouse pad is dark gray.

Just before I left for home a few rays of sunshine shone on me and briefly colour touched me. But like the glint in the eye of a beautiful girl, temporarily transfixed in the gaze of a young boy at the traffic light while she’s on the bus and he’s on a push bike, all to soon it too was gone. The sun disconnected, the colour went off line.

I drove home in my black car with the gray seats on a dark asphalt road with white markings. I got caught at the traffic light on gray, stopped on black, and crossed when it turned light black. At home I parked in the gray driveway, opened the black gate and stepped onto the white tiles of the living room with it’s gray walls. The stairs were dull and black, my bed a pit of despair.

And as a sunless sunset brought dusk upon my day, the white moon was already announcing the arrival of the black night from the east. At least, at night, everything is supposed to be black and white.