Hi stranger,

When you are hearing this voicemail, I have already left the world.

I am going to tell you a story of my life, a life without any color.

It’s easy for me to do so because I have always been a bystander to my own life.

In other words, I have never participated in my life until the very end.

I was born on July 17th , 2018. My mum worked odd jobs at different stores and factories. That was the time of global economic depression and life was especially hard for a not well-educated woman with a 2-year-old child. I have very little memory of my father, who left us when I was 13 months old.

My mum and I lived in the underground city of Chongqing, China. People like us are called “rats” for we can only afford the rent here and we go up to the ground searching for food and job to survive. The underground city was at first made up of several first air raid shelters left in the Civil War, but with the higher unemployment rate and the rampant inflation, “rat” group got larger and gradually developed into this giant population of nearly 30 million. More and more shelters are dug as they get through each other as a whole. We have our entire city system with water and air from those used by the upper city, food and clothes they abandoned. To put it in another way, we are rubbish recycling bin with intelligence. The city is mainly in the color of grey for the concrete or steel walls everywhere and people’s shabby clothes that long lost its original color, bleached into the shade of grey.

I first knew I was a “rat” when I was working for a bicycle-repair shop at the age of 7. A woman in an exaggerated purple feathered hat and pink suit passed me and looked at me with disgust. She then turned to the man by her side who was in a bright blue leather wind coat and said in a voice just loud enough for me to hear, “Our city is ruined by those rats. Why don’t they disappear? It makes me sick whenever I see them.”

I stood there quietly as the word buzzed in my brain. The bright rainbow-like colors on their clothes made me dizzy as I felt the view blurred by tears. I looked at my grey shirt with several patch on it and asked god for the first time why I didn’t have the color as they did, why I was born a rat that people disgust.

On an afternoon a week later, mum bought two steamed buns with meat stuffing. I was so happy because it was not normal for us to eat meat. I could still remember the water vapour in the plastic bag and the wonderful smell when I sniffed it. But while I was eating she began to hit me. She cried as well, saying that no man would want her if she carried me with her. I didn’t say a word and finished my meat bun. She left that afternoon, prepared all the possible things I would need in the future and then walked down a path in the sunset. I didn’t know whether she turned her head to look for me because I ran away as far as I could when she was about to say goodbye. At that sunset, everything got bleached and I couldn’t see any color other than white, the absolute white in the snow storm that made you blind.

I hate to see and remember the scene of her receding figure that would hurt me even when I told myself to forget her like how she forgot me. But I couldn’t forget her smell as I silently crawled to her side on the quilt on the floor, her angry shout at the sunset to urge me go home and have dinner, my photo that was always in her wallet which I secretly put in for her to remember me when I was 5, her tired eyes and messy hair, her selfish hands that searched my clothes for every penny I earned, her perfunctory hug, and her cracked lips. I hate her with all my heart. I love her with all my heart.

I went back to my home alone later that night, and it really seemed to be rat hole, dirty and inferior. So I left and climbed a hill where I could see the whole city ablaze with light in the distance. But there were no stars in the sky. In starless night, the light of the city was an illusion when you stretched out your arms as far as possible but couldn’t grasp anything. At that moment I felt forgotten, forgotten by mum and dad, forgotten by the world, forgotten by the god. I wished I could disappear as that pink suit woman said, so that the world would get a bit cleaner.

I gradually grew up, avoid thinking but busy working for survival like a rat. I joined a teenage gangster and paid several visits to detention house. Our business included from bars to drugs, bullying to protection fee. There are no other ways, you either bully others or get bullied by others. I knew this from very early age that people desire only two things from others, pleasure and utility. The so-called love is about them as well and it’s funny how people struggle for them all their life. In this way god is rather fair for we are all tools and robots in the giant machine called society. And no matter how well people hide their true selves, you know under the lies and masks, there are darkness that everyone has. Rainbow is a lie. Black is the truth.

So when I heard a mum told her son that “Don’t be like him when you grow up.” as I was stealing something from the shop, I looked at that boy clean and well-dressed and I smiled with contempt. If I were him, I would be a god damn angel as well. My life is a mixture of all the colors, which turns out to be black. His life is a mixture of all shades of light, which turns out to be white. That is our difference. We are not born black or born white. We are simply two palettes.

Actually I used to have a guardian and that was my grandma who came from the countryside when she received mum’s letter of her leaving. She used to sang night songs by my side and made delicious pancakes for me. The deepest impression about her was that she had a floral handkerchief which always hid candies for me. She always held me tight as I felt warm and safe in that little shelter. Every day was of something to expect. In that short time, I felt as if I grew up like a normal child, being loved and cared. When I reflect on my entire life, I feel that was the firework which enlightened my starless sky but faded away in a short time that I can only linger the warmth again and again until I get numb and feel nothing at all.

She died of lung cancer when I was 12 due to the inadequate sanitation and polluted air in the underground city. Many people around me died because of the same reason. They all didn’t have stable job thus lack health insurance to pay for the heavy budget of medical treatment. There were people who protested for so-called human rights, but those at the top of the pyramid always win and silence those at the bottom with power and violence. Justice only works in a very short range. For us “rats”, no one would ever care about our life or death. Even for us, we are simply existing, surviving, breathing, but not living.

After grandma’s death, I wrapped myself up with a hard shell so that I was too numb to feel any pain. I used to be scared of darkness, but now I loved it for I could hide myself in the dark and that made me feel safe. I hate happiness and warmth because they are so temporary that I am afraid to lose them at any times. We chased after light, warmth and that tiny possibility to be loved, wishing that someone would come out and lighten our life like what happened in those movies and novels. But in reality no one would be there. Hope is a dangerous thing for it exacerbates the pain. Sometimes I feel that I f*ckin enjoy the sorrow of my own tragedy. Pain and sorrow stay with me forever, and that makes me feel not lonely, knowing I won’t lose anything. I found that I have always been a bystander to those happening in my life, like someone watching a movie with indifference, sometimes a bit moved by happiness and sorrow, but later returns as an audience whose life has nothing to do with the character’s. What’s more, it’s a black-and-white film to me, not a colorful one.

The last day I went to school the teacher was talking about Nicomachean Ethics by

Aristotle, weird that I still remember the strange long name. The thin woman with a high ponytail read it out loud in a high squeaky voice “bad man has nothing lovable in them that they have no feeling of love either to themselves or to others” and she then repeated the core values of socialism again with tremendous pride which you could see it printed in giant bold red like blood in nearly every road in this country: Prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, law, patriotism, dedication, integrity, friendship.

From then, I stopped going to school.

Teenage years gradually ended as adult life arrived.

At the age of 20 I killed a man when driving while intoxicated. I heard a loud bang and got off the car. A man was lying on the ground with blood all over his body under the pale moonlight. I walked away after a minute , murmuring “I don’t know it’s that easy to do so.” I felt strange that I didn’t feel guilty or sorry at that time. All I saw was a biological structure not working physically but not a life with passion and love. I have no compassion or empathy at all. And that scared me when red lost its meaning.

Social and moral standard of evil and good has long been a joke to me. I am now totally a bad person. “Bad man is laden with repentance.” This line is also from that damn Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. But I don’t feel regret at all. If you ask me whether I have ever wished that I were a good man, the answer is yes. I wish to live a life of that little boy whose mum told him “Don’t be like him when you grow up.” but I will never have the chance to. I don’t envy him. I just want to know what it feels to be a good man since I already know what it feels to be bad.

Life gets faster as you grow older. For my entire life, I never seek for any long-term purpose or deeper meaning because I don’t believe them the same way I don’t believe happiness and warmth. All I want is short-term satisfaction for myself, whether it’s sex or money or drug. In those moments, I feel eternal. As you can guess, I did many things illegal in order to do that. I experienced ups and downs of life, how everyone came to me and praised me when I was on the top and abandoned me when I was at the bottom. I have no family for I don’t believe I have the ability to love and be loved, and I never trust light and warmth.

And this life is now getting to an end and the road has been dark, alone and cold. But I don’t regret it. I lived in a hut on the cliff in Ireland in my age. It’s the corner of the world and I was left alone between heaven and earth.

You may now expect I tell you that a lovely little girl gave me a bunch of flowers and that aroused the kindness at the end of the bad man’s life. But no, that’s not who I am and that’s not what happens in reality.

What did happen was that as I laid dying on the deck chair, I suddenly recalled a memory when I was not even 2 years old. At that time, father hadn’t left me and mum hugged me with both arms. They smiled at me and whispered something I didn’t understand. I felt the sun shone warmly on my face and there were birds singing.

 It hurt me so much.

 It warmed me so much.

At the end of my life, I finally engaged in it, not as a bystander or an audience anymore.

And then I saw the rainbow across the cliff.

So my story has a color finally.