On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 180, of 240 so far.

Accessibility Settings

The sun is in my eyes, but the tinted lenses help with that. The world is so bright. It’s beautiful, and it’s enticing, but it can be a little too much at times too.

I access the options menu of my phone. and navigate the interface from memory, without conscious effort. I reach the subsection I need, and its name appears in boldface.

Accessibility Settings.

The brightness slider’s position varies from moment to moment, but remains in the topmost quarter. I decrease the value, and the world fades towards darkness. My eyes are relieved, but it’s not practical for walking around safely. Too easy to trip over something that blends into the background. I increase the brightness again.

I back out of the brightness section and instead opt for a more decisive intervention. The single button control has a yin-yang quality, and I activate it with anticipation.

Dark Mode: On Until Sunrise, the status message says.

The world inverts in a dramatic cross-fade, rendering previously searing colours in substitutes of soft neon. People still look the same, but are now cast in soft shadows, like the lighting in a bar, and the sky above me is that of night, rather than day. Vehicles passing by in the road have their lights on, and I see street lamps where there were none a moment before.

The transformation is wholly virtual, and entirely personal to me. It remains late morning, on a beautiful sunny day, but to my eyes and my mind, it’s past twilight.

I continue walking, appreciating how white clothes have become black, and primary colours have taken on cleverly subdued yet vivid shades. The few clouds above are a deep grey against midnight blue, and the scene is much more restful.

The sounds remain, though. A thousand voices, and countless vehicle engines, overlaid with the usual urban morass of shopfront music, emergency sirens, laughing and screaming children, and all the rest of it.

Noise Filter: On.

It all drops away. Rumbles and roars and sonic pollution, all gone. I smile as I realise that I can hear birdsong — I couldn’t a moment ago — and the sound of the wind in the trees of the park just across the way. I wonder if it’s real or simulated, and then I realise that it doesn’t matter.

Someone brushes past me, and I can see their mouth moving but I don’t hear any words. It takes a second or two for me to realise that it’s my own fault. I return to the settings.

Voice Transparency: On.

The words return to the world, all around me, but less pronounced than they originally were. Those who move past me are temporarily louder and more focused, but most of the sound is deliberately indistinct; a pleasant background drone rather than an annoyance.

The muffled neon twilight noon is like a cocoon for the senses as I continue, moving away from the park and towards the city centre. I soon start to see billboards, and sticker-emblazoned windows, and animated displays on bus-stop shelters. They’re silent, but they’re gaudy, and some of them move and flash. Distracting and crass.

Suppress Advertising: On.

They all become greenery. Photographs and paintings and videos, all of lush foliage. I smile as I realise that all of the logos on other people’s clothing and bags have similarly been replaced with natural motifs. Much better. I walk on.

Time passes, and the throng of the city begins to wear on me. So much motion and urgency and intent. I start to feel a familiar buzzing in the back of my skull, which I know will soon develop into a headache. Overstimulation. I notice the first mild stirrings of anxiety. But I have coping strategies.

Increase Contrast: On.

Edges are emboldened, giving the world a strange, hybrid sort of hand-drawn look. Street markings are exceptionally clear, text is made of heavier strokes, and colours have shifted to provide stark boundaries between foreground and background. I think of this as the preparatory phase, where everything becomes marked clearly. And then the final step.

Simplify: On.

All textured content vanishes, reducing buildings to grey monoliths, and vehicles to flat-shaded geometries. People are now only blank mannequins, stylised but generic, and the omnipresent murmur of their conversation becomes a babble of nonsense syllables, unintelligible and rhythmic. When I glance directly at someone, a rudimentary facial expression appears, from a limited set, and then vanishes again.

I feel my tightening chest begin to loosen, and my shoulders drop. My lungs can draw a full breath once more, and I sense that my pulse has slowed.

The vista before me, featureless and non-threatening, grey upon black, and populated by so many purposeful but faceless whispering forms, is like the first sketch of a painting, or of a modelled scene not yet rendered. Quiet and calm, wordless and dulled and reduced.

I can deal with the world on these terms.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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