Purgatory

The world greyed. I didn't know it could do that. Even the "color-blind" saw some colors, saw everything in blues or greens. I'd never heard of a world without any color at all, but here was one and I was in it as black and white as Bogart.

People dulled. Crowded streets held no vitality. Walking in Millennium Park, I shouldered through a hundred people like they were laundry. None of them pushed back. None of them even looked. I stood over a reading woman for ten minutes, and not once did she ask me to stop blocking her sun.

No hunger, no thirst; it all tasted like cardboard anyway. I went three days without eating and felt sick when I finally did. Liquor still worked, but only just, and after 12 shots of bourbon failed to pass me out I got tired of buying.

So this was being dead. I could've done with a little more heaven or a little more hell.