The wall was red and green.

Danny's favorite colors.

Red. Ever since childhood, he had loved the color red. He practically wore it every day. It was the color of Mars and fire trucks and juicy watermelon, the color of love and energy and fire. His sneakers were red. His T-shirts were red.

His blood was red.

Green. Phantom's color. Ghosts in general were often associated with green, but especially Phantom. Paired with black and white, it was his aesthetic. His essence. His ectoblasts were green. His eyes were green.

His ectoplasm was green.

Now all he knew was white.

He clung to the memories of the people who supported him: his best friends, his sister, his screaming teenage fans. The only people who missed him.

He had lost count of the days. Had it been weeks or years since he had seen them last? He had no idea.

Back then, his life had been fine. Stressful at times, but fine. There was a rhythm to every day. Wake up, catch ghosts, go to school, catch ghosts, go home, catch ghosts, avoid his parents, catch ghosts, go to bed, catch ghosts. Always catching ghosts.

Things had changed. He no longer caught ghosts; he was the caught ghost. He no longer went to school; he was cruelly used to school the government. He no longer had to avoid his parents; they were the ones avoiding him without a second thought.

He was alone.

He stared at the white ceiling. He was boxed in by white walls and blinded by white light. White, white, white. It was everywhere.

White was supposed to represent purity, peace, holiness. Now it was nothing to him but pain. Evil. Them.

There was a new rhythm to his life. Wake up, stare blankly forward while they poked him and prodded him and recorded his vitals and sometimes beat him senseless, doze off again after they left, and repeat. He soon lost track of how many times he was stabbed by needles, whether to take his blood or inject a drug into his system.

He was a dead, living, broken experiment. He was the one thing that he had been afraid of since the beginning.

At least he didn't have to face his parents anymore. It was bad enough that cold, merciless strangers treated him like less than an animal. It would be so much more painful for his own parents to do so, day after day. Reminding him that he was disgusting, unworthy to exist, a mistake.

Every so often they came in to clean the white surfaces closest to him, the ones that always got stained. Especially the wall he leaned against day after day. To them, everything had to be perfect. Clean. Pristine. White.

They scrubbed at the wall while he sat there motionless, staring into nothing.

The wall was red and green.