The Anomaly's Enigma

I’m still tired when Frank wakes me up sometime around noon. Apparently sleeping in all day isn’t a smart thing to do while I’ve got a few pages due. I try to protest waking up, but I do so anyway, because Frank’s very convincing. I’m certain that he sold his soul for that pair of puppy dog eyes. God I hate how good he is at getting me to do things. I’d probably let Frank steal my wallet if he said please and thank you. Now granted he doesn’t need to ask, he’s a good pickpocket. I know because sometimes he steals my phone just to piss me off.

“Nah, don’t worry about lunch, I’ll make it,” Frank says, when I try to offer. Probably a good idea, I’m way behind on my work.

About twenty minutes later, Frank hands me a plate with a poorly made grilled cheese and sits down across from me.

“So how many letters have you got, and have you kept all of them?” Frank asks, delving right into the conversation.

“Um, I’ve gotten, to the best of my knowledge, six, though I could have missed one. They have all come over the course of about a month. I didn’t notice any real correlation between them until the third, but I kept all of them.”

“Could you get them for me?” Frank asks.

“Yeah, hold on,” I say, and stand up to go find the folder I put them in on the living room table. I put them all in a folder separate from the usual stuff, and, looking back on it, I see now that I shouldn’t have pawed them, because if there had been any fingerprints, I’ve totally botched them, but it’s too late to change that now. I grab the folder that they’re all in, and take it over to where Frank is sitting.

I set it down in front of him and Frank looks at me, silently asking permission to look through them. I nod and Frank takes out the letters, and starts looking through them. The room becomes quiet as Frank looks at them, and I watch him patiently, hoping that he might finally believe me.

“How were these addressed?” Frank asks.

“They’re all one piece of paper, just look on the back,” I say. The message is written on the paper, which has been folded into the shape of an envelope and was then taped off. On each there’s only three words, other than the address, and those words are ‘Not over yet.’ The words look like they were typed, curiously, with a type writer. Both the address and the message.

All six are different colors from the rest, two different shades of blue, two different shades of purple, one pink, and one golden yellow color. I feel like the gold one has some sort of significance over the others because it’s a more metallic color, but maybe the person who wrote them was just stealing from his daughter’s arts and crafts supplies. I don’t know, I just know that the gold one kind of sticks out.

“Okay so, six different colors,” Frank says, “do you happen to remember what order they came in?”

I frown and look at them all splayed out in front of Frank, trying to remember.

“I don’t know, I think so. Why?”

“Just curious,” Frank says, “maybe they’ll show some sort of meaning if you put them in order.”

“But they’re all the same,” I say.

“No,” Frank says, “they’re different colors.”

“Does the color of the message hold any significance?” I ask, because I’ve just been viewing them as pieces of paper. I figured whoever sent them just liked the colors, but maybe the gold one is different. I don’t know really, I’m not good at puzzle solving. Frank’s pretty good at it, he’s a menace to watch National Treasure with. He’s good at solving the clues and blurts out the answers before Nicholas Cage does.

“Just, try to put them in order for me please,” Frank asks.

I shrug and then look over them. I’m positive that the first one I got was the lighter purple, so I put that one closest to me, and then sort out the rest of them the way I think they were sent. In order, I spread them out vertically in front of Frank with the light purple first, the dark blue second, the dark purple third, the pink fourth, the gold fifth and the light blue last.

“Now, are you sure this is correct?” Frank asks.

“Um, not really,” I admit, “I can tell you for sure that the first and last are right, but the four in the middle might be wrong.”

“Hmm,” Frank says, “hold on just a second.”

I watch Frank as he stands up and goes over to the counter. He shuffles through a drawer for a second before coming back with a pad of paper and a pencil.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

“You’ve caught my interest,” Frank says, “I like a good puzzle, and there’s something really off about the fact that their all different colors.”

“What do you mean?”

Frank sighs, “Well, they’re all the same. All completely the same. Same size of paper, same font on the paper, which is clearly meant to look like it’s been written on a typewriter, but you can tell from the way that it’s pressed so precisely into the page that it was printed from a computer. Then there’s the placement of the message and the address. They’re all aligned on the same pat of the page, right in the middle with the address being on the exact opposite side of the page, but the same formatting. For all intense and purposes, each one is identical. So why are they different colors?”

“Because making them different colors means that they’re easier to distinguish? Or to put in the order to which they arrived?”

“You’re thinking about it like the colors weren’t precognitive, but I think they were. I think they definitely were. I think that there’s a reason you have six different colors, and there’s another reason why they came in the order they did. So, technically, yes. They’re colored to make them easier to distinguish, but not in the way you’re thinking.”

“It’s a puzzle?” I ask.

“Very well may be.”

“Okay, so what’s the message?” I ask him.

Frank starts writing things down in his notebook and says, “That’s what we’re going to figure out now with any luck.”

I nod and look down at what he’s writing. He’s making a table with six rows, and he’s written the simple name of the color on each.

“So we’re sure that the light purple was first, and that the light blue was last?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Okay, well let’s start with the ones that are obvious,” Frank says, “look at this gold one. I don’t think there’s any color that this could be other than gold. It’s gold. That’s just what color it is. Do you agree?’

“Um, I mean, I guess?”

“Great,” Frank says, “Now Gerard, what color would you say this first one is. The light purple.”

“I’d say it’s light purple,” I reply, totally not getting what he’s trying to do.

“No, specifically. Pretend you’re painting the walls in your house and want to get just the right color. Tell me what you’re going to tell the guy at Sherwin-Williams when he asks what paint color you’re looking for.”

“Um, I don’t know. Plum?”

“No, I think there’s a little too much grey in the color for it to be plum. I’m thinking... mauve. Grape. Eggplant. Raisin.”

“Okay,” I say, nodding along even though I have no idea what he’s talking about, “so it’s a greyish lightish purple.”

“Exactly,” Frank says, “now let’s look at the last one. Let’s look at this bright blue. What do you think that color is?”

“I don’t know, there’s a lot of shades of blue. Just spit-balling I’d say azure, sapphire, cerulean, cobalt, aqua, maybe it’s denim or true blue.”

Frank nods and writes down all the blues I just mentioned. I look at his pad to see that he wrote down all the different shades of purple we had as well. He’s seriously lost me, but I’ll go with it for now while it looks like I might be able to convince him.

“Right so next, we’ll go in order with the ones we’re not sure of the order with. We still don’t know if the gold is in the right spot, but I’m pretty sure we have the right word for that color. It’s gold. Plain and simple. So next in your order we have the dark blue.”

“I’d say it’s navy blue,” I say.

“You know what, I was going to say the exact same thing. It doesn’t seem to me like that can be anything but navy blue,” Frank looks energetic that we agreed on the blue, and moves on to the next one. He comes to the decision that it’s either indigo or violet. To be honest, I work with colors all day, and I don’t know the difference between half of these.

“This last one we have is pink. I’m thinking fuchsia, or jam, or rose. Red-violet possibly.”

“Hot pink?” I suggest.

“It’s too mellow to be hot pink,” Frank says, “it’s more mundane than that, but it’s still bright.”

“It’s a little like the plum color,” I point out.

“True,” Frank says. “Give me a second, I’m going to get my laptop.”

“Why?” I ask him.

“I’m going to google specific colors to see if we can get a match.”

I just shrug and watch him grab his computer from where he left it in the living room. I finish eating my food and then push the plate away. I’m too caught up in Frank’s little game to keep drawing though so I wait for him to come back.

After Frank logs on he places the computer between the two of us so that I can see the screen. I watch him quickly type ‘different shades of purple,’ and hope to god that something in his head knows what it’s doing. I don’t understand this in the slightest.

Frank grabs the paper and holds it up to a swatch of colors on an interior design website.

“Based on this, I think we can rule out mauve and grape,” Frank says crossing off the colors on his list. “That leaves us with plum, eggplant, and raisin.”

“Maybe this guy has a lot of passion for fruit?” I ask.

“Be serious here, Gerard,” Frank says. I hadn’t realized I wasn’t being serious, but I look down and nod when he says that. Frank’s really into this whole ‘find the right word for the color’ game. I’m just lost.

“Now let’s look at the last color we have,” Frank says, “to me, true blue, azure, and brandeis are all the exact same color, and they match this letter.”

“They are the same color,” I groan, “why is there three different names for the same fucking color? Why can’t people just call it blue?”

“I don’t know,” Frank shrugs, “but they all look the same to me.”

A few minutes later, we come to the conclusion that the color we think is navy blue is definitely navy blue, because it can’t be anything else. The dark purple Frank decides is indigo, and the pink one we agree is either fuchsia or magenta. We realize that different websites all have different ideas for what some colors are and what they aren’t. On one website, the color that claims to be fuchsia looks nothing like the fuchsia of another site.

“Give me just a minute,” Frank says and he looks down at his notebook for a long time. It’s way more than a minute. I watch him, questioning whether it would be a good idea to say something or ask him what he’s doing, but I decide not to. He looks deep in concentration.

After about ten minutes of me just sitting there looking and waiting for Frank, I see him have some sort of small epiphany. I look at him curiously to see what it is that he’s discovered.

“Wait a minute,” Frank says slowly and then looks at the letters which are still spread out in front of him. They’re not very straight or uniform, having been bumped while we were looking at them, but Frank grabs the gold one, and switches it with the pink. I watch him, wondering what it is that Frank’s got rattling around in his head. What purpose does switching the two colors serve?

“Gerard,” Frank says, and he looks up from his notebook, looking a little paler than he’d looked a few minutes ago.

“Yeah?”

Frank frowns, “well, what I’m doing is taking the first letter of each color and seeing what they spell out. So I’m looking for a six letter word.”

“Okay?”

“Well I’m fairly sure that the second letter is N. The third letter is I. The fourth or fifth is G. The last letter is A for azure.”

“N for navy blue, I for indigo, and G for gold?”

“Correct,” Frank nods, “Well, when I take a wild guess, I think that the gold and the pink were switched. I believe you accidentally switched them, so when we change them back, this makes the G the fourth letter, and the pink was the fifth letter.”

I nod slowly, because I understand the words he’s saying individually, but as a whole, his sentences don’t make any sense. I’m completely lost.

“Are you still with me?” Frank asks.

“I think I might be?” I say, though that’s somewhat of a lie.

Frank sighs and then looks worriedly at me, continuing on, “well, I took a shot in the dark here, because I don’t know if this first color is supposed to be a P, E, or R. Knowing that the second letter is an N, effectively tells us that we can cancel out the letter R. This means that our word either has a silent P or the word starts with EN.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, the most likely option is EN. There’s more words that start with EN than there are that start with PN.”

“Just give me the whole word, Frank, I’m not good at crossword puzzles,” I tell him.

Frank nods and then turns his notebook around for me to look at what he’s written there. He’s scribbled over the entire page, and circled what he believes to be the letters we’re looking for.

I look down at the colors he’s decided the letters are. Eggplant, navy blue, indigo, gold, magenta, and azure.

All together, and in order, Frank’s spelled out the word ‘ENIGMA.’

“Gerard,” Frank says, “I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

I shake my head, because the look on Frank’s face is what I’ve been waiting for, but it’s not the one I want to actually see. Frank looks terrified. He never looks scared. He’s the brave one, he’s the one who protects me from the monsters in horror movies. He’s supposed to be the guy who doesn’t get afraid. I haven’t seen Frank genuinely scared in four years.

“I don’t think that’s a coincidence either,” I say.

Frank takes a long breath and says finally, “Gerard, whoever this is that’s sending you these letters, these threats, they know who I am. Someone out there is telling us that they know who The Enigma is.”