Bathed in green

It was a slow evening, everything seemed to ache with expectancy never to be realised. Even the growth of the plants seemed oddly on pause.

I was bored, truly bored.

I thumbed through old records in search of musical inspiration to fill my evening.

An evening of uneventfulness seemed to stretch out languidly in front of me.

But this quiet dull evening was not to be.

As I sat peacefully in my favourite chair, my window exploded into green light.

It was blinding. A green mass of neon green, bathing the whole room.

I sat frozen to the spot. In shock, more than fear: the light had appeared so suddenly.

“I’ll have to ask you to come out now!” Boomed a faceless male voice through the light.

I remained frozen to the chair.

“Come out!” The voice boomed again.

“Who are you?” I stuttered.

“Never mind who I am. Come out!”

I searched my memory banks for a way to stall this faceless man further. Fear was now creeping in.

“You are trespassing.” I wavered.

“Trespass means nothing to me!” Exclaimed the voice. “Come out!”

The light was still blinding. Reluctantly, I stood up.

“Now come out!” Ordered the voice.

I edged nervously away from the chair and towards the door. Once my hand settled on the handle of the front door my whole weight rested on it. Pausing in some vain hope that the door itself would save me from this situation.

“Come out!” He shouted again.

I slowly turned the handle, opened the door and stepped out into blinding green.

I shut my eyes. Partly because of the brightness, partly because I expected the worst.

Behind my eyelids I felt the light ease. I was still alive. I opened my eyes again.

Haloed in slightly less harsh neon green was a man dressed all in red, with a scar across his face.

“I have come to ask you to join us.” He said, more levelly.

“Join you?” I said confused. “Join you in what?”

“Exploring other planets.” He said: “The time has come to leave this place.”

“But my home…” I stammered.

“You can always return.”

“I don’t know you.” I said to him.

“You will get to know me on our travels.” He said: “I have been watching you for a long time, you are ripe for an adventure.”

I looked behind me at my green bathed home. Until just then the dullest place I knew and something shifted in me. Finally, after some thought, I nodded.

“An adventure it is.” I said, still slightly uncertain, but now keen to leave the chair, the records and the home behind.

A year on and I am still exploring the galaxies with Sid. I have seen Red Dwarfs, Black Holes and distant moons and I am still not ready to come back to sitting bored in the house I fought to own with you.

Before you left, I thought you were everything I could expect of the world. I thought I would never get over you.

But now I’m glad you left, because we would never have had such an adventure together. You were too stayed, too settled, too home oriented. Whereas Sid has quite literally shown me things that are out of this world.

I wish you well down there on the third rock from the Sun, but for now I will stay up here, exploring the cosmos. Seeing a world beyond chairs, beyond record collections, beyond mortgages.

And if I should come back, I will not be the same woman you knew. I will be brand new. Glowing in green afterglow.