Green Is My Love?

I never told anyone why I quit college halfway through my sophomore year.

I certainly didn’t tell Elias, although I often wondered if he guessed why I did it. For nine months, my roommate and I had been having a secret sexual relationship. It started out as merely uncomplicated late-night blowjobs— an 'I’ll do you if you do me' kind of deal. It took a long time before I realized how obsessed I was with him. And when it finally dawned on me that I was falling in love, I panicked. I was entirely too insecure to deal with such feelings.

I had thought of our naked games in the dark as being “experimentation.” I told myself I just hadn’t met the “right girl” yet but, as soon as I did, I would “settle down.” All the while, I had no interest in dating anyone. Increasingly, it was my ‘man time’ with Elias that I lived for.

On the rare occasions when I did hook up with some coed, usually one from my psych class, I always got my rocks off, so it was easy to kid myself into believing it was only women that I wanted. But in my most private moments? It was actually hot guys (especially Elias) who really set my imagination on fire.

My denial about my bisexuality led directly to an inevitable identity crisis. The realization that I was infatuated with Elias— that epiphany challenged everything I thought I knew about myself. And I just bailed on college. I packed my car, started driving west, and I didn’t look back. The trust fund Grandma set up for me before she died will be cranking out good money for at least twenty years. Maybe thirty! I'm frugal! So I had the luxury of being able to ditch… and I took it. I didn’t intend to stop driving until I saw the Pacific Ocean. But then I blew into Saint Louis and my world was upended.

It had been two crazy years since the Incorruptible Club prevented the Extinction Event. My personal childhood idol—Wish Master— sacrificed himself in that horrific metaphysical war. With his dying gasp, he invoked…

“When they need it most, let them all have their wishes come true.”

And just like that, snap! Billions of people received a superpower!

I was one of the billions more, however, who was still waiting on my cosmic inheritance.

After driving the bulk of a dreary day, I was idly looking for a hotel. A dull Missouri drizzle fell from an overcast sky. When the lucid green light appeared overhead, I knew it wasn't a star. And I could tell it wasn’t a helicopter or a plane. I wasn’t exactly certain what it was, but I sensed clearly that it was paranormal!

I was reminded of the Wise Men on their quest to find the baby Jesus. That nativity scene impression was so strong because the pea-green orb appeared to be hovering directly over that specific location. Beryl beams shot down from above, transforming the shabby tavern into an emerald oasis in the dark, dank city.

I thought it could be some big corporation promotional stunt. Then I wondered if some local superhero was up to something. Or God forbid, some supervillain. But then I finally considered the possibility that my own superpower was finally manifesting.

I needed to know: were other people seeing that light? Or was it just me?

I stopped, of course, and entered the pub. I found Donna waiting for me at the bar, looking beyond description. The attraction that I felt for her was supernatural! When she and I locked eyes, transcendent green light erupted from within her, a brilliant halo bursting forth from all her pores! In that opening instant, I fell madly in love with her, before I ever knew her!

She and I were together for almost a year. It was a volatile romance, for real, but she taught me a lot. Donna was also bisexual. Seeing how fiercely she embraced her identity made me rethink how cowardly I was about my own.

When we broke up, it was venomous hell. She cheated on me. I cheated on her. It was childish tit-for-tat pettiness. Definitely not my best behavior.

I left Saint Louis, again headed for California. I was bitter about the breakup, especially because I thought my superpower was a total letdown. It had guided me to Donna? Her? That psycho batshit bitch?? Really?!? What kind of fucked-up wish fulfillment was that?

Most people only milk a single great moment out of their superpower, or one extraordinary day. I knew I should be grateful for all the time I had with Donna. But I had locked myself into a victim’s mentality. I kept thinking…

What the hell was up with that stupid green light?!?

I was driving through Nebraska one evening, thinking exactly that, about how obtuse it all was, when, quite unexpectedly, the very phenomenon I had been cursing happened again! Off in the distance, high in the sky, the light appeared!

This time I thought it looked like a giant green traffic signal. And the message seemed obvious. It was telling me to “GO!” That very instant, I abandoned my quest westward. I would follow the glow south!

I chased the shamrock light for several nights. At the southern border, I was delayed just long enough to secure my passport. The green harbinger didn’t appear to me during my last nights in the United States. But as soon as I was able to legally leave the country, that guiding light returned, shining brighter than ever.

It led me to my destiny.

When I eventually reached a small town in central Mexico, the iguana glow stopped moving, to hang directly above what should have been an unimpressive cantina. The place terrified me, because I knew there was someone green-lit inside there, someone special waiting for me.

I was about to fall in love again.

When I finally saw my sweet senorita for the first time, the resulting peacock array was even more breathtaking than the fireworks I witnessed when I met Donna. Consuela flared with such dazzling emerald pneuma, I was nearly blinded. My Twin Flame blazed the most glorious shade of green!

That night, we began our golden summer. We both knew from the very beginning that the love we were inhabiting was divine.

In our short time together, we never talked about marriage, by unspoken mutual consent. We didn’t need to discuss it. We both knew that no ceremony was needed to assure our devotion.

About two months after we started living together, Consuela went to bed before me one night. I stayed up, drunk and horny, and I did something supremely stupid, leaving open gay websites on my laptop browser when I passed out. That was how Consuela learned I fantasized about men. The next day, she was so gentle in the way she approached me about it. Her casual acceptance helped me to realize on an emotional level what I already intellectually knew: that I was making my bisexuality a way bigger deal than it needed to be.

On Labor Day, Consuela and I were lazing in bed together when we learned about the insidious Incursion from the 16th Elsewhere. For three days, like everybody in Mexico, we hid in terror while the country was under siege. The Purple Marauders were finally defeated, of course, by S.O.L., on Quelling Sunday. The Special Operative League sent those plum parasites careening back to the periwinkle where they were spawned, but that victory had dire consequences, ultimately causing the preternatural outbreak of the purple plague.

Consuela and I did what everyone else did at first. We stayed inside. We wore our striped black-and-honey-yellow masks. But mi novia hermosa refused to get the vaccine once it became available. That was the only fight she and I ever had, and it was a bad one.

As for me, I received the amaranth antiserum at the consulate in Mexico City the same week that it became available. Barely a month later, I was devastated when Consuela contracted the deadly contagion. Then, for the next nineteen heartbreaking days, the extradimensional flux gradually ate her up. Her feet went first, then her ears. When her left leg disintegrated in a magenta burst all the way up to her hip, we both knew she had very little time left.

Since there would be no need for a burial plot, she made me swear that on the next Dia de las Muertos, I would go to the graves of her grandparents to remember her there. “This is important, Nicky. You don’t need to go every year, but you must visit their grave this year, on the Day of the Dead. Promise me!”

I promised.

A week later, right before my eyes, her entire body shattered into a wild cinder-gush of sparkly grape glimmers.

After she vanished, leaving behind no trace, I went a little berserk for a while. I grieved. I raged. I drank myself into a puking oblivion. Within days, I knew I couldn’t accept her death. I wouldn’t accept it! After only three months together, she was gone? Just... ...gone!?! That was entirely too unjust to tolerate!

My swan song would be my protest.

I tried calling Elias, subconsciously knowing that he was the only person who could talk me off my crumbling ledge. But Elias had changed his cellphone number. I couldn’t track him down.

I was committed to honoring my oath to Consuela, on the Day of the Dead. After that, however? I planned to stick a gun in my mouth and blow my fucking brains out!

Hey! I never vowed to go on living without her!

Exactly as I did promise, I arrived at her abuelos’ final resting place on November 1st, my ‘Suicide Day.’ I plopped down on her grandfather’s grave, sitting between two plush beds of marigolds.

I started crying, weeping harder and harder as I relived those ghastly memories when purple pulses erased mi amor.

The gun in my lap felt heavy and dangerous, even though it was only loaded with one bullet. I was almost ready to take that single shot when the miracle occurred.

A green flash barged up out of the grave— animating radiation rising from the dead past. And the flowerbeds came alive! The blossoms wiggled, the leaves reached, the stems stretched, popping out of the dirt, supported by tangles of roots that looked like stick-figure legs. I smiled for the first time since Consuela disappeared.

The marigolds began to dance!

I giggled like a starstruck schoolgirl, only half-conscious of flinging the pistol away.

As the peppy perennials rustled and frolicked around me in hopping conga line circles, I was shocked that Consuela’s superpower had manifested after her death! I didn’t know that was possible! But I understood in a revelatory flash that Consuela’s deepest desire had been for me to release my grief and go on living beyond her. On some subconscious level, she must have known she’d die young.

The joyous cavorting of the marigolds made my emancipation possible. I let go of all my pain and my anger. And flushing away all that dark energy associated with Consuela's untimely death, I also consciously decided to release the last remnants of my insecurities. I used that heartwarming paranormal waltz to embrace my true identity. By the time the gold blossoms finished their finale and dropped over immobile again, I felt completely relieved.

I felt cleansed.

“Hola,” Miquel said airily, right after I had just dried my tears.

In the synchronistic moment that followed, I saw every past partner of mine linked in an energetic chain, from Elias on through to this fated meeting. Each and every connection helped to enable the next. My green light had never been a destination. There was no ending to it. It would always lead me forward to another great love.

“Hola,” I said confidently, as I stood up and turned around.

Consuela’s brother had the most beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen.

⚡___________💚___________⚡

This story ☝ is the second part of a series of stories all set in the same superpowered universe. Each of these tales stands alone, with different characters in each, and can be read in any order.

Here's part one! 👇

This is part three of this series. 👇

This next piece provides more information about how this entire reality became empowered. ⚡👇

If you enjoyed this chapter of the 'When They Need It Most' LIKE and SUBSCRIBE for more forthcoming chapters in 2022.

Thank you kindly for your support!

_____________Bolt ⚡