Beckoning

It was on a flight from one dull state to another equally dull yet altogether different state that it came to me. I didn't ask for it, I beg you to believe that. Even in the darkest times that came after, I tried to turn from it. Lord help me, Gentle Reader, I tried.

I sat in the 15th row, in the seat marked C. An aisle seat. No view to speak of, save for the back of 14C and the nameless denizens of the AB seats across the aisle. Rows 15 to 12 were the small chunk of humanity that occasionally I glanced over to with disinterest and slight annoyance at any errant shift in position or idle slide past my seat, hips and elbows jostling the semi comfortable position I have wrestled out of seats that don't much care for a person with any bit of girth.

Strangers. All of them. I traveled alone with my limited view and my ears stuffed with headphones to equally limit my hearing.

Isolated in public as all good solo travelers should be.

Which is why I felt so violated when the man next to me grabbed my arm with white knuckled fingers and wide brown eyes speaking in frantic pantomime.

Shaking off his grasp with a sigh of enormous patience, I plucked my earphone from my ear, "Excuse me?"

15D met my irritation with frenetic gesturing towards the rounded rectangle of the window. "The light on the horizon. The green light. Did you see it?"

I lifted the book I had been contentedly reading before this and said, "Afraid not. I was nose deep."

"Well, it's out there," 15D insisted, and he turned away from me, beginning a watch that would last the rest of the flight. The steward brought canned juices and dime sized pretzels, and 15D watched for the light. "Green…" he murmured. The pilot turned on the seatbelt sign as we hit weather over some mountain range, and 15D kept his steadfast vigil. I found myself dozing over my book, a travelogue written by an avid hot air balloonist, and each time the twitch of a leg or the sound of my own snore woke me, I saw 15D still riveted to the clouded sky beyond our craft.

Turning away from the man, as the steward gently indicated it was time for me to return my tray table up, I thought of an old episode of a horror anthology show. I'm sure you know the one. A handsome young soon to be starship captain sees a gremlin on the wing of a plane. A fleeting thought passed through my head that perhaps 15D's watch will be vindicated when the plane landed and the green light would be some Lovecraftian boogedy gnawing on the engine.

But to my relief, the plane landed without a hitch and the last I saw 15D, he was rolling his carry-on off towards his connecting flight, still glancing out the floor to ceiling windows that showed the tarmac beyond. "Green?" I thought I heard him whisper before he disappeared. I shook my head as I joined the throng headed to baggage claim.

After a time, the strange incident faded into the murk of my subconscious, and I settled into the routine of my new home, my new job. I had no family, tend to hold people at a distance, so my days were regimented but simple.

7 am: Wake. Shit, shower and shave. Eat two pieces of toast and a banana. Wash it down with tea --two sugars, a little cream. Put on a clean shirt, clean sweatpants every other day.

8:30 am: Turn on computer and log into work web. Enter long lines of numbers, letters and symbols until lunch.

12:30 pm: Lunch. Usually tuna or chicken salad. I'd order a burger if it was a payday week.

1:30 pm: Back to work. More lines, numbers or symbols. Twice a week, a web meeting for project updates, and the odd special occasion announcement.

5:30 pm: Finish final task. Log out and start contemplating dinner.

7:30 pm: Dinner in front of the tv and whatever show I was currently binge watching most recently it was all 22 season of a police procedural where the crime was always solved within 46 minutes, though how they managed to do any detectiving with all the interpersonal relationships and bed hopping was beyond me.

10 pm: Bedtime. Well, retire to bed and then play a puzzle game on my phone until the pieces blurred and the phone slipped and fell on my face.

Very boring, and grey. and steady.

Perfect.

That day was like any other, except it was Loren's birthday. I never met Loren but she was one of the many faces on the screen during meetings. A pleasant enough looking woman. Round face, round glasses. She beamed when Kester, our project lead, switched his screen to a digital cartoon of a dancing birthday cake.

But the candles were lit with green flames.

Odd.

My computer's color didn't need adjusting. Everything else was as it should be.

I shrugged it off. Some whim of the designer, I thought, and I joined the off key and out of synch singing of the birthday song, to the delight of round faced Loren.

The memory of 15D and his green light never entered my mind until late that night. After the puzzle game had lulled me to sleep. My dreams were filled with green lights and something beckoning from within.

I woke with a start, imagining my room filled with green, oh such green. It sang. It reached for me. Green, lovely green.

But then the sleep lifted and I was alone in my dark room. I checked my phone. White numbers on a black background read 5:14. Just under two hours before I had to get up. I fell back to my pillow and drift off again. If the green called for me, I didn't hear it.

After that though, the green came more often. I saw it shine in the light on the coffee machine that told me the brewing was done, though I am sure that indicator was red before. It tinted the sunset, as if a thunderstorm hovered on the horizon. It whispered in my mind while I stared at the rows and rows of code I entered five days a week.

Green. All shades. Emerald. Jade. Why are so many gemstones green? Grass green. Apple green. Green and green and green.

Oh, Dear Reader, I know you may think this of no concern. A color, a gentle light, a whisper on the wind. My life was so grey and simple before. I should be pleased to have the green shine in my soul.

After all, it could be a more garish color. Yellow so bright that it would shine through my closed eyelids, blinding and brilliant. It could be red like blood, visceral and ghastly. Worse still, my vision could go black and then there would be nothing.

But it was not just the green light. It was what waited beyond it. The beckoning call of something that shouldn't know my name but did somehow. The words it said were no language I knew, no tongue I spoke. Something older. Something more pure. I didn't fear the call…

...but neither could I answer it.

A year passed since 15D had grasped my arm, and his face had fallen out of memory, replaced by thoughts of green. But, I recognized him immediately when they showed his face in a superimposed box next to the news anchor. Transient found dead on hiking trail. Unknown man discovered surrounded by leaves and broken branches, choked to death on handfuls of grass. 5'10", 182lb, salt and pepper hair, green eyes.

An update soon provided his name. Pritchard, Tarleton Pritchard.

I sat in bed, laptop occupying its namesake place, devouring every article I could find about 15D… I mean Pritchard. A strange name for a strange man, perhaps. It conjured up images of Dickensian barristers selling young orphans to workhouses or colonial ministers warning their parishioners of the devil's temptations. I was a little disappointed to discover he was a grocery checker who never returned home after a flight to bury his last remaining parent. No friends to miss him, really. No one to explain what happened to him.

But I knew, didn't I?

I stared at the pictures of poor old Pritchard, searching for some clue. Information was scarce. No one knew him. He had no social media I could find. A ghost. Now perhaps literally.

I looked into the brown eyes of lost 15D and suddenly realized something that shook me to my very foundations.

When his body was discovered, his eyes were green.

I sprang from my bed, tossing the laptop aside as if it was a poisonous viper. I ran to the bathroom, snapping on the light, and staring into my own terrified eyes in the mirror.

Brown.

Still brown, dark, red along the edges from so many hours staring into the backlit screen of my worldly connection, but still brown and my own.

I returned to my bedroom, snapping shut the laptop without glancing at the screen and laid down, expecting sleep would not come.

But it was the alarm that woke me up at 7 am.

After that I tried to fight the green, the light that still called and cried on the wind. I stubbornly ignored the shine in the window glass, the reflection in puddles after the rain. I hired landscapers to rip the lawn from my home, replaced with a rock garden, and told myself it was for conservation. No green remained in my home. Not even lettuce, or broccoli. I stopped driving my car, certain that the green lights were sure to drive me mad.

Pritchard's lonely end haunted me, but I was certain I had avoided it. I could deny the whispers, even though they were now screams. I could deny the green light even though its glow filled the night like St Elmo's Fire.

I could be spared…

But this morning, oh Pitying Reader, when I woke and looked into my haggard reflection, I saw… oh, god, I saw…

My eyes are green.