Glimmering Green

For the past 3 years, I have worked as an orderly in a particular rest home. I won’t say its name or mine because even though I feel the need to write this down, I also know there are good folks still working there and I don’t want their reputation to be impugned by association with me. Anyways like every job its had its ups and downs, but for the most part, it has been fine and my time here has been no different than what you’d expect it to be like. I make sure the residents take their medicine and eat their food, I try quickly to respond to any emergencies, I clean up after them, and I try to keep the less mentally put together ones from walking around without clothes. Like I said, simple, standard stuff...for the most part.

There was however one event that stands out though, to the point that I’ve recently had to take a leave of absence just to process it, especially now that the only other person I could talk to about this has passed away. To understand what occurred you have to go back...say 6 months ago when we got a certain new resident. For convenience sake, let’s call him Cyrus. He was brought to us after a different nursing home in the area went bankrupt due to some...financial malfeasance and so it had to offload its patients to other facilities.

Now, this Cyrus fellow was in his 80s with all the wrinkles that entails. He was bald, skinny as a rail, and slightly hunched with that typical somewhat squished and shrunken torso that all old people eventually get that makes their limbs seem slightly too long for their height. Despite all this, I imagined based on the evidence that I could still see that he must have been quite handsome in his youth as all his features while wrinkled up were still otherwise classically handsome in proportion and symmetry, with a single exception. While his left eye was a run-of-the-mill chocolate brown his right eye was quite simply the brightest and most verdant green eye you could ever have imagined. Hell, I’d even go so far as to say I’ve seen green neon signs that were less brilliant in color. In contrast to this outstanding physical feature, his personality was otherwise subdued to the point he came to be considered one of the better patients under our watch. He never caused a fuss, and barely said two words to anyone, but on those occasions when he did speak his perfectly lucid and aware of his surroundings and circumstances. Had it not been for his one distinct eye it would have been fairly easy to lose him in the crowd of people in the nursing home.

In fact, it was this fact or rather its absence on one occasion that first caused me to stumble across the unique origin of this feature of his. One evening to keep our residents entertained we had hired some folks to come in and put on a show in the auditorium. It was a regular thing we tried to do every couple of months to break up the monotony of life in our facility. I don’t recall exactly who the act on this occasion was, but I distinctly recall it to have involved some sort of standup comedy act. On this occasion, I had happened to get a seat that gave me a relatively unobstructed view of where all the residents were. Now standup comedy wasn’t really my thing, so after about 15 minutes of the comedian's routine, I found myself growing bored and my eyes began to scan back and forth across the room. I did this once, and then twice rather absentmindedly, but on the third occasion I noticed something off. Despite the fact I had seen Cyrus’ nearly phosphorescent green eye near the edge of the central row of seats the first two times I looked, the third time I had found it noticeably absent. Feeling this was as good an excuse to bail early on this tiresome mess I decided to get up and search for Cyrus and after 10 minutes or so I managed to do just that. Somehow without anyone noticing the old-timer had managed to roll himself out of the auditorium without the slightest hint of sound and got himself all the way to the window of an unoccupied room in the east wing of the facility.

Not wanting to alarm him, I knocked on the door of the room before calling out to him.

“Hey Cyrus”

“Hey.”

“So...I see you left the show early.”

“Yeah”

“...any particular reason? Did it bore you or something.”

I waited but after 30 seconds of heavy silence, I decided to continue speaking.

“Yeah I feel ya, I mean it wasn’t the worst act in the world but it wasn’t anything too special. Still, you know you can’t just roll away without telling anyone right?”

“Hn…” he grunted in affirmation. At this point, I was starting to get a little annoyed so in a slightly raised tone, I asked him.

“Listen, you know this isn’t your room right?”

“Yes”

“Ok good, then you know that means you can’t stay here, right?”

“No.”

“C’mon man,” I said while reaching out to grab the wheelchair handles. “I don’t know what’s up but you can’t just…”

Before I could finish his right arm abruptly shot out and grabbed my wrist so hard I swore I could hear bones starting to pop. Grunting in pain and struggling to keep from falling to my knees I turned my face towards him as if the ask what the hell...and found his head turned right at me, that emerald green eye of his looking at me with such intensity I’m surprised it hadn’t melted a hole through my head.

“I...am...not...going.” he said slowly and deliberately before shoving me back with a strength that his stick-figure frame should not have been capable of producing. I landed flat on my rear and for a long while all I could do was cradle my bruised wrist in shock.

“You want to know why I’m not going? Why I'm here?” He said, his words freezing me where I was starting to sit up, and for good reason. This was the most I had ever heard Cyrus speak at one time and it left me nodding dumbly in response.

“It’s the same reason I have this eye now.” He said pointing to his emerald sphere. “Yeah that’s right,” he said in response to my unasked question. “I wasn’t born with this eye of mine. Originally both my eyes were the same color, just like my brother’s eyes were back when we were boys.” He said with a slight tinge of sadness. “Then one day we got bored and decided to go out camping. So my brother and I packed up our supplies and off we went a hiking. Now after a couple of hours, we come across a hill, and figure it's as good a place as any to set up shop seeing as it's getting late. So we spend the rest of the day putting our campsite together and we settle down for the night. Then that night I’m laying there dreaming a dream about...being a movie star...or something...it’s honestly been so long I don’t even remember but it's not important. What is important is that halfway through the night I hear this noise, the oddest, freaking thing I ever did hear in my life. Like a weird cross between a bolt of lightning and the drone of a cop car’s siren. So I sit bolt upright and turn to look at my brother and he’s looking at me with the same dumb look I know I had on and all the while we’re hearing the same weird noise going on in the background. Eventually, we snap out of it and step out of the tent and there it is, this...thing ….like a glowing disk of green light the size of a man just hovering in the air. Now me I wanna get the hell out of dodge and so I start packing up...but my brother, well he was a curious sort, and so he picks up this long stick and he tries to poke at it like it was some dead thing on the side of the road. I turn, see what he’s doing, and start walking toward him all angry like and telling him he’s being plumb foolish. Then right as I get to him that stick of his touches the disk and just like that he’s suddenly flying forwards toward the disk. I leap forward and manage to grab hold of his ankles and in doing so manage to get my feet tangled in some kudzu vines. So here I am dangling on to my brother for dear life and all the while this whatever it is trying to suck us in like a twister and as I watch this thing starts to come toward us closer and closer and the closer it gets the harder it's sucking till finally, it touches my brother. The second it did his legs jerks like he’s been hit with 10,000 volts and he kicks me in my left eye so hard that I can’t keep a grip on him. So I go flying and as I do so I see him get sucked all the way into that thing, and the second he’s all the way in it there’s this flash of light and then...nothing. Well, a couple of hours later I finally woke up lying on the forest floor, my foot still tangled in the vines and with my left eye totally swollen shut. I get myself loose and start looking for my brother and you know what I find? Nothing….absolutely nothing….and the only proof I’m not crazy is this here eye of mine. I figure the reason my other one didn’t change was that I had it closed when the last flash happened...and you know where that place was?”

“No, where was it?” I asked enraptured in what he was telling me. Then in response, he raised his right arm and pointed at a small hill in the near distance.

“Yeah, it’s no accident I ended up here. I would have moved in a decade ago when they built this rest home, but instead, my good-for-nothing son dumped me in that other rat hole and nobody would listen to my requests for a transfer. That place shutting down was the best thing that could have happened to me. Now as for why I would want that, see kid, for a long time I couldn’t bring myself to go near that spot, but then 13 years after it happened I finally got up the nerve to go camping there again and wouldn’t you know it, that very night the damn thing was back again. So another year passes and I come back to see it again but nothing doing. I waited a full week but nada. So I try again and again every year after that until guess what? Another 13 years roll by again and viola! There it is! That’s when I finally put it together. And wouldn’t you know it, it’ll be 13 years exactly right...about...now.”

And then through the window and before my amazed eyes, on that hill nearby...a glowing green disk of light hovered there before our gaze. There were so many questions I wanted to ask but I just couldn’t, my throat simply refusing to work. Finally, I just gave up and watched the disk silently with Cyrus until after 10 minutes or so it just kinda blinked out and was gone. Then without a fuss the old man finally let me take him out of the room and back to his regular one.