Green Light Decisions

The glow of the green light swells in the small, dark room around me. Reaching fingers coax the shadows from the dank corners and paints the walls with the sickly hue. The room is alive with the color green. Breathing steadily and watching me intently, the walls rise around me like a judgmental wave waiting to drown me in its depths.

I’ve stared at the green button for so long now that the light it emanates pours into my pupils, filling the inside of my skull until it glows with the same fluorescent color. My eyes begin to burn and I can’t remember the last time I blinked. I force my eyes closed thankful for the relief.

Yet, even in the state of my self-imposed blindness, I can feel the green light pulsing through my veins. Each heartbeat pushing it throughout the rest of my body burning through the flesh and scorching the veins until finally, its journey ends at the tips of my fingers hovering over the button.

Slowly and unwillingly, I open my eyes half expecting the green light to shine through the sockets as if I were a lighthouse made of flesh and blood. Perhaps I could blink in morse code. I would spell out S.O.S into the dark ceiling above me begging for anyone to save my soul.

Save me from having to make this decision.

It would only take a millisecond for this to be over and I to become both savior and condemner.

Pressing the little green button is the only decision I can logically make.

It had to be.

A whisper of red shines through the green chaos swirling inside of my head and all around me. The red button faintly glows to my right offering me a different outcome; a different decision to live with. I imagine what it would feel like to press this little red button instead. My right index finger twitches at my side as if I had already made up my mind in its favor. Could I live with myself if I chose to push the red button?

Hadn’t I already done so before?

A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead and catches on my eyebrow. The sensation was fleeting but mercifully distracting. I imagine myself as an ice cream cone starting to melt under a hot summer sun. My torso a sugar cone lightly held by a woman with dark hair so glossy that the shine rivals the sun’s rays. She is beautiful but not overtly so. She possessed the kind of beauty that whispers from the corners of her face and flashes behind her dark eyes.

Her makeup is smeared either from the relentless summer sun or from her laughter that causes her eyes to squint and water from sheer joy. I happily languish away in her hands as she laughs raucously, her face turned to the sky and I turning into sweet puddles between her fingers. Pools of delicious cream that she sensually licks away emphasizing the forbidden nature of our meeting.

Valerie…

“Pop pop?”

The summer day vanishes and for a split second, I am angry that my thoughts are interrupted.

Before me, past the chaos of the green and the red buttons, is a wall of glass. Behind the glass are two rooms one lit by a single bulb light fixture and the other completely black. Thick burgundy curtains are pulled away from the glass on either side like a wide, sinister grin.

I catch my son’s eyes staring at me from behind the thick glass. My anger evaporates and guilt burrows into my chest.

His sandy blonde hair catches in the dim light hanging above him and it reminds me of a fish’s scales flashing in the sun at the aquarium. A beautiful angel fish staring at me from behind its clear prison. Helpless, trusting, and dumb; it puts absolute faith in my care. Faith that I will provide and love it forever without waver or falter.

My God, how he looks like his mother…

He is watching me with wide, frightened eyes. His small hands are pressed against the glass so hard that the palms are white. He looks like he is shaking but he does not cry. He has complete confidence in his father. The guilt in my chest twists inside of me as I stare back.

I should comfort him. I want to but I don’t know how.

“Pop pop…” He says a little quieter this time. He is beginning to question the person in front of him. He sees a glimmer of who I am past the mask of his father. A seed of doubt planted in his little chest. One that I put there long ago but is now beginning to take root.

But he still does not cry. He still trusts my love for him unconditionally even when I do not.

I reach for the green button and close my eyes, my mind is made up. I am his father, and he is my son. This is the only decision I can make. For a moment in my decisiveness, I am euphoric. This nightmare is about to end. I have stared into the devil’s eyes, and I did not crumble this time. For as many mistakes as I have made in the past, tonight will not count as one of them. I open my eyes and feel them burning as they lock onto the green light. Tonight, I reinvent the man I once was into someone reliable, strong and worth having as a father.

My entire being is intent on pushing the green button, freeing my little angel fish and sealing my fate.

A moment’s breath away from slamming my fist on the button and an infant’s wail pierces the air just before I commit it to its fate. My decisiveness melts away as a light switches on in the dark room next to my son’s. As the room lights up my breath catches in my throat.

The child’s screams rip through the silence and I snatch my hand away from the buttons in front of me as if they were on fire. The newly illuminated room acts as a spotlight on a small bin placed in the center of the area. A tiny bundle squirms and shrieks under the harsh lighting. My eyes lock on a barely visible figure just behind the child.

She is bound and gagged to a structure shrouded in darkness, but the ferocious thrashing and muffled screams assure me that it is her.

“Valerie?”

Our eyes lock, hers wild and surging from her face as if they would attack me given the chance. She softens ever so slightly when she realizes it is me. I can’t imagine what my face looks like, but I feel my mouth gaping open and ice running through my veins. I am colder than I have ever felt in my life as I stare at the scene before me. The son I should have loved more and the woman I never should have loved.

Two choices…

The red and green buttons mock me now.

“Decisions, decisions” a voice taunts me cutting through the wails of the baby.

Valerie lunges toward the child in the bin as if to protect it with her body but her tethers are too tight. Her body feebly thrashes against their bindings and I can faintly hear her screams. My son’s gaze is darting back and forth between the wall that separates the rooms and me, completely bewildered. He finally begins to cry.

What will I choose?

“Who will you choose?” says a vaguely familiar sing-song voice echoing my thoughts.

And in that moment, I cannot honestly say that I knew.