A Glint in the Sky by Mason Yates

The jet shot across the blue sky like a bullet, tearing through the air and pushing towards the unidentified object that was trying to escape to its grasp. The circular disk ahead was sailing through the sky, trying to maneuver, trying to escape, but Johnny Parker, the man in the jet’s cockpit, was persistent and kept on its tail. He had no clue what the object he was chasing was, but there was a lot of ideas of what it could be circulating in his thoughts. His first idea was it could be an advanced aircraft produced by the Russians, Chinese, or North Koreans, but the longer he chased, the more unlikely it seemed. In fact, as he watched the disk-like aircraft dodge bullets in a way that broke the laws of physics, it became obvious that it was not manmade. Einstein, Newton, Hawking, and especially Aristotle and Galileo Galilei, would have been rolling in their graves if they saw the aircraft that Johnny Parker was chasing.

The disk flying ahead was something unimaginable, something breathtaking. It was something out of the comics that Johnny used to read as a kid, something he once adored. As he chased the object, still keeping on its tail and never letting go, his mind seemed to transfer from reality to the past. In an instant, he was away from the chase and back to his childhood. Instead of in the cockpit with hundreds of buttons and multiple levers, he was lying in bed. His uniform was replaced with cozy pajamas, and his adult body transformed back to a small, fragile child. As for his mentality, the knowledge floated away, and what replaced it was the blissful innocence of youth.

Little Johnny Parker had his eyes wide open despite the dark night outside his window. He was supposed to be asleep; at least that’s what his parents thought. However, he was far from it. Downstairs, in the living room, his parents were arguing; something that was becoming a common occurrence. Although they tried to keep it in whispers, he could still hear them. They were mentioning divorce again, a word that he had been unfamiliar with just a few months ago but had started to take meaning lately. He associated it with separation. One parent would go one way and the other parent would go another way. As for him, he didn’t know what would happen, and that was what scared him. He thought about creeping out of his bedroom and standing at the edge of the stairs to listen in, but then, he thought not to. It was better off, he assumed, just to stay in his room and let his parents handle adult things. But the thought of the unknown nagged at him. Lying in bed, eyes staring at the ceiling, he tried to imagine scenarios of what would happen to him. He imagined his parents standing on the sidewalk with him in between. His parents shook hands, turned their backs to each other, and walked off with grumpy expressions. As for him, he stayed put, watching his parents leave him. That horrible thought made him want to cry, but he couldn’t cry. If he cried, he would make sounds, and he didn’t want his parents to know he was up. To take away the pain he felt, he looked to his night table beside his bed and saw the comic that he had been reading earlier that day. On its cover was a metal, circular, disk-like spacecraft, and it resided on a grassy knoll. The spacecraft had an opening, and within the opening, three green aliens were emerging. The words “Green Men Invade” in an odd font style were written on the cover. He grabbed the comic and the flashlight next to it, and suddenly, his parent’s whispers were obliterated, tossed somewhere in time and space, somewhere he could never hear them.

Opening the comic to the place where he had left off, he saw the illustrations within the light of the flashlight. There were more pictures of green men, spacecrafts, and odd landscapes. As he looked down at the drawings, he smiled. He pondered what it would be like if an alien appeared outside his window and offered to take him away from his house and life. He wondered if he would go. Sometimes, especially that night as he sat in bed, it seemed like a good idea. Some nights, he wished the aliens would take him, take him somewhere far away, far away where his parents couldn’t find him, somewhere where things were better. He imagined where this better place was. Perhaps it was on another planet or in a distant galaxy. Or, if he really wanted to get scientific, the aliens might take him through a wormhole to another universe. Despite his wishes, however, the aliens never came. Why would they? He was just another ordinary boy out of millions. So, with that thought in mind, he knew his only escape was in his imagination. It was there that his parents could never infiltrate. It was there that he could be in peace.

He read a little, flipping the pages with grace, making sure not to rip them. After a while, he set the comic back on the night table and kicked his covers off. He swung his legs off the bed, planted them on the floor, got up, and crept to the window across his room. He did so without making a sound. When he got to the window, he silently opened it and leaned outside, first looking down at the ground below, then looking up where the full moon shined. The whole night was doused in the moon’s light, and the small Johnny Parker found himself in a trance upon gazing at it. He could see the man in the moon, which was only a face created by craters, but either way, he stared into the moon’s eyes.

“Please take me away from here,” Johnny whispered into the night. “Please. Please.”

Nobody answered his pleas, and he didn’t expect anybody to do so, but he still found himself disappointed when there was no voice given in return. He frowned and continued to stare. He desperately wished someone–or something–would come down from the moon and take him away. He didn’t care who they were or where they took him, because he knew that anywhere was better than listening to his parents argue. He kept his stare and rambled his wishes. Then, he fell silent. Something next to the moon glinted. It was only a quick reflection of light, but it was enough to tell him something was out there. He immediately knew what it was: aliens. Twenty-five years later, Johnny Parker, once the kid who desperately wanted to be abducted by aliens, was racing towards what had made that glint. He knew the aliens were in front of him, and they were trying all they could to avoid being captured. There was no escape though, for Johnny was finally gaining on them.

“Preparing the missile,” Johnny said to himself, tapping a few buttons within the cockpit.

He lined his aircraft’s body up with the spacecraft in from of him and waited a moment for the missiles to prepare. Any second the aliens were going to feel a massive explosion, and then, finally, after so many years, Johnny could see the beings he had dreamed of in his youth. The green men from the comics had finally come to him, but not in the way he wanted them to. Either way, he smiled. He was about to achieve his dreams of seeing them, being visited by them.

“My wish has come true,” Johnny whispered and pressed a button, sending the missiles out towards the disk. They rocketed across the sky, finding the target. An explosion, then a roar. Finally, the craft dropped out of the sky in a ball of flame.

“I finally got you.”

Johnny took the jet around in a circle, lowering it towards the Earth as he did so. Below him, the Arizona desert. Nothing was in sight except for the alien aircraft, which was still burning on the ground. He flew downward and landed. It was a tough landing, but it wasn’t dangerous. He knew he was going to be able to get back up in the air, but that wasn’t what he was thinking about. Quickly, directly after landing, he grabbed his automatic rifle and opened his jet. He crawled out, jumping down to the desert below and running to the disk. The heat was immense, but he didn’t care. He ran to it, pointed the rifle where he saw the entrance/exit of the craft, and waited for something to emerge from it. It didn’t take long before something happened.

The place where the aliens were going to exit crashed open as if something or someone had given it a swift quick. A huge chunk of metal fell to the desert sand, and suddenly Johnny saw them. Instead of green men, the aliens looked human, white and dressed in uniform. Johnny was stunned. He looked down the sights of his rifle and got into a stance, ready to shoot.

“Who are you people?” he shouted.

The human-like beings emerged from the craft, not saying a word. Johnny watched as twenty or thirty people exited. They all watched him.

“Who are you?”

Still nothing.

“Where do you come from?” he shouted, still holding his rifle to his shoulder and aiming at them.

A few of the people who emerged from the craft turned to each other and began to speak. It became obvious who they were by their language: Russian. They were from Earth. He hadn’t been chasing aliens; he had been chasing humans. As for their craft, he wondered how long the Russians had had such advanced technology. What was it? How? It was surreal.

A sudden wave of sadness rushed over him, for his dream of being visited by aliens seemed to fade away. In the moment of looking at the Russians, he realized the aliens were only in the comic books. They were created by the mind of a writer, by the mind of man. The little green men didn’t exist. But what about the glint in the sky that he had seen all those years ago? It could have been anything: the space station, a satellite, a meteor. For some reason, Johnny doubted it. What he had seen that night was something entirely different. It could have been a spark of hope created by his imagination, or perhaps an anomaly. Whatever it was, it had been there. He would never forget it.

—

Mason Yates is from a small town in the Midwest. Now living in Arizona and attending Arizona State University. Mason has been published in Dark Dossier’s 37th issue, and is set to be published in Schlock! in September.