The Flash

In a flash, and it was a flash so much less than a second but we both saw it.

What we didn’t know was that many others also happened to be looking skywards at the time. Neither were we aware of what was to follow, how could we have known?

Next day’s news bulletins newspapers and all media carried a mention of the phenomenon but offered no explanations.

How much more ignorant and wrong could we have been thinking that it was just one of those things and would soon fade and take its place in the do you remember that night of the flash? And then fade into the lost memories section of the mind.

Then after a matter of days the media grew bored and no one talked about it anymore.

Apart from us, we knew the meaning and the importance of the flash.

It was late one evening, we were visiting Grandad in hospital, and we took a few moments outside, having a coffee and getting some air.  Grandad had been ill for as long as we could remember, but this was the first time he had been in hospital.

We were talking about him, standing close together, grasping our coffee, hoping it would warm our hands.  We were probably a little sad, that Grandad was so poorly and both of us were wistfully looking up into the night sky.

You could have missed the flash in the sky, if you had blinked at the wrong time, but we both saw it and looked at each other, puzzled.  Unaware of its importance or relevance to us.

We went back into the hospital, to find Mum waiting outside Grandad’s room.

“The Doctor said he has taken a turn for the worse and asked me to wait outside, I think it would be better if you both go home.  I’ll ring you if anything happens.”

Mum looked tired and worried, so we both gave her a big hug and left the hospital.

The next day’s papers were full of reports of aliens landing or government experiments.  But we knew that none of this was true.

238 words – Sandy Bryson