The green triangle.

The green triangle

Doodle doo…
An electronic rooster’s crow, Scott’s alarm clock, screeched its way like a breaking freight train into his dreams.
Scott who had been dreaming about chatting to the president of the United States was slightly bemused when the mobile in his hands started to ting, and the presidents voice changed into a cockerel’s.

Scott opened his eyes.

...Cock a doodle doo.

The room was dark. Closed curtains blocked the sun. The alarm clock. Scott slammed his hand down repeatedly all over, until success he hit the right button, and silenced the intrusive crow. Peace, calm. Then he flicked on his bedside lamp. The sudden change from light to dark both hurt his eyes and put his focus on the world into a gradual blur. Scott’s eyes soon adjusted, and he felt a fleeting regret for the passing sensation before he pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Scott drew the curtains from the window. It was drearily grey outside.
“So much for Sunday!” Said Scott speaking to himself.

It was 10:30 on a Sunday morning and if it were not for his alarm clock Scott would have happily slept well past 12.

Scott went downstairs, padding his way, barefoot to the kitchen. In the kitchen he checked the water level of his kettle. It sat above the marker numbered two. Plenty. Scott switched on the kettle not knowing how long the water had been resting inside. As the water heated up to boil, Scott took out a bread-knife from a drawer and cut himself a slice of bread from a loaf. He put the cut slice in the toaster, pushing down on the handle attached to the toasters side, lowered the piece of bread into the machine so it could toast. Meanwhile, Scott opened up a cupboard and took out a mug. He put a teabag in it. Starting with a rumbling sound that ended with a click. The kettle boiled. Scott took the kettle and poured the boiling water into the mug. Whilst his cup of tea brewed, Scott took out the slice of toast from the toaster and checked to see how brown it was getting. It wasn’t quite done, so he flipped it over and put it back in. Then he washed and dried the bread-knife before returning it to the drawer, where he took out a butter knife. Scott got himself a plate, took the lid off a jar of marmalade, then out came the toast from the toaster. It had yet to pop. Using the butter knife he spread yellowy globules of orange marmalade onto the toast, which rested upon the plate, and then sliced the toast into two pieces diagonally across the middle.
Scott used a teaspoon to fish the teabag out of his now well brewed cup of tea. He dumped the steaming teabag in the bin. Turning his back on the strong cup of tea he opened up the fridge to take out. Scott’s face fell. “Shit!”

Instead of a bottle of milk there was an empty space.

Scott ate his toast, put on a pair of shoes, struggled into a jacket, and left his tea to get cold. He went out the front door of his house and headed up the road to the corner shops. About halfway up the road, he noticed out of the side of his eye, a strange object. In the grass next to one of his favourite trees. An oak whose branches grew up towards the sky like curled fingers on a hand. A dark green point was poking out of the mud. Scott didn’t stop walking. He carried on all the way to the local shops, where he brought a bottle of milk and a newspaper. Apart from having no milk in the fridge, everything about this Sunday morning was quite usual. Scott thanked the shop keeper, and after paying for the milk and collecting his change wished him all the best. On his way home, beside the tree that looked like a hand Scott noticed that the green point sticking out of the mud, was still there.
Curiosity, made Scott stop, he bent down and scrabbled in the ground to find out what the object was. It didn’t take long to free the object. Scott looked at it sitting in his hand. It was a small green plastic triangle about twice the size of a match box. Here and there bits of dirt still remained stuck to the plastic. Scott had no idea what it was. He could have just dropped it on the floor, but instead decided to slip it into the back pocket of his jeans.

Little do we know about objects such as these, except that they like to prey on those who live alone and generally keep themselves to themselves. Incidents that make me wonder. In this case was it Scott that decided to pick up the triangle or indeed for whatever reason did the triangle choose him?

Finally, later than usual, Scott finished his breakfast routine. He made and drank another cup of tea. With milk. Then spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon with his paper. In fact he got quite comfortable and drifted off into a daydream, about hosting his own radio show. The first topic of which would be, what if anything did you used to call your gang or group of mates when you were at school? Scott fell gently into a snooze, a bright smile upon his face. He had forgotten all about the green triangle.

It was night time, getting late into the evening. The news crews and reporters had all but packed away and moved on. They had finished reporting the tragic accident of the day. One witness had told the BBC,
“First thing I heard was a very eerie sound... a buzzing sound, then I looked up into the sky”
Another said,
"I didn't see anything wrong with the plane. It didn't sound normal."
Paul Bisson, Aviation expert and senior fire officer explained,
“It (the plane) basically dove right into the top of the house . . . clearly a direct hit; it’s remarkable that it only took out one house. It could've easily taken out the whole neighbourhood."
"The only recognizable piece of the plane left is the tail."

There wasn’t much recognisable about the house either. A pile of mushed up concrete metal and rubble, bricks glass, the entire contents of Scott’s home, burnt, blackened, exploded together into a unidentified jumble of cemented mess. Remarkable. One house out of the whole street gone. As if some giant finger descending from the clouds, bounced along menacingly eeny meenie minie mo, before settling on devastation.
There were no survivors from the plane, 44 deaths, passengers, pilots, crew, all lost, and the owner of the house, Scott, dead too. He had never awoken from his daydream upon the sofa.

The plane that fell out of the sky. It was big news for almost a year. Then it became old news. It still cropped up in conversation from time to time. Little sparks of interest. Memory. Except the world moved on and bigger shocks and surprises where happening all the time.
Ten years down the line and the plane that fell out of the sky was only mentioned a scattering of times, rather than the full on showers that it had been at the start. In fact there was a new house on the spot of Scott’s old one, and a family had been living there now for five years. A husband and wife with a son called Harry and a dog called Cosmo. Harry was five years old, and one particular fine Sunday he was playing with Cosmo in the garden, when he discovered a strange mysterious object.
It was a green point poking up out of the mud in the grass. Cosmo saw Harry’s attention on the object, and quickly went at it with his paws, spraying mud with his scrabble until the object was rescued from the ground. Cosmo gripped it in his teeth and slobbered over it with his tongue. Harry using the fingers on his right hand pinched the object in between Cosmo’s teeth, tugging at it gently until it came free. It was a green triangle. Covered in flakes of mud. Harry played with it in his hand, pretending it was a spaceship that could fly.

“What’s that you got there, sport?” Asked Harry’s Dad, who was watching Harry vroom all around the kitchen with a new toy. Harry explained it was a spaceship that Cosmo had dug out of the ground. Harry’s father noticed it was rather muddy, so asked Harry if he could borrow it for just a second to give it a bit of a clean. Harry handed it over, and waited eagerly for it to be given back. He watched as his dad turned on the cold tap in the sink and let the water run over the green triangle. Bits of mud fell away from the triangle into the sink, until it shone green and sparkled almost clean as new. There appeared to be a slight groove in the triangle with some writing across it. Harry’s father took up a sponge and gave the triangle a brush, to completely remove the final traces of dirt.
“Well I never” He exclaimed,
“What? What?” Asked Harry,
“It’s this writing on the back of the triangle...”
“What does it say” Harry who had yet to learn how to read now, seeing his father’s interest in the object, was even more eager to have his triangle back, he squirmed about and his arm made slight snatching motions.
Harry’s father remembering why he had been cleaning the triangle in the first place looked down at his son; he smiled as he gave it back,
“The words say, Made in Bermuda.” Said Harry’s dad chuckling, before returning to finish his abandoned crossword on the sofa. Not knowing why he found this funny; Harry went back to playing spaceships with his new toy. Cosmo forgotten, together Harry and the green triangle vroomed in and out of every single room in the house. Until Harry got so tired that he fell asleep, with the green triangle clutched tightly in his hand.