Billy knew a lot of things that glowed in the dark. His bath toy, Monty, glowed in the dark. Monty was a dinosaur. When you stuck Monty in water, Monty grew. Billy didn’t know what he would do if he ever met a real dinosaur, but he hoped that it, too, would glow in the dark. He hoped it wouldn’t grow if he threw water on it, because he had heard dinosaurs were very big already and if his dinosaur grew too big, he didn’t think it would fit in his doghouse. For that matter, he hoped that real dinosaurs weren’t porous, either (or at least he would have, if he had known what “porous” meant).
On this particular evening, Billy’s dinosaur nightlight was glowing, too, which was odd because he hadn’t turned yet it on.
In fact, as Billy looked around his room, he could see many things were glowing, things that didn’t usually glow – big things, small things, electrical things. His lamp was glowing. His ceiling light was glowing, too. Everything was pale, an almost neon shade of bluish green. Billy wasn’t thinking much about his room, though, because outside, the dark was glowing in the dark! When he looked out there, Billy hoped a real dinosaur didn’t come, because his doghouse had been crushed by what looked like a giant glowing bouncy ball.
As he walked out of his room and down the stairs, Billy noticed all the lights in his house were glowing that same bluish-greenish haze. In the living room, his parents sat on the couch, eagerly glued to the relatively healthier glow of the television.
“It’s bright outside and I can’t sleep,” said Billy. “Can I play longer?”
“Better not,” said Billy’s dad. “Meteorite.”
“Oh,” replied Billy.
Outside past the patio, Billy could see the meteorite, silhouetted against the dull sunset. Around it, the grass swayed and bent and twitched calmly in the warm summer air. Amongst the blades mushrooms were sprouting, especially around the dirt patch beneath Billy’s tire swing. The tire swing, too, swayed in the breeze.
When Billy’s mother and father announced they were going to sleep and asked that Billy please shut the TV off on his way to his room, he wasn’t paying attention. He stared, transfixed at the eerie beauty outside. He had read in books that a meteorite may have killed the dinosaurs a long, long time ago, but the thing outside looked harmless, like a big frozen blob of grape jelly. It had crushed his doghouse, but it wasn’t like Monty #2 lived there yet (but then, Billy realized, he was getting ahead of himself).
Quietly, he slid open the patio door. The air was warm, especially around the meteorite. Billy thought he saw more mushrooms than before, and the ones he remembered seemed bigger. The swing nodded back and forth invitingly, and Billy sat. Now Billy, too, swayed with the breeze. As he went back and forth, he could feel the change in heat as he moved closer and further, toward and away from the meteorite. Billy noticed how quiet it was, as the jolting of the ground and the tree lulled him to sleep.
When Billy woke up, there was a crowd of aliens around him. actually, they were at a distance, and Billy thought that beneath their bulky grey tin foil suits they were probably people, but it pleased him to think that they might be from another world. Billy liked aliens. The fungi had now conquered the whole of his backyard, and the semi-neon haze still hung in the air. Billy found that just a little odd. Not frightening odd, but different odd. Regardless, the more he thought about it, the more Billy liked fungus.
“This area has been contaminated,” came a voice from a loudspeaker. “Please evacuate the premises and step into the containment area.”
Billy didn’t know what the words “evacuate” or “premises” meant, but the urgency in the loudspeaker-man’s voice alerted Billy that something exciting was going on. Now Billy was excited, too, and without even knowing it, he was swinging again, back and forth. Billy laughed to himself. The grey figures all looked so funny to him, waving their arms at him trying to communicate with their weird alien language. As he looked to the side, he could see the mushrooms growing up the tree. As he looked up, he could see the fungus working its way down the swing’s rope. Before he knew it, the rope had snapped, sending Billy through the air, and setting him down on top of the meteorite. Its surface crumbled where he landed, and, much to Billy’s delight, he discovered the inside really was like grape jelly! As he soon found out, however, it didn’t taste much like grape jelly. Billy spit it out, and the aliens stopped waving their arms and took frightened steps back.
From the top of the meteorite, Billy could see Jimmy’s house across the street, where the aliens were spraying the mushrooms with what looked like fire hoses. At the mist of the spray, the mushrooms became all brown and withered; not glowing and purple like the ones in Billy’s yard. Billy was sad, because he liked the mushrooms. They looked fun, like if grape gummies grew in the wild. Billy didn’t know where gummies came from, and, the more he thought about it, the less sure he was that they didn’t grow on plants, like corn and rhubarb and popsicles. Maybe the little mushrooms were baby gummi bears, or gummi worms – they were very young, and Billy couldn’t tell.
Billy carefully climbed down from the space glob as the aliens took another step back. All the while he had been on the meteorite, the loudspeaker had been shouting things at him. Though at first Billy had found the voice exciting, now it was just annoying. Billy ignored it. adults were like that sometimes – yelling and screaming and barking about things. Billy wasn’t sure if they were aliens or adults or both, but they seemed very un-fun to Billy.
“Catch,” called Billy playfully, as he threw a gummi plant at one of the no-fun-niks. Catch always cheered Billy’s dad up when he had a bad day at the lab. The alien didn’t catch the gummi, but Billy knew the alien was having fun when a puff of smoke rose where it fell, and the alien did a little dance. He danced and jolted and was so enthusiastic that he fell over, still moving his legs doing that merry jig! Billy threw more mushrooms, All the other aliens fell over, too, and did the same dance. Billy was delighted!
Soon the aliens stopped kicking and Billy felt very alone in the world – that is until he saw his parents back in the house. His mom was absently clicking the remote. His dad was eating popcorn. They had moved the television so that it was in front of the patio door. Billy thought that was a great idea. Now they could watch him play and see their stories at the same time! Billy waved happily, and his dad raised his popcorn bowl in salute. Billy suddenly realized how hungry he was. He ran to patio and threw open the door and tiptoed carefully around the television set.
Billy reached into the cupboard to find a bag of popcorn and was just about to ask his mom to put it in the microwave when, to his surprise, it began popping in his hands. When Billy’s dad saw this, he looked directly at Billy.
“Son,” he said, “I’m afraid that piece of space waste has made you monoluminescent extraterristrialliantly cardioeffervescent.”
“Way to take down the G-men,” said his mom.
“Oh,” said Billy, as he comfortably plopped himself down on the couch between them. He remembered once he had eaten a wild mushroom, and then he had to go to the doctor. He didn’t understand just what his parents had just said, but Billy imagined monoluminescent extraterristrialliant cardioeffervescence was something like when he ate the mushroom. Billy wished Monty could have been with him outside, but the aliens had seemed so afraid of him that he wasn’t sure they would like dinosaurs, even one that was full of small holes. It was evening by now again, and after the sun went all the way down, he could see purplish waves beaming from the meteorite. Billy wondered where they went after they floated into the sky and far away.