The Sombrero spiral galaxy
- My first unforgettable glimpse.Posted: April 30, 2004
Evening of April 19th, 2004.
I got home from work late that spring evening, took a shower, got dressed and lounged on the living room couch. It was 8:30. Time dragged. What was on the television was pretty dire as usual. Some crime-busting documentary, World in Action, A Place in the Sun, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I flicked the TV off, went to the kitchen to see how the cooking was coming along. My wife looked at me. Her eyes were tired, but she’d spent time on her hair. She looked nice. I put my arm around her and kissed her.
‘How was it today?’ she enquired about my new job. She took the chopping board over to the cooker, and shoved the potato halves into the chicken vindaloo.
‘Usual grind,’ I said. ‘Board presentations. Tons of number-crunching.’
I went to the kitchen window that looked out onto the garden and wiped the mist off the glass.
My next door neighbour’s black cat snarled back at me through a crack in the fence, then I saw its silhouette pad away silently into the shrubbery. Up above, a breeze was shifting the white clouds and a few stars glinted.
My wife came up beside me and peeked out into the gloom.
‘Stars are waiting for you,’ she moaned softly.
Nothing new. Her usual thumbs down on my nocturnal fascinations. To her, a guy obsessed with spending half the night in the garden squinting into a telescope was like... someone peering through the end of his penis!
‘April skies, dear,’ I reassured her with a smile.
My wife sighed. ‘Then May skies. Then June skies. Then July skies. Honestly,’ she said.
She went back to the cooker and slowed the gas to a simmer.
‘Every season brings its own fresh spectacles into view,’ I reminded her enthusiastically.
This made her eyes twinkle with that slow-breaking smile of hers that was like the moon slowly coming up over the horizon.
‘How can I forget?’ she said.
I went back into the living room, wrapped a warm jacket around me and stepped out into the garden through the back door. The night greeted me like a dark lagoon of dreams. I strolled past my shed to the patio area of the garden, near the middle.
As I was there in darkness, I took a couple of deep breaths and became intoxicated by the sweet scent of vibernium flowers blooming on a shrub nearby. I turned to the south east, and watched the horizon for a few seconds. Silhouetted trees overshadowed a dimly lit railway line that vanished into the distance, in the direction of London’s St. Pancras.
This short story was published in the "Forever Friends" anthology, edited by author Shelagh Watkins, and is available to purchase at Mandinam Press:
Copyright © 2004-2009 Abdul Ahad. All rights reserved.
