Danny sat down in his favourite chair by the range, and lit his pipe.
“You go where you want, I’m staying put”, he said through a cloud of smoke.
“But you have to leave, those wee green bastards are crawling all over the place! They’ve already abducted the Friel’s, doing God knows what kind of experiments! Probing them, taking them away to who knows where! They’ll be here for you before you finish that pipe!”
Danny sat back and took a long puff, and as he exhaled, he pointed with his pipe around the room, “I was born in that corner, I was reared in that corner, and I’ll die in this corner. Right here…and the boy’s staying with me.”
“He most certainly is not! Michael, get your bag, let’s go.”
“No, I want to stay.”
“Michael, your bag. Now!”
“No! You’re always telling me what to do, stay here, go there! Do this, do that! Well I’m tired of it! I’m forty eight years old! It’s time I made my own decisions, time I became my own man! I’m staying.”
“But it’s not safe to -“
“I don’t care if it’s not safe! I don’t care! All my life I’ve been here, the same thing every day! All people do is talk about the weather and who’s dead! Well I don’t care about the weather! I don’t care about who’s dead! I want to LIVE!”
“Michael -“
“NO! I want to live! I want to see a dozen little green men coming at me over the hills and fields! I want to be taken away and experimented on! I WANT TO BE PROBED!! And you’re not going to stop me!”
Just then, Michael ran out the front door, removing his clothes as he ran past the window and down the garden to the fields.
“I’m alive!”, he shouted as he ran, “I’m a MAN!!”
“You heard the boy”, said Danny calmly, “he wants to be probed. And I won’t get in the way of that.
“Come on Terence, we have to go…”, said Madge, “your brother’s made up his mind, such as it is. Let him get probed…in his…area”
“There was always something funny about that lad. If we survive this, I’ll come back for you Danny”, Terence puts his hand out to shake Danny’s and Danny refuses.
“Save it”, says Danny, and he closes his eyes and breathes in the smoke from his pipe, “save it for after the probing”.
Terence and Madge look at each other in discomfort.
“I wish everyone would stop talking about probing”, says Terence looking at his feet.
And with that, they leave. In a distant field they see a flying saucer, and the small figure a naked Michael floating up in a beam of light. And ever so faintly, they hear a voice shouting, “Probe me! PROBE ME!!”
As they get into their car, they pause for a brief moment. “I’m going to tell people he drowned.”
“Of course”, says Madge.
And they drive away.
