Lights Out
01 Jul 2020Today’s prompt: “Put your character (or yourself) in the dark. See what happens.”
In an instant, you’re enveloped in blackness. The overhead lights, the blinks from your modem, and every digital clock display in your house, all go dark in a single moment.
You grab your nearby phone and search through your contacts for the power company, who you have programmed in for precisely this situation. You’re just starting through the rigmarole of reporting an outage when you pull open the blinds to let in more moonlight, and realize it’s not just moonlight out there. The streetlights are on. The neighbor’s porch lights are on.
The breaker box, then.
You turn on your cell phone flashlight, take a deep breath, and head for the cellar. The concrete echoes around you as you step downstairs, shadows flickering in the unsteady beam of light. You can imagine spiders all around you, black widows and brown recluse spiders. And just what is that sound? Would the gas furnace be on without the electricity? The water heater? Ugh. You try to tell yourself it’s nothing.
You make a beeline for the breaker box in the corner. You focus your phone flashlight on the switches. Aha. A whole bank of them out.
You flip on the living room switch. The kitchen. The master bedroom and bathroom, and on down the line. But one of the last you hit is the basement. And by the time you do, the black-robed worshippers of the Old Ones have melted from the shadows and surrounded you, scythes and daggers in hand.