The power went out last year

I've been blocking big time on what to write. So I'll post something I wrote and was going to post last year after the power went out while we were staying with Nana and Papa (they were out of town at the time). I didn't post it because it got kinda moody and ....eh, I dunno.

Here it is:

I sat at the computer watching a segment of The Daily Show on Hulu. The guest had just walked out and Jon Stewart was doing his nightly dance of firmly offering a chair so that his guest will sit down first and Stewart can maintain the illusion that he’s tall. All at once, the guest and Jon Stewart and the entire studio, as well as the computer and the desk and the bookcase around it and the entire room disappeared and was replaced with black. I searched around in the darkness and said, “Woah.”

“Power’s out!” Greg yelled from the other room, where he was getting Ellie ready for bed. The house was impossibly dark. I walked slowly across the small hallway to Ellie’s room. She was already in bed with the blankets to her chin and she didn’t seem particularly scared, so we kissed her goodnight and left her with the dog in the room. Then we fumbled our way through the pitch-black house.

I opened the front door and looked outside. Across the street, a tree had split apart and a large branch and part of the trunk were lying the middle of the road. The neighbors lost their lights, too, and without their lamps and TVs glowing into the small lane with no streetlights, it looked like the world outside almost disappeared. Greg grabbed his coat and gloves and headed out the door to move the branches off the street.

The moment the door opened, the dog started barking. The moment the dog started barking, Ellie started crying. Her crying got louder and more panicked, so I went to her room to calm her down. “I think there’s an animal in my room!” she called to me. “Abby keeps barking!”

“I know what Abby is barking at,” I told Ellie. “Come with me and look outside.” I pulled her to the window to look down at Greg as he walked to the other side of the street. We could barely make out his form in the dark night. “See? Abby is barking because she heard Daddy leave the house. He’s out there picking up the tree branch that fell.” Ellie nodded as she watched Greg pull the largest branch off the road and rest it on the grass under the broken tree.

She was still scared. “I’m too scared to sleep in this room,” she said. “I still think there’s an animal in here.”

“Come downstairs and sleep in our room just for tonight,” I told her. “But it’s going to be dark everywhere.”

”Okay,” she answered, and we walked downstairs, through the kitchen and to the bedroom at the back of the house, where the light from the highway dimly lit the room. She was able to fall asleep there, but I was worried she would wake up with nightmares.

Greg decided to go to sleep too, but I wasn’t tired. I wandered through the house as it sat inert, pulling energy in from outside instead of sending it out. I sat on a kitchen chair and leaned on the window, trying to force my pupils to widen so I could see as much as I could in the backyard.

All of the ambient noise we normally hear in the house was gone. The whir of the refrigerator, the whoosh of hot air blowing through the vents, the sound of computer fans. But it wasn’t silent. The cars got louder as they zoomed by on the nearby highway. The wind blew through the branches. A pump under the house made a grinding noise periodically. These sounds were not welcoming. It occurred to me that all the sounds we hear inside the house become like a barrier. Now that they were gone, the house felt more fragile.

I was getting creeped out, so I woke up Greg. I stood over the bed and nudged him and said, “Get up, it’s too creepy in this house. And there’s nothing to do.” He grumbled a bit and got up, then went to find some candles. I followed him around, talking the whole time to try to fill the house with voices.

“Do you think ComEd knows about this?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Are you sure? What if everyone is thinking that someone else called it in?”

“They know,” he answered again.

“Well, I’m going to call them,” I announce, getting my cell phone and finding 411.

He was right---they knew. The recording said that it could be hours before power is restored, so Greg and I stretched out on opposite ends of the couch with a blanket, talking and listening to the clock above us ticking and the pump under the house with its intermittent grinding. I felt better with someone else to stay awake with me and it didn’t take me long to get sleepy. Soon we were both dozing on the couch and decided to head to bed.

That night, I am the one with bad dreams. I am standing alone at the window in Ellie’s room, looking down at the street below where Greg had moved the fallen tree branch. Instead of Greg, I see a thin, unshaven man in stark white clothes standing in the middle of the street. In my dream there is a moon and its light is hitting this man’s uniform, making it glow. He is agitated and he is emanating sadness and anxiety so strongly that I can feel it all the way up and through the window where I am standing. I’m worried that he will look up and see me. But I’m even more nervous about what he is looking at. He is staring at the house as he paces back and forth on the street…staring and staring at the front door…trying to figure out how to get in.