"You have got to be kidding me right now."
"Relax, BeeBee. Darkness is my element."
"Wait guys, let me see if I can find the flashli-"
"Ow!"
"Sorry, Mae."
I was hanging out with Bea, Gregg and Angus in the lovely apartment building home to my best friend and his boyfriend when a storm moved into our beloved town Possum Springs and caused a blackout. Gregg moved over to one of the windows, being careful not to step on my foot again, and looked outside.
"Yep," he observed after looking out. "Rest of town is out too. U=You two should just call your parents and let them know you're staying over. Is that okay, Angus?" With the occasional lightning flashing through the windows I could see Angus smiling, still cute and not at all scary.
"I don't mind, there isn't much of a choice really," he answered, motioning for me to sit on the couch with Bea so I did as he got to his feet and looked around for a flashlight.
"It's one of those shake flashlights," the big guy said with disinterest and a sigh. "But it's the closest one until we get the other one."
Gregg eagerly nabbed the irritating light off his paws. "I'll get it, Cap'n!" he said with a smile before trailing off into the darkness.
I grunted. "Wonderful. A nearly pitch black room with brief flashes of light?" I said, but then remembered something similar. "It's like those crappy parties everyone snuck out to go to in high school.
Beside me, Bea snorted. "Don't remind me," she said. "Wasn't it Jack Wilson's party where Michelle Myer got into a huge fight with Jessie Brown?"
"Yeah, I'm still amazed they weren't arrested," I answered, thinking back to how it happened. Basically Myer got too drunk to think straight and Brown happened to not be in a very good mood. Next thing you know they're on the ground.
Angus seemed pretty interested in the story. "There wasn't anything illegal going on there, right?" he asked since he had never really gone to many parties. Gregg came back just in time with the better time and was soon cuddling up with Angus as I told the story of the long lasting rivalry before and after and all that.
Bea and I called our parents soon after, and even though I say many times it's a crime to go to bed early all I wanted to really do was sleep. I don't know why, but I didn't feel all that hyper. Gregg and Angus headed to bed after giving me some blankets to share with Bea.
I curled up on the couch, listening to the patter of rain outside. Everything else was silent and dark, and Bea was either on the floor or in the kitchen since unlike me she didn't want to sleep. But even though I wanted to sleep I just couldn't. This wasn't supposed to be hard since I had been in this apartment plenty of times but somehow it was different.
It wasn't the storm since I had slept through much bigger when I was 14 and those weird dreams had stopped since the mining incident a few weeks ago.
I froze in place. That was why I couldn't sleep, this blackout was like the darkness of the abandoned mine where murderous cultists lay and almost made me their new victim. My heart raced as the horrific memories of almost dying, being saved by my friends then almost crushed by a cave in.
But then I felt it.....the feeling I had way back when everything, well, disappeared. When nothing had any meaning, when my mind and myself were absent from reality.
When the screams of bystanders were drowned out by my own abstract thoughts. I still remembered the horror in that scream of his as I smashed that bat into his body.
And with that I was in tears, curling up into a smaller and tighter ball, trying to keep quiet. Thank God Angus kept the lights off even if the power did return over night.
"Mae," a faint whisper came from the floor, "are you crying?"
Crap; Bea had heard me. As more lightning briefly lit up the room here and there I could see her move to sit next to me on the couch. In response to her question I just nodded, it was hopeless to deny it at this point.
"What's wrong, MayDay?" she asked softly, with a scaly hand gently rubbing my head. It was at the top, where I had dyed part of my fur a kind of red.
"I just...remembered that crap with the cult," I muttered into a cushion. "And beating Cullen with a bat, you know; fun stuff." Bea held a concerned expression, I could tell that much as she pulled her hand away.
"Get up," she said, her voice stern but soft. I didn't want to fight so I got into a sitting position. "Look, for the cult thing it wasn't your fault. It wasn't any of ours either," she added.
"I never thought it was my fault, Bea," I interrupted, getting more upset. "I just....came so close to death. I could have died, Bea. We all could have, just because of my stupid talk of there being a ghost in town."
For a second she didn't respond, and when I turned around to see why she suddenly pushed her lips against mine.
"W-what was that for?" I asked nervously, blushing under my fur. My friend had just kissed me, the same friend I was trying to hide my real feelings from.
Bea giggled softly and lay down on the couch with me. I ended up curling into a ball next to her and we fell asleep that way.
