Short Story Collection

Lights Out

On Wednesday the 27th of May, 2019 at exactly 12:00am, the electrical grid will go haywire, cutting off the electricity connection in Australia then, in the space of 12 hours, progressing to the rest of the world. At 5:00pm, any hand-held electrical items including the telephone and related technology will be down, and will never retain power again.

In the first few hours, the world will be in a state of confusion and frustration. People will be looking for an explanation, and they will be trying to fix the electricity, wondering what made it all go wrong.. When the hand held electronics loose power, panic will settle in. There will be no way of contacting others, no instant messaging, no electrical buzz, social media, internet, clocks or phone calls... And absolutely no light.

By evening, the world will be washed in black. Usually, a thousand streetlights will spring up for those desperate enough to miss the sun. But not that night, and never again. Or what counts as night from then on, because the next morning, the sun will not show. Storm clouds will cover most of the world, and it will forever be grey. There will be enough watery light to cast faint shadows on the walls of children bedrooms, but that is barely enough to live with. The people will be growing desperate by then, lighting flickering candles that do more harm than good until the flames extinguish with a soft hiss. There will be no buzz of electricity and no lively chatter, because that will have disappeared on the first day. It will be so silent, you could hear the stars scratching the sky, the continents rumbling along and the churning of the molten rock under the freezing ground.

Some people will board up their houses and hoard food. Some will run to the countryside. Some will get married, some will get divorced. Some will kill themselves. But they all will miss it. They will miss everything they took for granted. They will miss the warmth. They will miss the lights, because even though they denied it, there was still that little voice inside their heads, the one that they used to stay alive when they were prey animals. The one that makes them terrified of the dark. Terrified of the silence. Terrified of the unknown. Terrified of us.

I'm not afraid of the dark. I haven't been for a long time. After all, it just makes things complicated and why would you want to make life more complicated than it already is? And why scream, as those people will be screaming, when you can just stay silent? And no one will know. No one will hear or see how pathetically broken you will be without light. Don't feel sorry for me, like I know some of you will, feel sorry for yourself. Cry, if you want to. But enjoy your light, sit by the streetlights and bask in the sun... While you can. Because the world will turn barren, the universe will grow cold and dark... Much sooner than you think.

Goodnight.