Blackout (and maybe a little loneliness)
I am playing piano, too many lights to be environmentally friendly are on around the house.
It’s just me. Mum, dad and Michael are at work. I’m meant to be somewhere else, but the continual rain and flash floods prevented me from going.
Then, it’s dark. No matter how dramatic I sound, this is how I felt and what I thought.
A (very) brief moment of fear runs through me until I realise what’s happening. Then my first thought is to find my mobile. One sentence repeats in my head: Get the mobile, and use its light to find candles. I know this house like the back of my hand, but I hold my hands out, groping at the darkness and stumbling across the hallway to the study, where I know my mobile was last.
In the study, my hands pass over papers and staplers until I grasp the phone and proceed to drop it. “Shit.” I fall automatically to my knees and fumble around for the smooth object.
When I get it, I use it and make my way into the kitchen. I pull the candles and a box of matches out. One by one, they glow in the dark.
The candles are really rather pretty. I sit there for possibly an hour watching the flames flicker about and the wax drip in interesting patterns. It sort of reminds me of those restaurants in movies, where there is a candle stuck in wine bottles on every table. The kind of scene where the diners lean slightly over the table, smiling at each other and basking in the golden glow from the flame.
I can’t help but feel a little lonely. I have no one to lean over the table with and smile at.