Power outage.

I need to get this deadline finished. I need to stop procrastinating until the last minute, literally glued to my chair, going on betting sites and watching football or continuously checking my Instagram to see if she’s messaged me back yet. Checking the tinder I set to Cairo; I so wish I could visit the ancient Temple of Philae in Aswan. The wifi here is so rubbish. I’m back at my parent’s house, it’s rented, we’ve never owned a house, but I need to save on rent money until I save up enough and get a stable job. There’s a lake nearby, at the local park, used to give me the heebie-jeebies after I watched Friday the 13th. Jason Vorhees is such an amazing character but he’s ruined lakes for me ever since the cliffhanger – we just never know if he’s coming back out of that Minnesota lake do we? Ha, such a ridiculous thing. Damnit, the wifi has gone again. Oh and my laptop isn’t on charge anymore. I hear my brother shouting powers gone. Annoying. And out he goes to the electric cupboard to reset the power. It’s back on and I get on with my work…and procrastination. Off again, on again, off again, on again. What on earth is going on with the power?

I wake up the next morning. Mera, the girl from Cairo I’m madly in love with still hasn’t replied. It’s been 2 weeks now, my dream girl and she’s lesbian as well. I was in dreamland and abruptly she just never replied again after telling me how much she likes me. I was thinking soulmates. Ugh, no wifi again, power has gone again. So I’m sat here listening to some kind of commotion, the fridge and freezer have no power, and my dad has called the emergency plumber. Six hours later he arrives and tells us the cause of the continued power outages is the fridge. The huge, unnecessarily large fridge my other brother handed down to us when he got his new fridge. It could probably have been the cause of global warming let alone the power outages at our house. So at least we know the cause of the issue now and the simple solution of getting a new, smaller, fridge. Simple as that, so easy.

Three days later after a weekend salvaging the food from the fridge and freezer by storing it in cold areas of the house, the brand spanking new fridge arrives. At last, food back, normality returns. Days pass and all is well on the power front. Or so we thought. Again, the power starts flickering, its around midnight and no one can be arsed to go outside to check the power cupboard. What on earth is the issue. I knew that electrician was rubbish. I shout up to my brother and he agrees to go and check the electric cupboard despite the fact it’s raining and windy, storm kind of wind and rain.

I look at my watch in the darkness, it’s a sports watch so it glows in the dark. My parents have candles downstairs in case the power doesn’t come back on at all. Twiddling my thumbs here. Waiting. Waiting. 10 mins gone. Still nothing. What.is.he.doing. For god’s sake, hurry the hell up, how hard is it to pull a switch and get the power back on? So, lashing down with rain, still no sign of my brother or the power. He went out without a jacket or his phone. Seriously, what is he doing? Mum tells dad to go out and see what on earth he’s up to out there. Thunder and lightning now, maybe that caused the outage? So I go downstairs and it’s me and mum inside, again, waiting and waiting and waiting. In the darkness. This isn’t a typical suburban house, but we’re pretty much surrounded by houses albeit we actually don’t know any of our neighbours. Maybe they went to get help from one of them?

Half an hour passes, still nothing from either dad or my brother. This is seriously annoying. I hear a knock at the door suddenly. Ah finally, must be them! Or another electrician at least? I open the door, no one there. This is not the time to play knock down ginger. I peer out the door through the darkness and shout at the top of my lungs “daaaaaaad, buuuuuuuub, you there? Is that you?”. No answer, the wind’s howling, the rain lashing down, and I’m starting to wonder where the heck they are. I close the door and go back to my mum and tell her there was no one there. We’re both getting somewhat worried but also trying to remain calm and logical. SMASH. The sound of one of the upstairs windows breaking. Oh god. What the hell is going on. What do we do? I need my phone but its upstairs and it has possibly no charge. Use the landline? That doesn’t have any charge either. I’m frozen. No idea what to do. It must have been the storm that broke the window.

So I make my way upstairs and find my way to my room. The window is smashed and through the street light there’s something just in front of the window. I go closer to see what it is and try to find my phone. I get closer and ugh. What. What the. It’s a human hand and there’s a rock as well beside it. I hear my mum scream downstairs. It’s a blood curdling scream of terror and fear and pain. This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. I rush back downstairs, my phone has no charge but I need to find my mum and get the hell out of here.

No. No no no no. Mum. No. She’s slumped against the kitchen cabinet, her throat slit and her hand severed. She’s dead. She’s been killed. I turn around, my brother is standing there. Oh bub what is going on, what the hell is happening. He starts to laugh. Bub what. What are you laughing about. He points to a body on the floor. It’s our dad. He keeps laughing. I hear more laughing, like a chorus, a crowd, a braying crowd chanting and laughing. I run for the front door, but there they are. The crowd coming towards me, chanting and laughing and they grab me. Its all the neighbours. They’re not behaving normally. They’re, they’re in a trance. Some kind of trance. I’m trying to run through them but I can’t. One of them grabs me, I’ve seen him a few times, lives on my street and he works at the post office. And her, she’s a checkout operator at the local supermarket and lives next door.

They grab me and slam me down on the table. My brother turns to me and tells me he’s the king of chaos and the leader of demonic spirits, he starts chanting from a book, speaking backwards. He takes a sip from a cup and pours some of the liquid on a knife and puts it to my throat. I’m surrounded. It’s over.