Where The Power Is

That night there was a power cut. They’d been getting more and more regular in recent weeks, so I wasn’t all that surprised when the living room, the whole house, the street beyond it, were plunged into darkness. I imagined the whole city falling into submerged, building by building, street by street, suburb by suburb, dominoes of illumination toppling. I knew there was a torch on the windowsill for just such an occasion as this, not to mention candles and matches in a kitchen drawer, but I didn’t go to them. Instead, I chose the darkness. I sat there for a long time, me and the silent TV. Two voids, staring into each other. 

Cars passing outside threw their headlights against the curtains, which were thin and let a lot of their brightness through. I opened them and watched the beams create bright spots which moved along the wall like searchlights in old prison break movies. 

And when she got home she was caught in one, looking side to side, edging to her left. But this time the light didn’t move. Caught!

        “Why don’t you close the curtains?” she asked, shielding her eyes with her right arm.

        “I did,” I told her. “Then I opened them again.”

        She sighed. “You make no sense sometimes.”

        “Maybe,” I conceded with a shrug. 

The light around her was growing as the car backed into the drive opposite. It seemed to me like she was glowing, emanating that bright disc like a force field. “You look like an alien,” I told her. 

She shook her head and though I couldn’t see it, I knew she rolled her eyes. “I’m going to get changed,” she said as she left the room.

We discussed getting a takeaway, but neither of us were particularly hungry. We ate bread with butter and jam and then had ice cream. My wife poured a glass of milk, but she only drank half so I finished it. We talked a little about our days, but both had been uneventful and we quickly lapsed into silence. 

“Shall we go out?” she asked after a while, as it was becoming clear to both of us that this outage would last some time.

        “Where?” 

        “I don’t know. Just out. It’s better than sitting in the dark.”

        “It’s dark all over,” I pointed out.

        She took my hand and tried to pull me up off the sofa. “Come on, it’ll be fun,” she said. “Where’s your sense of fun?”

        “I guess I outgrew it.”

        “Idiot,” she said, matter of fact, as I dragged myself up. 

As we walked we barely spoke, and when we did it was in hushed tones. It felt much later than it really was. The houses around us seemed abandoned. Small animals occasionally ran around the periphery of our vision. It was like we were the last people on Earth. She took my hand and I swung hers lightly in time with our steps. 

“This is nice,” she said.

        “It is, I agreed.”

We got to the park without me even realizing we were there. Somewhere close by we could hear singing, which followed us as we walked around the pond, a gentle splashing from the water serving as a counterpoint.

        I told her about how my grandmother used to bring me to a park near their house so we could feed bread to the ducks in the pond, but that all I was ever interested in was the frogs. I’d try to catch them. Occasionally I’d even manage, though I could never hold onto them for long. They always managed to leap out and escape.  

“You know, you’re not supposed to feed bread to ducks,” she said, giving me a little shove.

        “That wasn’t the point.”

        “I know,” she said. “I was just saying.”

        “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ve heard that.”

        “If there was light,” she said. “You’d see there are signs around the edge now, warning people not to give it to them.”

        “They always seemed to like it,” I pointed out.

        “My brother likes drinking and smoking.”

        I nodded and we lapsed into silence for a time. I thought maybe I could see the outline of one of the signs.

        “Anyway,” I said. “Giving them bread was a thing then. It would have been weird not to.”

        “I guess.”

When we came to the children’s play area, we sat side by side on swings. They creaked with our movement.

        “Do you think…” she stopped.

        I looked over at her. She was looking up into the night sky.

        “What?” I asked.

        “Nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

        “Everything matters,” I said.

        There was a pause, then we both started to laugh.

        “What was that?” she asked.

        “Deep shit,” I told her.

        “Nice try.”

        I stopped laughing and tried to look at her seriously. “I do what I can.”

        “When you can,” she said.

        I laughed again and then asked her. “what were you going to say before?”

        There was a pause before she answered. “I can’t remember.”

        “Really?”

        “Really.”  

        I nodded and started to swing myself, kicking my legs out and pulling them back.  

She was walking a few paces in front of me as we left the park through the back gate, into the narrow alley that would bring us behind the churchyard. The ground was soft beneath our feet and we had to tread carefully. I tried to stick to the edges to not get dirt on my trainers and jeans. She walked down the middle and skittered slightly like she was on ice. 

Suddenly fireworks started going off all around us. From the left, the right, from behind and in front. Really close. Arcing towards each other like some kind of battling tunnel. The bangs and the colours filled and refilled the sky and seemed to arc above us like the walls of a tunnel. 

        “Where did they all come from?” she asked, looking up.

        Her face flashed and glowed with the colours. A bright blue flower exploded just above our heads. So close we could feel its heat. Both of us ducked

“It’s like being at war,” she said. 

        I laughed and held her close to me. “It’s like the end of the world,” I told her. 

        We kissed, and I felt a passion that hadn’t been there for some time. I took her hand and we ran beneath the exploding sky, slipping and skidding in the mud and laughing like children until we came back onto the the pavement at the end of the high street.

        Opposite us was the cinema. The doors were wide open onto the dark cavern within and we crossed the road and walked in, still holding hands.

        Inside, there was nobody on the ticket counter or behind the concession stands. As we walked further in, the sound of the fireworks faded away. The automated ticket machines were silent shadowy slabs that watched us passively as we walked past. Somewhere inside we could hear laughter, but we turned away up a flight of stairs and into one of the screens.

        Without the usual dull illumination, we had to tread very carefully so as not to trip on the stairs. She stood tight behind me with a hand on my shoulder, breathing heavily, occasionally gasping as she stepped down.

        I guided us to seats, somewhere around the middle of the room and we sat deep in them and put our feet up on the ones in front, as if waiting for the ads to start. The screen, before us, was like super darkness within the darkness, sucking everything else in the room towards it, and I almost felt like I could feel myself being sucked in. next to me, she sunk even lower into her seat and rested her head against my arm. She said my name and I answered with hers.

        “Wake me when it starts,” she said.

        Her hand fell into my lap and I rubbed the top of it. “Sure,” I said.

        “Don’t forget,” she warned me. “I don’t want to miss anything.”