Prometheus Day

When Craig Mercer, from the Warramurra Power Plant, forgot to check the temperature of the cooling system, the siblings decided an adventure was in order.

The youngest child, Scotty, was scared of the dark, the demons that lurked in it. Recently he had watched Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and was now terrified of child-snatchers. Without distraction, the dark would make Scotty act just like their dog when a book was dropped. So much so that Scotty’s sister, Jamie, had called him Jumbo one time. They’d had a good laugh at that.

Jamie was the oldest in the house at the time of the black-out, a newly fourteen-year-old girl with amber eyes and a crooked smile that stretched to her eyebrows. She had come top in her class for Mathematics and was not afraid to let people know. She was in charge.

It was her idea to pretend the concrete slab of their backyard was a jungle. The most persistent blades of grass - the ones that managed to push through cracks in the paving - they were 100-year-old trees. And the siblings, they were adventurers.

When she told Scotty her idea he was ecstatic. He had never been camping before but he had read all of Al Koupacher’s Journey of a Thousand Suns adventure novels. The entire collection of the world book was proudly presented on his bookcase. A to Z. Adventure. It was the perfect distraction.

Jamie and Scotty busied themselves. They collected blankets and mattresses. They struggled to pull the mattresses out the back door and onto the slab. They were heavy and the door was precisely small enough to be a nuisance.

They didn’t have a tent. But Jamie had said that sleeping under the stars was better anyway. Scotty agreed without a thought. It was to be an adventure. The first of many.

The kids lay on their mattresses on the slab. Jamie looked to the sky, Jumbo by her side. Scotty looked to the sky. Every now and then his eyes flickered to his sister - then back up to the sky. He was doing it right.

They played noughts and crosses on the slab, using chalk their parents had bought for Scotty on his birthday the previous week. Jamie thought about losing on purpose. Her friends at school told her this is what she should do. She won.

Scotty didn’t mind, he was just excited to play, excited to learn. There were setbacks to every adventure he said. Always setbacks. When he finally did win, they both shrieked. It was worth something. Scotty knew this. Jamie made sure he knew, giving him a piece of the easter chocolate she had been saving as a reward.

The dark came and Scotty didn’t notice. He wasn’t scared. No time for that. No time at all. It did mean that they couldn’t play noughts and crosses anymore though.

Jamie looked to the stars. Scotty followed. The stars that night were brighter than usual. Jamie said it was light pollution - she learned about it in Geography. The lights of the city no longer drowned out the stars above. Not when the city was dark.

Thank you, Mr. Mercer. Thank you, for the stars.

Scotty liked to think they shone down for the two of them. That it was Al Koupacher blessing this adventure. Jamie said that that could also be true.

The two siblings stayed up till 9:30 pm. An adventure to say the least. They had talked about everything, from school to why the sun rose. Neither of them knew - it was fun to guess though. Jamie claimed it was “the gravitational pull of the earth” she didn’t know what this meant. She thought it sounded intelligent though. Scotty thought it much more likely it was Phoebus riding his chariot across the night sky, liberating the world from darkness.

He loved Greek myths.

His favorite was Prometheus - he was an adventurer. He brought light to the world. He was not afraid of anything. Prometheus was the king of fire, the king of light.

Whenever Scotty was dragged along to church he would think of Prometheus. On a rock, guts ripped out by the same vulture every day. A real sacrifice. A real Jesus.

Really, it was the fire of the matter that attracted him. It would be an exaggeration to claim he was a pyromaniac. But he was entranced by fire. He would carry a candle with him at all times. “You never knew,” he would squeak.

He never lit it but he took it everywhere, stowed carefully in his front right pocket. Whenever his father’s mates came around they would always make jokes and laugh. Scotty didn’t get the jokes but he laughed as well.

As the children grew older camping during blackouts became a tradition of sorts. A custom of the Johnson household. Scotty no longer feared these darknesses, rather looked forward to them, to the adventure, to the slab, to spending a night among the stars and his sister. It was his prayer before bed, every night he prayed for Mr. Mercer, he prayed for the lights to go black. Every so often, Prometheus would hear his prayers, every so often Prometheus would take back his gift for one night. One perfect night. One that Scotty would hold onto for the months to come.

On the second blackout, Scotty had beaten his sister at noughts and crosses after only 7 games. They had both shrieked and she had given Scotty a pen, one her best friend Penny had given her. Scotty placed this in his right pocket, beside his candle. He didn’t use it of course. He saved it, he might need it someday. “You never know,” he would say.

The second blackout had been an even bigger adventure than the first, they stayed up past 10 pm. 

A full year passed between the third and fourth blackouts. Scotty turned twelve and was slacking in his prayers, he only made time every third night. The pen and candle lay unused in his pocket.

As the Johnson children aged; the time between blackouts only increased. After the fifth, their parents replaced the slab with grass. To play noughts and crosses, they had to use paper. It was only then that Scotty would extract the pen from his right pocket and nestle the lid within the new forest of grass.

On what would have been the ninth blackout, Jamie wasn’t at home, she was out with her friends. When the blackout struck she told her friends it was “Prometheus day.” And that she must go home. Prometheus day was for her and Scotty.

She had got her provisional driver's license the month prior, and so of course she chose to drive home.

Mr. Mercer had made his mistake and so the street lights were off.  Jamie didn’t see the road curve off to the right. She didn’t see the tree, not until it was centimeters from her face. She only heard her own shriek. She thought of noughts and crosses, of an unburned candle. Then she didn’t.

That night Scotty would reach into his pocket and place his candle next to the hospital bed that Jamie lay in. He would burn one centimeter. He would lay next to Jamie during this time and look up to the sky with her.

The next night he would do the same and the same the night after that.

On the eleventh night, his candle would burn to a stub.

On the twelfth, his sister would wake.