When the Lights Go Out

     “It’s really starting to come down,” Natalie said as she watched the snow accumulate against the cedar trees, collecting along the tops of the branches and bowing them towards the ground.

         “Yes,” Tim responded, excitement glittering in his eyes. “Probably not long before the power goes.”

         Natalie nodded in agreement and shuffled her slippered feet to the kitchen. She counted: one, two, three jugs of water on the counter, along with two flashlights, four rechargeable LED lanterns, and a six-pack of tapered candles. Next, she found the junk drawer with its menagerie of things generally only useful once per year and searched for the batteries and matches.

         “I’m going to bring some more firewood inside,” Tim brushed past her with the log-collecting basket.

         Natalie rolled her eyes and smiled; she’d never understand why he enjoyed winter storms this much. They’d had a few of them since moving to the mountains, but they were nothing more than a night without power, huddled up with a book until the lanterns died.

         “Maybe it makes him feel like an old pioneer, roughing it in the wilderness,” she thought, and her smile widened. She dug through the drawer and pulled out two packs of Amazon Basics AA batteries and a box of large kitchen matches, still half full.

         “When did we buy these?” Natalie mumbled to no one. She couldn’t remember having ever purchased matches, they just seemed to appear from nowhere. Maybe they were left at the house by the previous owner? Yes, that seems right; every home purchase should come with a box of matches, ready and waiting for the day you decide to burn the place to the ground as we all inevitably will feel like doing someday.

         While she was still sifting through the drawer for the evening’s necessities, Tim returned with the basket full of dry fir logs and kindling shards.

         “Shit-shit-shit,” Tim was reciting in quick succession, one hand carrying the basket from the handle, the other cradling the bottom as the overweight load threatened to be the last the basket ever carried.

         “Are you about to break my basket,” Natalie asked, teasing Tim’s one-and-done motto.

         He made it to the living room and began stacking the wood in the corner close to the wood-burning stove he’d specially ordered when they remodeled the house. Its beautiful cast iron still gleamed, but the glass front was darkened with soot from the continuous burning it had endured this season. Winter heat was necessary nine months out of the year, here. But as long as they had firewood, they had a heat source; power outages were no big deal anymore.

         The days were still short in February, reaching total darkness by 4:30 in the afternoon. It was already 4:00 PM when the first flickering of lights occurred.

         “Ooo!” Tim sucked his breath in, like a child overjoyed at the sight of presents on Christmas morning.

         “I’m going to call Candice before it gets any worse, make sure she’s all set,” Natalie told Tim.

         Candice was their elderly neighbor who lived in a motorhome next door. It was the only way she managed to survive solely on her Social Security income. Natalie and Tim had taken a protective role in her life, treating her like their mothers who lived thousands of miles away. She was still independent at seventy-two years old, but age has a way of sneaking up on you and laying you flat when you least expect it. So, Nat and Tim offered help when she needed it but otherwise simply included her in their daily activities while living in a town that prided itself on its isolation.

         While the phone rang in her ear, Natalie walked to the pantry cupboards and browsed for something to snack on. Candice picked up the call after a handful of rings, sounding worried.

         “Hey Nat,” she answered.

         “Hey Candice, you ready for the blackout?”

We all knew it was coming; it was just a matter of being ready.

         “Yeah, blackout is accurate,” Candice laughed lightly.

         The only folks in town with whole-house generators were the ones running vacation rentals; the rest got by with smaller genies set up to run a few necessities like refrigerators and freezers stocked with a year’s worth of fresh elk meat. When the power lines went down in the mountain town, so did all sources of extraneous light; you’d be hard-pressed to see your own hand waving in front of your face.

         “I’m good over here,” Candice continued, “I have my Little Buddy heater ready to go. I wish this damn thermostat had a battery back-up – what’s the point of propane heat if I can’t use it when the power goes out?”

         “I know. Maybe we can try to find something to replace it with this weekend?”

“Oh, that’d be nice, Dear.”

“Okay, then,” Natalie said wrapping up the conversation to conserve the battery on her cell phone. “We’ll be here if you need anything, even if it’s just some company.”

         Before Candice could respond to Natalie’s attempt at ending the conversation, the lights flickered again. And again. Then they went out.

         “Ope, here we go,” Candice moaned in Natalie’s right ear while, in her left ear, Tim’s voice rang out, “Here we go!”

         Natalie couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled up from her chest at the opposing tones of the same words reaching her ears simultaneously. She said goodbye to Candice who was eager to settle down with her iPad and play her video poker game until she fell asleep in her chair. Not a bad idea, in Natalie’s opinion, except she preferred a dark, thrilling read to match the mood of the storm.

         Setting her phone on the counter, Natalie called out to Tim that she had the lanterns and flashlights stocked and ready to go on the kitchen countertop if he needed one.

         “I’m good, Babe,” he responded.

Tim was getting cozy in the living room, watching the bright glow of the burning wood accentuate the darkness that had quickly enveloped the house. Natalie joined him with a lantern and a handful of crackers in hand, trying to remember if her book was on her bedside table or the end table beside her rocking chair.

Seeing no book beside the rocker, she decided the book’s current position was exactly where she should be, as well: in the bedroom, under the wool blankets, with a half dozen pillows propping and enveloping her. Yes, it was time to settle down with another Mercy Kilpatrick book from Kendra Elliot and see what trouble the FBI agent could find herself in this time around. Natalie changed into her “power outage” flannel pajamas and skid-proof fuzzy pink socks and then slipped into the bed under the glow of the lantern beside her.

A few hours had passed, Tim having crawled into his side of the queen-sized bed and promptly passing out, while Natalie followed Mercy’s tale of returning to her hometown as the investigator of a heinous crime. The lantern began to dim, and she laid the book next to her hip before getting out of bed to fetch a fresh light source. With the lamp in hand, she maneuvered through the dimly lit hallway and was about to turn the corner into the kitchen when it suddenly lost its juice and everything was plunged into darkness.

“Shit,” Natalie whispered in frustration as she navigated the path, trying to precisely recall the location of the steps down into the sunken kitchen. She waited for her eyes to adjust, her hand on the wall for balance, and moved slowly around the hall corner. As she turned into the kitchen, she looked out the adjoining dining room window and saw two small lights bobbing around in her flowerbed. She froze in terror, knowing immediately that the moving targets were headlamps, on foreheads, attached to people who should not be standing amongst the dead ferns.

In the mountains, power failure meant more than frozen toes and spoiled milk; it also meant no flood lights on porches, no wireless networks to make up for spotty cell phone coverage, and no security cameras, alarms, or monitoring services. Natalie remained still while she strained her ears to hear through the glass. Low voices, not only in volume but also in tone – men who appeared tall and thin, and likely missing most of their teeth from the rampant methamphetamine usage common in their rural area.

“Go round back, they might’ve forgot to lock it again.”

“Again?” Natalie thought with rising alarm. Was this someone she knew? Or was this someone who’d unknowingly been inside her home before? Panic pricked at her bladder as the anglerfish figures crept around the side of the house towards the back porch. The first gangly shape reached the door and began jiggling the old knob while peering inside through the clear sections of beveled glass. She willed herself to step back into the hidden hallway to get Tim and the .357 Ruger revolver she kept tucked away in her nightstand, but before her feet could move, the lantern in her hand decided it had enough battery-life left in it to try to end her own.

The lantern gleamed brightly in her hand for a count of less than three before it went out again, the doorknob seizing its movement before Natalie heard the men outside decide it was now or never.

“Fuck this, just kick it!”

Her presence no longer a secret, Natalie screamed for Tim while breaking into a sprint down the hallway.

“Tim! Tim! Men! At the door!”

With her stupid sticky socks impeding her speed and nearly taking her down to kiss the laminate floors, she saw Tim’s figure jumping awkwardly out of the bed just as the first impact hit the door. She skidded into the doorway, holding the frame for balance as her knees tried to buckle beneath her. Another impact to the doorframe and she heard the wood splinter and break free of the deadbolt.

“Two men, outside,” she said between gasps.

“Inside,” Tim corrected her as he took two large steps to the closet where the shotgun and shells sat on the highest shelf out of curious view.

Natalie dashed to the little Ikea bedside table and hastily pulled the bottom drawer open and out onto the floor, the contents spilling wildly across her feet and under the bed. The shotgun was not kept loaded, but her revolver was meant to be ready for immediate use. Her shaking hands searched in the darkness for the cold metal machine as adrenaline coursed through her body and warmth spread down her legs, soaking into the pink and purple flannel pants.

“What could they want?” she kept thinking. She and Tim weren’t wealthy; they were modest folks with thrifted furniture, a cheap television, and no jewelry. Natalie didn’t even wear a wedding ring, opting for a tattooed band, instead. What could they possibly want from them?

In the background, Natalie could hear Tim fumbling around in the closet searching for the shells as they rolled from his grasp each time he came close to grabbing one. Despite her heightened senses, everything around her was blurred, like she was in a slow-motion bubble while the world outside the orb moved at hypersonic speed. Her peripheral vision caught movement in the doorway as the smell of wood sap and foul body odor gripped her throat.

“Found ya,” a voice announced like a melody.

She still hadn’t found the revolver.

“Tim,” Natalie screamed as terror coursed through her body.

Tim gave up finding the shells and instead held the shotgun like an axe and ran at the man, rotating it out and hitting the intruder in the shoulder. Natalie could not make out who was who anymore, only two shapes struggling, grunting, and cursing. She had forgotten there were two assailants until the second stepped into the room, the minuscule amount of moonlight glinting off a metal object in his hand. Tim and Natalie were not the only ones who were armed, but were, unfortunately, the only two not ready to defend themselves.

“There you are, you commie bitch,” the second man snarled, followed by a sharp sound piercing the air.

Natalie felt the air in her lungs vanish as the cold floor smashed against her left cheek. A new source of warmth was spreading across her chest and down her stomach as she stared under the bed, confused and growing colder at an alarming pace. As her mind tried to make sense of what was happening, the continuing struggle in the background growing dimmer to her ears, her eyes landed on the Ruger that had been flung from her drawer, lit by the once-again rekindled lantern she’d dropped in haste. She slowly reached her hand out and gripped the gun but kept her hand under the bed, not wanting the man to see it as he approached her soon-to-be lifeless body.

As he stepped closer, she could see his face and realized it did not belong to a stranger. Another gunshot rang out, but it was not the sound of a pistol. Tim had managed to get a round off from the shotgun. Hopefully, it was Tim. She heard a thud and someone scrambling towards the closet as Martin crouched down beside her.

“I want to see your face as the life leaches out of your body,” Martin said to Natalie.

Martin Glenscole. A local logger she’d recently investigated after the Department of Children and Family Services received an anonymous tip of child abuse within his household. The man who’d whipped and strangled his step-son to near death with a coaxial cable for sneaking a space heater into his bedroom so he wouldn’t freeze to death. The man who had lost his family and would likely lose his freedom within the next six months due to the impeccable case she’d built against him.

“Fucking meddlesome social workers, think you know how I should raise my kids. Fucking socialist slut,” he ranted at her, fixated on her face instead of her hands.

It all seemed so slow-moving: his movements, his words, her hands. She lifted her right arm off the floor, palm-up in a protective posture, and hoped her left hand was coordinated enough to get off one good shot. Martin was too distracted with her face, the blood, and the defensive imitation of her right hand to see it coming. Natalie swept the gun from under the bed and rolled slightly to the right, squaring her sight between Martin’s eyes, and squeezed the double-action trigger twice. A sticky warmth splattered across her face and arms, Martin’s body slumping to the floor beside her, as she dropped the weapon and felt the last of her energy fading.

“Natalie,” Tim shouted as he reached her, shaking her as she felt herself slipping into that deep sleep we all know we will fall into one day. “Wake up, Natalie! WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

And then she did. She woke, in her bed, with Mercy Kilpatrick lying quietly in the pages upon her chest and the lantern barely alive on her nightstand. Tim had his hands on her shoulders, towering over her looking alarmed and pissed off.

“For fuck sake, Natalie, you were thrashing and yelling and wouldn’t wake up!”

“It was a dream?”

“I don’t think I’d call that a dream, Nat,” Tim said as he laid down on his back, exasperation escaping his lips as his head hit the pillows.

“It was just a dream,” she said more to herself than Tim.

But Martin Glenscole was not a dream. Neither were his kids or his upcoming court dates.

“Tim,” she said, “We’ve gotta get out of this fucking town.”