Being 19 years old and barely a year out of high school, most of my time is spent working a part-time job, living with my family. Because of that, the house can get pretty damn cramped sometimes with how many people are walking around doing their own thing. Some way or another, there was always at least one another person nearby. I never realized just how much I’d come to appreciate and cling onto that feeling ever since everything happened.
It was 10 PM on a Saturday night, my mom had long settled into bed while my dad was staying up watching TV in the living room. I was in my bedroom playing a few games with my friends before I wound down for bed. I remember just how violent it was raining that night, I’ve always been one to leave the window open so I could listen to the sound of the droplets hitting against the ground, combined with the sounds of my parents shuffling around next door. Being too wrapped up in the conversation I was having with my friends at the time, I completely forgot just how rough the thunderstorm outside truly was, because right in the middle of my sentence , everything went out.
One moment, I was having a lighthearted, funny conversation with a friend, and the next, I was sitting in complete pitch dark, no light, no warning, and not even the sound of faint buzzing or air conditioning the house subtly gives off, all of my senses were wiped in an instant. To say I was startled by the void I was stuck in would be a fucking understatement. I’ve always been afraid of the dark, and situations like this, ever since I was a kid, would always scare the shit out of me. With my hands shaking, weaker than jelly, I slid my hand all around the desk to feel out for my phone, immediately flicking my flashlight on, just barely illuminating my bedroom. Upon looking outside my window, it wasn’t just my house, but everything else outside had been completely switched off, making it damn near impossible to see anything, not even a moon in sight.
Dazed, and panicked, I opened up my bedroom door and lit up the hallway leading to my parents room.
There wasn’t a single person in the room.
At first, I was confused. I heard everything my parents were doing, I knew for a fact my mom was reading in her room; she always is. Following my instinct, I take my phone and trudge through the pitch dark with my phone once more, walking down the stairs as the overwhelming silence rings my ears to a deafening degree. I felt so exposed, like every breath I took was a fatal mistake. There was no logic as to why, it just was.
As I walked down the flight of stairs to my living room, the sinking dread in my stomach was all but confirmed. The power was out, with the only thing keeping me from being stuck in pitch darkness being my phone at 38% battery, and everyone that was once in my house was gone.
I was alone.
Every single one of my worst nightmares had just come true, and been thrown on me in the absolute worst way possible. I didn’t know how to react, I don’t even know if I could react. All I could feel was this primal sense of dread and panic as I stare at the pitch dark, vacant living room. My entire body was frozen, too scared to even scream or start crying. I wanted to leave, I wanted to run out of my house as quick as possible to escape this feeling, but looking at all my options to leave put an even bigger pit in my stomach. Leaving through the front door meant needing to further walk downstairs into my house, a tight, claustrophobic space, with opening the door meaning I’d have to have my back turned to the basement.
The back door being an easy access sliding door, but taking that route would mean travelling through the dark, tree-filled snake trail to circle around to the other houses. No option seemed reasonable, but I had to leave. I needed to leave this house and find somewhere safe, where nothing could find me. When suddenly, without warning, the phone in my hand goes off.
It’s an alarm, the fucking emergency alert system alarm. It only plays the high-frequency tone, and it just continues to blare, and break the silence of my living room, and before I could even process it any further, the TV turns on, blaring the exact same alarm at an even louder volume. I couldn’t take it anymore; on instinct, I ran to the back door, trying to slide it open.
Locked.
No matter how much my hands tried fiddling with it, nothing would open it up. I wasn’t thinking straight anymore, it was leave now, or turn around and face something that I never want to see in my vision ever again. I lunged my entire body forwards, throwing myself against the glass sliding door; two pushes against the glass wall was all that was needed to break it open, and throw myself outside into the back yard. I could barely tell if the tingling sensation all over my body was my fight or flight, or the blood drawn from cutting myself as I ran. I didn’t care. I kept running as fast as I could into the darkness, everything becoming fuzzy, and faded in my memory, all up until there wasn’t a single thing I could remember after that.
Before I even knew it, I woke up in a hospital a few days later. According to my family, after the power outage, they thought I went missing during the middle of it all, only for my dad to find me after pulling apart my room for long enough. They found me in my closet in the midst of having a seizure; 911 was called immediately and I was taken to the hospital. I refuse to believe that was all that happened. Everything I experienced, everything I went through felt so fucking real, it was the most alive and panicked I had ever felt in a moment. I refuse to be by myself anymore, everywhere I go, I travel with either my parents, or a friend that happens to be nearby. I’ve moved my computer setup into my parents room so I don’t need to be by myself at late hours of the night again. No matter what, I never want to be alone during a power outage.