The answer of course is to run fewer appliances at the same time, but she doesn’t discount a supernatural cause. She runs them all to hear the hum—the low background buzz that makes her feel much less alone. But now half the house is out, the half she finds herself in, and she thinks of what she needs to do next. Her own thoughts keep bad company now that he’s gone.
She thinks of all the different ways to be haunted while her sight adjusts, thinks of the believer’s argument that the eye is too complex to not just be designed. But what a simple body needs is a single cell to sense the shadows—to know what to move toward or from. That’s all the edge it needs.
She moves to the basement, hand tracing the wall, phone-glow guiding her steps down the stairs. She kneels in front of the panel like some sort of shrine, the switch box labeled with faded pencil from former inhabitants. And that’s as ghostly as it truly gets. The reset waits. She thinks it’s a form of prayer to type into the phone how to stop a circuit breaker from breaking. And maybe she’s right. What else is prayer but bringing back the light or asking not to let it fade in the first place?
Some hours she believes he’ll just come back. Some hours she thinks to just let go. She waits for the answers though there’s no signal down here. It’s a form of prayer to just be still. It’s a form of prayer to be silent, asking not to be broken but whole in the dark.
Aaron Sandberg has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Frog, Phantom Kangaroo, Qu, Asimov’s, No Contact, Alien Magazine, The Shore, The Offing, Sporklet, Crow & Cross Keys, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, you can see him—and his writing—on Instagram @aarondsandberg.
Lost Balloon 