The last of the batteries ran out seven hours ago. I only know because I had been counting the ticks of the wall clock in the dining room, where I spent most of the evening.
My sister had started burning candles just six hours after the sun didn’t rise last Monday. While everyone in town was immersed in mass hysteria, she was more worried about the darkness within the confines of our home. I overheard her telling our mother that she simply didn’t want anyone to trip and fall, but I’ve known about her fear of the night since she was a child. Thirty years later, she hadn’t shaken it, but there were more pressing matters at the moment.
Our final candle melted down days ago. Flashlights had been guiding us around the neighborhood until the panic from downtown inevitably crept closer to home. On Wednesday, the 76-year-old woman next door began boarding up her front door with wooden planks. When we saw the quiet man at the end of the street lining his yard with barbed wire, we stopped our neighborhood walks. There was nothing more to see or try to understand, and there were no answers in sight. The flashlights were best reserved for indoor use.
Now that they had died, everything was seemingly growing colder. The absence of the sun amplified the frigid winter air, but the artificial lights and the warmth of our home had been enough to maintain our sanity. Less than a full 24 hours without light, and everyone here was suddenly on edge.
Slowly, I walked down the hall in the darkness, grasping at the walls along the way. The chatter between my sister and mother faded as I rounded the corner into the kitchen. Fortunately, food was something that hadn’t become scarce yet. This was also the only room in the house that wasn’t shrouded in complete darkness. Rummaging through the fruit bowl, I pulled out a bruised apple. When I opened the drawer for a utensil, all of the knives were missing.