Blackout at Cherry Estates: Part II

Monica Ellis had always had an irrational fear of the dark. At least, that's what her friends called it: irrational. To her, it seemed perfectly reasonable. For starters, it meant being unable to see where you were going. That meant – at best – stubbed toes, bruised kneecaps, jammed fingers, or all of the above. At worst...well...who could honestly say with complete confidence they knew what lay waiting in every dark space?

Take the hallway at Cherry Estates. Monica knew, with relative certainty, that it was about fifteen steps from the elevator to the turn, and then forty steps from the turn to her apartment door. But there was no way in hell she was going to make them shuffling along in the eclipse that had engulfed her home.

Sometimes her neighbours would leave their bicycles outside their doors, anticipating a green-friendly commute first thing in the morning. The building manager, Ashley, had warned them off from doing it because it was a fire hazard, but people rarely listened. Other times the housekeeping staff would leave extension cords in a tangled mess, either through carelessness or laziness.

Nope. Monica wouldn't take a chance on it. Aside from these obvious pitfalls, who was to say there weren't any flesh-eating zombies waiting to take a chunk out of her arm the moment she strayed into the unknown?

Okay, she admitted. That might be a little irrational.

Nevertheless, waiting out the power outage seemed reasonable. And, despite everything, she had to admit there were worse places to be caught in a blackout. For starters, she had made it off the elevator just as the lights clicked out. The idea of being trapped in a four-foot by two-foot metal coffin was far more alarming than her current situation. Thinking about it sure didn't help much, though.

Monica tucked her grocery bag close by her feet and leaned against the wall. Her reliable anchor. Now she just needed a distraction; her cellphone, consistent bastion against face-to-face interaction. It would give her the idling her mind badly needed.

She dug the electronic device from her purse and tapped the wake-up button. Nothing happened.

She checked the hold button with her index finger. It felt like it was in the off position.

Her mind went into a mix of exasperation and desperation. Dead. Not now, not now, not now...Okay. Just breathe. Just breathe...Monica inhaled through her nose. Out through her mouth. Deep, relaxing, cleansing exercises she'd learned through yoga took over, and she felt herself letting go of her stress.

Perhaps a bit too much. Her bladder ached in protest. Why me?

She briefly considered just holding it in, but the thought of the blackout lasting ten minutes, twenty minutes, an hour, or more told her there was no way that was going to happen. She wouldn't compromise her own dignity out of fear.Monica picked up her grocery bag and placed one trembling, hesitant hand on the wall. Her anchor. Fifteen steps to the turn. Move. She stretched out one leg tentatively, foot scuffing along the carpet, like a nervous rodent scurrying out from a burrow. Scuff-scuff-scuff. Her hand, pressed tight onto the textured wallpaper, scraped back a harmony to her stuttering feet.

One...two...three...

Monica thought there would at least be some kind of emergency backup for this kind of thing. A gas generator in the basement, or something. It just seemed like shoddy planning. She pushed forward.

Four...five...six...

Or at least there would be a glimmer of daylight, maybe peeking in through cracks under the doors of her neighbors' apartments. Surely at least one of them had left their blinds open during the day? It wasn't that late, was it?

Seven...eight...nine...

And speaking of neighbors, where the hell was the building manager in all of this? Couldn't they at least take the time to check in on everyone? Make sure they were all right? Hook up the aging P.A. system to whisper some words of comfort?

Ten...eleven...twelve...

Three more. Just three more to the turn. Three more to the turn, forty (phew) more to her door. Christ, she needed to pee. And if the building manager wasn't going to make some kind of rounds, why didn't at least one of her neighbors think to light a candle, or bring a flashlight? Something, anything. Why was it so completely, perfectly, dark?

Thirteen...fourteen...fifteen...

And suddenly there was light. Not a lot. But it gave her a point of reference. A sickly, reddish glow, some thirty feet ahead on the left. It didn't illuminate the path in front of her in the slightest, but at least she had a goal now.

She blinked, and it was gone.

Shit shit shit. Maybe it had just been colored spots in her vision. Like looking at a bright light and then away. Wait. Monica fumbled with her purse. Felt for a texture: smooth, flat, like a card. It flipped open, like a little pocket. A pocket of matches. She didn't smoke, but her friend Alice did, and Monica silently thanked her lucky stars that Alice refused to cave to pressure and threats of cancer.

She pulled out one of the precious wooden sticks and scratched it firmly against the pad of the matchbook. The result was less than she'd hoped for. She could barely see a foot in front of her face. In the movies, it always seemed like a match would at least provide a safety halo around the hero.

Photo by Andrés Nieto Porras licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

Monica muttered darkly under her breath and moved forward. Forty steps to the apartment. Just slightly under three times the distance she had just covered. Piece of cake.

The heat reached her fingers, and she dropped the match with a hiss. The flame sputtered out as it tumbled end over end to the carpet. Just as well. She didn't want to burn the place down.

Monica sucked on her fingertips and reached for another match, striking it to life. She raised it mid-waist, and looked ahead.

The light was back.

She could swear it had grown brighter from before, but at the same time it was by no means penetrating the darkness. If anything, it melded into it seamlessly, a blurry haze that should have been comforting but felt somehow uncertain.

Still, she'd take it.

The second match was nearly burnt out. She blew it out with a breath that was half-exhalation, half-shudder. Her anxiety was getting to her. She struck another match up and walked forward with a quicker pace.

The reddish glow ahead of her was throbbing. The brightness wasn't merely flickering, or pulsing, it was outright intruding on the hallway in a disturbing manner. Monica's lip unconsciously curled into an expression of disgust.

What the hell?

She shook her head, and the sensation passed, but the glow remained, steady now in its hue and intensity. Monica felt her mouth go dry. She kept moving forward. She was close enough now that she could make out a room number. 316.

Of course it was. Of course it was Grant Stebbings. The creepy, shifty, jobless guy with the pasty complexion, wandering eyes and (she suspected) equally wandering hands. It couldn't possibly have been the apartment of, say, sweet Maureen, or handsome Steve. No, that'd be asking too much. Instead, the only definition of light she found belonged to the twenty-something man she suspected was a pervert and satanist. Terrific.

Forget it, she urged herself. Just shuffle on past, find your door, get to the washroom.

Monica was right outside Grant's door now. The red luminescence blinked glimpses of her feet as she went past. From inside, she thought she could hear a loud buzzing. Monica hurried on, leaving Grant's apartment behind. She was in the home stretch now. Grant was 316. She was 323. She dropped her latest match and struck another, holding it up to the door next to her.

325.

Monica cursed and turned. She'd gone too far. She shuffled back one door worth.

321.

What the f...

The buzzing from Grant's door had caught up to her. Had it increased in volume, or was it because she'd moved closer?

She felt like her bladder was going to burst.

Screw it.

She moved quickly to Grant's door and knocked. "Grant?" She called out. "It's Monica. Look, I'm really sorry, but I can't seem to get into my place. It's just too dark."

Her only answer was the buzzing, now grown in pitch to the sound of a hornet's nest.

"Please, can I use your bathroom?"

She knocked again. The door fell open with a bang. The light vanished, but before it did she thought she caught a glimpse of a figure in the room beyond, head tilted back at an unnatural angle.

Fuck. This.

Monica turned to run, but her legs wouldn't obey the rest of her body. She managed a half-turn, in slow motion, and reached for the wall. Her anchor.

Her fingers clutched only empty space.

Where is the fucking hallway? Where is it? Where?

She fell forward and her groceries tumbled out of her bag and were immediately swallowed up by nothingness. She suddenly no longer felt the need to go to the bathroom. Monica choked out a humiliated, terror-laden sob and struggled to her feet.

Find the wall. Find the goddamn wall.

Her hands flapped from side to side, trying to find definition in the empty space. Even the floor seemed inconsistent. Her feet were rubbery. She stuck both hands out in front of her and stumbled forward, tears staining her cheeks.

Why is this happening to me?

She ran onwards, fingers spread out, still seeking something to latch onto. She collapsed to her knees and reached out one last time, and felt something wet.

What?

It was a surface. Slick, sticky, and uneven. Trembling, Monica felt her way around the edges. It was rounded. It had bumpy features. On top, it felt like a stringy, matted material. Hair.

Is this...a head?

She let go, and fell back. In the darkness, something was waiting to catch her.

No.

NO!

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