Photo by Eyasu Etsub on Unsplash

The light went out.

Thankfully, he had prepared for such emergencies.
He owned a flashlight. He was an organized guy.

Finding the nearest wall to lean on, he followed it towards the kitchen. Once there, his fingertips found the counter. They felt for the top drawer on the far left. Soon, the drawer handle rested firmly in the palm of his hand. Feeling the reassuring, cold steel, he pulled. The drawer opened. And yes, inside was the flashlight.

He turned it on and walked back towards the hallway. Grateful to have light again.
However, he had forgotten all about the garbage bag he had prepared for disposal. As he turned right towards the front door in the hallway, his gaze focused forward on the beam of light, he tripped over the large bag and fell. The flashlight hit the ground. The bulb broke. The light went out again.

As far as he remembered, there were matches and candles in one of the other kitchen drawers. He got up from the floor and kicked the air until he hit the garbage bag. It tumbled out of the way. His path now unobstructed, he felt his way back to the kitchen counter. Growing increasingly irritated, he opened drawers roughly with contents falling painfully onto his bare feet. The fourth drawer held the matches and candles he had remembered. He lit a match, burned his fingers, but managed to light the stubborn wick. Instantly, his home was illuminated again, albeit minimal and flickering.

But enough to carefully venture out into the hallway once more. He made his way to the front door and opened it. From the porch he could just make out his nearest neighbor’s house in the distance. The lights seemed to be on over there. This wasn’t a general power outage affecting the entire neighborhood.

The wind almost snuffed out the candle, forcing him to step back inside quickly. He needed to check the fuses in the basement. But could they all have blown at the same time? He quickly walked from room to room. None of the light switches worked. The house was utterly without sound. No humming refrigerator, no softly buzzing appliances.

Back in the hallway, he opened the door to the basement and, carefully, made his way down the raw concrete stairway into the dank, windowless underworld. The candle flickered and was almost blown out twice due to a slight draft following him from the ground floor like a whispering wave.

He opened the fuse box and was astonished to see nothing. All sockets were empty. All spares were gone.

Instead, a handwritten note inside the fuse box read, “You made it this far. Come into the boiler room.”
What? Why? Who was toying with him?
He walked down the hallway, carefully protecting the candlelight with the cup of his hand.
At the end of the short hallway was the boiler room.
The metal door stood open.
It shouldn’t be open.
Fear and unease almost made him turn around right then and there, but curiosity and mounting confusion drove him forward.

He stepped into the boiler room. Nothing but darkness.
He said, “Hello?”
No answer.
He took a few more steps.

The door behind him slammed shut with a bang. As he whirled around, he heard the outside bolts sliding into place.

The candle flickered violently, smothered, on the brink of going out. It gave just enough light so he could see a poster on the door. Large, black letters proclaimed:

“Now you have more time than you think.”

The candle didn’t recover. It suffocated.

The matches were in the kitchen.

The ordeal began.