Not What She Meant

20251030

Written for Bradley Ramsey's "First Indulgence" event.

When the event happened, Mollie was curled up on her windowsill reading by streetlight. It was far past her bedtime, but her sitters never came in unless they saw her light on.
Twinkling pulled her from her swashbuckling escape. Shooting stars? She’d never seen shooting stars! But the sky was covered in dots of warm yellow, drifting like dandelion seeds.
Mollie closed her eyes and whispered “I wish mum and dad weren’t so busy with work.”
Down, down, the dots floated, ignoring the wind, until they finally touched down.
Then the pulse went off.
Mollie gasped, her eyes flying open just in time to see the street lights guttering out, along with every house on the street going dark. Including hers. She was plunged into a deep darkness foreign to her urban existence.
What had happened?
She got up, hands waving around at waist level as she shuffled towards her bed. Side lamp, side lamp… here!
But it didn’t turn on when she flicked the switch.
Must be a power outage.
Mollie was a big girl, and brave, and not at all worried by being alone in the dark. But something about the situation left her shivering. So she crept to the door and peeped out into the hall.
“K-Kimmie?”
“Shit - you ok??” Kimberly’s voice echoed from downstairs.
“Yeah. When will the power come back?”
“Um.”
It was a heavy ‘um’, dripping with uncertainty and unease. Mollie’s shivers deepened.
“I don’t… my phone got knocked out with everything else, I don’t know if…”
“Huh?” Mollie shuffled down the hall, one hand on the wall for guidance and reassurance. “Why’d your phone go out? Was it charging?”
“No, no, it… did you see that flash?”
“…Yeah.”
Thankfully Kimberly didn’t tell her off for not being asleep. Instead she said “Whatever that was, it bricked all the electrics. My phone’s dead. I don’t know if I can get it to turn back on. So, um, I can’t look for news on the… blackout. Or call your parents.”
Mollie bit her lip. “What about the hospital?”
“I… don’t know. We could go outside and look?”
“Yeah.”
Mollie’s house was on a hill. You could see most of the city laid out like a giant bowl of light.
Except now the light was gone.
Mollie clutched Kimberly’s hand and stared out across the darkness. The hospital should be… there. It probably was still there, none of the buildings on the street had vanished, so… But if it didn’t have power, the patients mum and dad were looking after would…
With there being nothing to see, she didn’t realise her eyes were full of tears until they overflowed.
“I’m sorry!” She wailed at the sky. “I didn’t mean it! I didn’t want you to hurt people!”
“Mollie!” Kimberly pulled her into a tight hug. “What’s wrong? What’re you talking about?”
Between sobs and hiccups Mollie confessed. About staying up late, and reading, and wishing on the lights.
“Oh… pumpkin, this… I’m sure this isn’t your fault.” Kimberly promised. “It looks like those lights went down everywhere. This… this didn’t happen because you made a wish, ok?”
Mollie mumbled doubt, but didn’t resist as Kimberly tugged her back inside.
“Ok, let me think.” Kimberly took a deep breath. “Do your parents have any candles?”
“Uh… mummy has smelly tea lights.”
“Sure, those’ll work. Do you know where she keeps them?”
It took an indeterminate eternity of fumbling and feeling through cupboards until finally one opened with a billow of floral and cinnamon. “Here!”
“Please, please, let there be matches...” Kimberly muttered, her fingers carefully checking each shelf. A paper box. It rattled!
As the match sputtered to life they both sighed with relief. Kimberly grabbed out a handful of candles, with no care to the fragrances, and lit them. Once they were arranged around the room, casting a gentle bolstering glow, things felt much less scary.
But Kimberly didn’t look comforted, her expression haunted as she stared out the window at the dark city.
“What do I do?” She mumbled. “My parents will be worrying, but…”
Mollie gulped and did her best to sound brave. “Do you need to go home?”
Kimberly jumped and firmly said “Oh, no, no, I can’t leave you on your own.”
Phew.
“But…” Kimberly frowned and tugged on her lower lip, then decided “It’ll be better to have more people. So I’ll write a letter for your parents, and then you come home with me, ok? W-we’ll have a sleepover until your parents come to collect you.”
“…Ok.”
No ‘fun’ labels could hide the fact this was an emergency. Mollie knew how important electricity was for the hospital. And everywhere else.
“Let me see if the car still starts. You go pack a bag with whatever stuff you need, ok?”
“Ok.”
With a tea light in her palm, a tiny dot of clarity in this utter umbra, Mollie returned to her room and emptied her backpack.
What about school? With nobody able to record attendance, or print out worksheets, or watch videos?
She shrugged this off. It wasn’t important. Not now.
Clothes. Should she get dressed? No electricity meant no heating. So she got changed into warm clothes and put her winter pjs in the bag.
Wuffles. While Mollie was a big girl and didn’t need Wuffles to sleep anymore, she wasn’t going to leave him all alone in the dark. He’d get scared. She hugged him tight before tucking him into the bag.
Lastly, the book she’d been reading. An escape from the world felt sweeter now than ever.
When she got back downstairs Kimberly announced “Car won’t start. And, I mean, even if it did we wouldn’t have lights, so… But it’s not that far. I’ve left a note for your parents and packed some candles and snacks.”
No electricity, no fridges. For medicine or food.
Mollie took Kimberly’s hand and followed her out the door, into a world which suddenly felt very, very big and very, very dark.

Prompt was “Over the course of a single night, strange lights appear in the skies all over Planet Earth. Before the sun can rise the next day, an EMP knocks out power across the globe, sending humanity back to the dark ages…”