You awake. You can feel the time. It's 3:30 AM. You can hear the wind outside. You can hear the rain. You can hear the trees. You can hear the house creaking. You can hear the floorboards creaking. You can hear your own heartbeat. You can feel your own heartbeat. You can feel your own breath. You can feel your own body. You can feel your own mind. You can feel your own soul. You can feel your own existence. You can feel your own mortality. You can feel your own fear.
No thank you, Copilot
You awake. You can feel the time. It's the in-between time, after late and before early, the witching hour.
For a moment you float in the unknowing, senses still asleep. You guess at what stirred you. While scanning possibilities, the first sign comes into view. A droplet of sweat, which had in stealth been gathering on your right brow, finally gains the courage to leap into your eye.
The reason for your state is now clear. It is hot in here, hot and humid. You are suddenly aware that you are stuck to the sheets.
You let a moment pass. You gather no light from the room, yet a streetlight shines through the window.
You wish the cold would just return. You know it won't come back just from wishing. A man makes his own mark on the world. You set your mind to the work ahead.
Finally, you notice the room has no lights, yet the street remains illuminated. "So there's power," you may mutter.
Finally, up at once, to the window you stumble. It feels better to have the sheet off your bare back, but you still tingle with sweat that has nowhere to go.
The usual tricks, of tapping buttons and unplugging and replugging and whisper cursing, have the expected effect on the window unit. What a loathsome device is this miracle of human ingenuity. You curse the air conditioner, and William Carrier, once more for good measure.
You remember there's no light in the room. You remember another observation: the streetlights, which you know also derive their luminous product from electricity, seem unimplicated in whichever scheme has deprived you of cool air, and of light inside your room.
"Ah, you grouch, see's not so bad, this must be but an overused breaker. I knew I was asking too much from that circuit. I need only go flip a switch or so on the panel, and that box of cold will roar back to action! Not so bad"
And so, with the plan surely described, down to the basement you set. You leave the bedroom without a flashlight, and finding yourself now more distant from the windows which permit the light from the lamps functioning outside, regret leaving the bedroom without a flashlight. Flexible in the face of adversity, you turn back to your room, and collect the flashlight from the top drawer of the nightstand. Now you face the interior darkness duly equipped. "Silly, silly, traversing a power outage without a flashlight."
In the basement you find yourself wakeful, suddenly eerily aware of your surroundings. You imagine your feeling might be like that of a caveman awake despite a strong fire, unsure why the woods feel to be watching.
No breaker betrays the plot. They all seem properly closed. You toggle a few which you recall having a relation to the bedroom region of the house. You toggle the main breaker. None feel tripped. No lights return. "Well, it's night and the lights were switched off anyway." You toggle each breaker, hoping this will unlock the magical cold, but despairing all he while. You know a breaker will not deliver you.
Back up-the-stairs you trudge, despairing all the while. You have not forgotten the heat, or the cloying, sticking humidity. You remember them all quite well. You are shirtless and covered in sweat. If it were honey you're certain you'd feel less sticky all over.
You have trudged the stairs. You return to your room. There is no light in the room (though, you can see out the window, the street is clearly lit by operating electrical street lamps).
The room is still hot. You can't imagine where in a human body mercy might live. You would challenge John Carrier to a bloody duel if you could just find him. You would accept any rules he brought then kick and slash and shoot anyway. "I'm no gentleman," you shout.
You realize that air conditioners are quite loud. This has 2 immediate ramifications. Firstly, that if you did revive the electricity, you should expect to have heard something from the basement, making all that hopeful trudging unneeded. Secondly, the clattering, buzzing hum you hear out the window (the same window through which you are able to see the luminescent street) is not, most likely, the biblical locusts. Most likely, in addition to seeing the world lit by electricity, you have been listening to it be cooled through the same means.
This new realization feels more crushing than the others. Perhaps, the unease of the basement roused your final parts from slumbering stupor. All is felt now. All heat, all of the sizzling sweat.
You feel the warm, sticky sweat. Shirtless, you stand with no more shirt to remove.
Can you imagine the terror? You review what you know. It is hot and humid in your room. Your room has no light. Your neighbors are enjoying light and cold. Nobody is coming to save you. There is no tripped breaker responsible for your discomfort. You do not know how else to save yourself. You do not know what to do. If you cry, the tears will only add to the sweat already glistening on your forehead and cheeks. It's too hot to sniffle.
You curse Dave Carrier. You doubt he could have ever suffered as much as you do now.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, you remember that the motions that occur in the world occur as a product of actions from men. You derive a corrolary, that through inaction you will not create an effect.
At last you leap to the window, resolved to throw it open as a palliative measure. "An open window may allow some transfer of the heat and wet, which have lately gathered in this room in great surplus, to that well-lit street."
The window is fixed against your effort by screws and wedges and sealing tape, all ingenious fasteners applied in relation to encouraging the efficiency of the inoperating air conditioner you installed there. Perhaps Ryan Carrier is not solely responsible for your situation. You decide to curse him anyway.
This still won't be defeat. Defeat - that is the irreperable state. When nothing can be done, there's nothing to do. In defeat, you might therefore rest. It's too hot to rest, too hot and wet. Unable to rest, you know you can't be defeated.
By now the time is well past late, and swiftly approaching early. There's not nothing to do, as you just established, so there must be something to do, if you can only find it.
With such conclusion in head, you are sure of your suffering. Further, of your fate, are you also resolved. To the basement you set again. Out the front door you trek, into that lonely night. Sudden temperate air shocks you, and like varnish seals your sweat fast to your skin. Now in the open, you shiver for lack of sky holding you safe. Defiantly, you stare at the nearest transformer on a telephone pole, damning Josiah Carrier. In that instant, the issue is made apparent to you. The wires from that transformer to this house, well the wires strung for that journey, are visibly cleft asunder. Clearly lit by the streetlights, which are powered and operating, a section of the wires is lying across your walk. You assume, from observing a large metallic rock sitting on the downed section, that your sudden newfound heat and wetness, and sweat in your sleeping quarters, is attributable ultimately to an asteroid from space. You decide to thank Archibald Carrier, one of those men whose mark on the world is basically for the betterment of human conditions, for this new specimen of rock, which you may try to bring inside later.
You turn back inside. Early is only a few moments away, so you take this last opportunity to sit in the helpless, now cosmic, terror, before the sun and day begin to intrude and strip your night to mere forgotten annoyance.
For good measure, you curse Richard Carrier one last time, then retire to your sticky hot stifling bed.