Vasili Moschouris

Blackout



On the night the clock started tickIng, Eli and I were lying sprawled out on the bed, the light of our phones burning like bugzappers through the darkness of the bedroom.

“Oh God, Taylor,” Eli said, recoiling from his phone screen. “Did you see Garrett’s story?”

“Lemme see,” I replied. He tossed me his phone. My face contorted into a disgusted smirk as I peered at the zombie dudebro on the screen wearing my friend’s skin. “Oh, God,” I repeated. “Is he flexing?”

“I know, right? He looks like he’s taking a shit.”

“Do you think he’s doing that kissy-face on purpose?” “Definitely,” Eli replied with a snort. “Read the caption.” “‘Gym Life,’” I recited, stifling a laugh.

“It’s like he’s trying to be cliché,” Eli said.

“I don’t know,” I said, considering the image again. The Garrett in the picture was wearing a hat I’d never seen the real Garrett wear. It was an insignificant detail, if you really thought about it. I mean, he could wear a hat if he wanted to. But he never wanted to, that was the thing.

“What’s the verdict, Gandalf?” Eli asked. The name made me smirk; we’d just watched Lord of the Rings on our last date night.

“I think,” I replied, staring at the Garrett on the screen, “that he can’t tell the difference.”

Eli snorted, “Between what? Himself and a dumbbell?”

“Between himself and a cliché,” I said. I tossed Eli his phone back, but he was still looking at me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know...” I replied. “I mean, we know that’s not what he’s really like, that’s why it’s funny. But it’s not funny to him, ‘cause that’s what he wants people to see of him.”

My gaze had drifted along with my thoughts. I looked back at Eli and asked, “Does that make sense?”

“Are you high?” Eli asked. He cackled and I punched him in the shoulder.

I pulled up Instagram, having milked Snapchat for all its enjoyment. And then, as I scrolled through my feed, just as my eyes had glazed, and my thumb had settled into its routine of flying up and down across the screen, it happened:

2:00:00:00:00

The screen went black, and just like that, the numbers were there. Crimson red on the slab of black glass, like fires in the night. Like blood on the pavement.

“What the fuck?” said Eli. “Did you just get these—” “Numbers? Yeah, just now.” “Let me see.”

Eli chucked me his phone again, and I held it up to mine. The numbers were there too, burning like coals. And as I looked at them, they started to change.

1:07:23:59:59

“Is it—are they counting down?” I asked. Eli grabbed his phone from my hand. The red light of the flickering numbers lit his face from beneath like a campfire.

“What does it mean?” Eli asked.

“Maybe it’s some kind of viral marketing thing?” I said. “Y’know, like when the Blair Witch Project came out?”

“What the fuck is the Blair Witch Project?” Eli asked, taking my phone into his hand and comparing his to mine again.

“A movie from the 90s,” I replied. “Whatever. The point is it’s fake, It’s, like, the countdown to the iPhone Twenty or something.”

Eli had stopped listening. His eyes were narrowed at the screens he held in his hands. He was jamming the power button, but no matter how many times he pressed it, the numbers didn’t vanish from the screens.

“This is freaky,” he said. He looked up at me—like my kid sister when my mom had come home from the vet without her dog. Waiting for life’s blow to be softened. “Do you really think it’s—”

Suddenly, his eyes widened, and he screamed “Taylor, your watch!”

I looked at my wrist, and my mouth fell open. My watch was old. Digital, but old. Thing didn’t even count my steps or anything.

It might as well have had Hello Kitty plastered on it for all of its technological complexity. And yet, there it was: the countdown, crammed into that tiny screen.

“But how—?”

I froze, mid-sentence. Red light was spilling onto the floor of the hallway beyond the bedroom.

“No way,” I said, as I rose from the bed, transfixed. “What? What is it?” Eli asked.
I drifted from the bed and down the hall, where the numbers were waiting, winking at me from every corner of the tiny apartment: they stretched across the surface of the TV tucked into the corner; they scrunched themselves into the oven clock in the kitchen; they were even on the microwave timer.

I could barely breathe as I drifted through the red haze of the apartment. The numbers were taking me on a tour, like a theme park ride; every now and then they would slow me down, so I could take in each and every one of the screens. They guided me through the whole apartment, and then I found myself face to face with the TV. The star attraction.

I reached behind it and yanked its plug from the wall. But when I looked back at the screen, the numbers were still ticking away, completely unfazed by the lack of electricity.

A part of me wanted to scream, but I didn’t. I hadn’t expected this to have that simple of a solution. And as the numbers shrank and shrank, I knew that was what they wanted to show me.

“Jesus Christ!” Eli yelled from behind me, having finally entered the room. He rushed from the TV to the microwave to the oven to the laptop, his eyes glassy, his arms wrapped like pythons around his sides.

“Two weeks,” he said, after he’d inspected all the screens he could find. “Those numbers—it’s two weeks, right? What happens in two weeks?”

“I... I have no idea,” I replied.

In the silence that fell then, we heard footsteps and fevered voices in the rooms we were sandwiched between, as all around us the world began to see. And then, everything went quiet.

The sun rose and fell on the first day, and nobody said a word, nobody moved. Everyone just stared at the numbers, getting smaller and smaller—watching our time slip away.

1:06:12:42:21

At first, no one was sure what to do. Some of us, like me, tried to go on with our lives. I only lasted one day. The streets were barren. The air was thick with silence. What conversations could be heard were hurried and whispered—nobody wanted anyone else to know that they were talking about the countdown. It was a secret that everybody knew. It was the elephant in every room. Who or what had done it, what it was... what would happen when the clock ran down. These were the topics buzzing around that day, like flies around a carcass, with about as much insight.

I had never really noticed how many screens I was around every day until I tried to avoid looking at them: the TVs in the corner of every restaurant; the screens inside of passing car consoles; the camera monitors in supermarkets; and, though no one would have ever admitted to it, every now and then I would see someone pulling their phone from their pocket to stare at it, as if to make sure they weren’t dreaming, that the numbers were still there.

Halfway through the second day, Eli and I covered our TV with a blanket and taped over the smaller screens that dotted the apartment. That eased our consciences a little; we figured that if we couldn’t see it, we didn’t need to worry about it. But when the sun went down, and the red light crept into the room from around the corners of the blanket and beneath the edges of the duct tape, we dropped that notion. The next morning we spray-painted what we couldn’t live without and moved the TV out to the curb to be tossed out. There were screens waiting for us, outside of every door, sitting on every curb: Hundreds of TVs and computers, phones and game systems, the numbers dancing across every one of them in perfect sync.

No one ever came to pick them up.

00:05:07:32:58

The old dial radio was talking at us from the kitchen counter again. Eli was pulling a face and mouthing along to it to keep me entertained. He knew the speech by heart, as if it were from a movie he’d seen one too many times.

“At this time, the cause of the numbers’ appearance, as well as the nature of the countdown, remains unknown. Additionally, we can confirm that this is not localized within the continental United States; we have received correspondence from our allies reporting similar countdowns. The United States government urges its civilians to remain in their homes and dispose of any electronic screens...”

“Yadda yadda yadda,” Eli said, dropping his act and turning the dial at random.

“Hey!” I exclaimed. It had taken me ages to find the right channel. “What the hell?”

“As if you don’t have it memorized,” Eli snapped.

“Will you shut up?” I said as I wound the dial back to the emergency broadcast. “There might be something new.” “That’ll be the fucking day, won’t it.” Eli grumbled, leaning back in his chair and casting a mutinous look at the floor. There was silence between us as the rest of the announcement played. And sure enough, Eli was right. There wasn’t a shred of new information to be heard, and as the emergency services signal announced the end of the broadcast, and the radio fell into static, Eli looked back at it, his eyes suddenly wide.

“What if they did it?”

“What?” I asked, almost out of reflex, before I realized what he was really asking. “Are you—do you think the government did this?”

“Who else has the resources to pull this off? This is some deep state future techno shit!” Eli said.

“Uh, sure,” I said with a laugh, as part of me still entertained the idea that he was kidding.

But he wasn’t listening. He went on, his mind obviously on its own track, “It makes perfect sense, right? All that talk after the election, all the protests and shit—this is their way of keeping everyone in line!”

His voice rose to a shout as his thoughts flowed faster, and he stood in a flash, his chair crashing to the ground.

“Eli, you’re freaking me out,” I said. He must have realized it, because his face eased up a little. “Come on,” I went on, talking slow so every word would reach him. “You’ve got the radio speech by heart! It’s happening in other countries too, it’s happening everywhere!”

His breathing was still labored with the weight of his discovery, and I heard him mumble, “S’what they want us to think...” but his voice was softer than before, the fire within it quenched.

“It sucks, not being able to control this,” I said. “I get it. But let’s just chill out and let this run its course. That’s all we can do, right?”

I reached for his hand, but he moved his arm away from mine. I couldn’t tell if he meant to do it; his eyes were gleaming red as he stared out the window.

00:02:01:12:57

I sat on the floor, an in-progress chess game sitting before me. I was playing black, and Eli white. But he had abandoned his troops to glare through the window as another convoy of National Guardsmen rolled by. I wished he wouldn’t; we had just put up a thick black curtain to block out the light. Not that it made much difference: the glow from the street was so intense now that it bled right through the black cloth. Sometimes, it looked as if there were a giant, monolithic screen lodged into our wall.

“Ugh,” Eli said. “Just what we need: more of them. This’ll really make everyone feel better.”

“They’re just trying to keep a lid on everything,” I said.

Eli grunted, but didn’t move from the window. The features of his face were blurring in the wash of crimson from outside. “Come on, Eli,” I groaned. “We put that up for a reason.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “What do you mean, ‘keep a lid on everything?’” he asked, moving his face out of the red light and pointing it at me. His hand was still gripping the curtain tight, pulling it just far enough from the window to leave a great red stain the wall over his shoulder.

“Well, it’s almost over, isn’t it?” I replied, choosing my words as carefully as I could to avoid stirring his mind up with conspiracies again. “People aren’t just going to be scared anymore, you know? They just want to stop people from freaking out.”

Eli’s eyebrows narrowed. He turned away, pulling the curtain open to stare out the window again.

I sat back from the chessboard and caught myself reaching into my pocket for the phone I’d tossed into the trash a week earlier. I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared anywhere but at the red glow from the window. I settled on the chessboard: I had all but won the game; my forces had overwhelmed Eli’s, slowly but surely. There were a scarce few white pieces left on the field, and none that could last very long against my troops.

“...Do you remember that lockdown in middle school?” Eli asked. I looked up and found him staring at me again, with that wide, pleading look in his eyes.

“Which one?” I asked.

“When that guy got loose—that guy who shot his wife? Dave Frenza, I think?”

“Why are you so concerned about Dave Frenza?” I asked.

“I’m not,” he said. “Well, not about him. Remember when they said that he was on campus, and they turned the lights off and we hid under our desks? I still remember the sirens from outside, and the yelling, and the footsteps in the hallway—this feels like that, but like—times a million. I feel so helpless.”

“I...” I began, unsure of what I could say to that. After a moment, I managed to get out, “It’s... gonna be okay.”

Eli’s face fell, ever so slightly. He stared out of the window again, his face drenched in the red glow of the screens as he watched yet more National Guard rumble by.

00:00:01:00:00

Another explosion sounded in the distance, followed by a volley of what could only be gunfire. It almost sounded like fireworks. I was lying on the bed, trying to ignore the sounds and lights bursting through the window, but Eli was pacing back and forth across the room, checking the phone that he’d retrieved from the street the day before every so often.

“Less than an hour now,” he said. “Less than an hour, and it’s all over.”

I groaned at the sight of the red light in the room, “Don’t remind me.”

“What do you think’s gonna happen?” he asked, without a trace of the fear that same question had been dripping with the last time he’d asked it to me.

“I don’t want to know,” I replied. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to know. Just listen to what’s going on out there—”

“Oh, come on! Tay, listen, really listen!”

I did. A crackle of gunfire and a spattering of screams echoed up into the apartment, as if on his cue. Suddenly, Eli threw back the curtain, and the room flooded with crimson.

“The countdown isn’t for us, it’s for them!” he went on.

“And look—almost fifty minutes, now! That’s all they’ve got left! And then it’s all us.”

He turned away from the window and towards me, but the bloodred light was so intense now that it drowned out every shadow.

“We’ve got to get out there. We’ve got to be a part of this.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “No fucking way! We need to stay here, where it’s safe!”

But my words were lost on him by then. He ran across the room and threw the closet open, reaching up into its depths for something. I was about to ask what he was looking for, but before I could, he found it: as he turned away, I saw a flash of red across black metal as a handgun vanished into his jacket pocket.

“Oh, shit,” I gasped. “Where the hell did you get a gun?”

But he was already gone. I leapt from the bed and chased after him as he dashed down the stairs and out the door of the complex. He was picking up speed, whether to get away from me or get to wherever he was going, I wasn’t sure. It was even louder on the street; screams were mingling with the gunfire in the distance. The whole world turned red down there, as the light of the screens blared at us from every angle.

“Where are you going?” I yelled.

“To the roadblock,” he called back.

“To do what?” I asked. “Eli, they have machine guns!”

“They’re all getting hit tonight, Tay. All of them. We’re on some revolutionary shit. Some Return of the King shit.”

“The King wasn’t an anarchist in that movie, you asshole!” I yelled.

I shouted at him, I grabbed at him; for block after block I did everything I could to stop him, and I managed to slow him down ever so slightly, but in no time—no time at all—we were coming up on the roadblock.

00:00:00:05:02

“Stop!” someone called to us over a megaphone. “You’re in violation of your curfew! Turn around and get back to your homes right now!”

Eli reached into his pocket. The scarlet light was flashing across his eyes as they widened with exhilaration; across his teeth as his lips pulled back into a smile; across the black metal of the gun as he pulled it out of his pocket—

“No!” I yelled, grabbing his arm. I couldn’t let them see the gun. I had to turn him around, get him home—convince him of how crazy he was acting. “Eli, stop! Let’s go home, please—”

“You’re in violation of your curfew,” said the guardsman over the loudspeaker again as I struggled to rein Eli in. “Go home, now.”

I threw my entire weight onto Eli’s arm, but he still managed to push forward, to raise his arm into the air as he moved towards the barricade.

“Turn around, right now, or we open fire. Final warning,” came the guardsman’s voice again, echoing down at us through the street.

“GO TO HELL!” Eli screamed, his voice splintering as he finally managed to throw me off of him. He pointed his gun at them, his smile widening even further with every step he took.

I could turn him around, I was sure of it, if I could just get a hold of him. But as I ran in front of him to grab at his arm, there came a popping sound from behind, and a volley of bullets ripped up the pavement behind me. My back, my legs, my shoulders—suddenly, it was like they were all on fire, burning from the lights of the screens, and I collapsed onto the street.

Eli shouted and ran forwards, past me. There were more gunshots, more screams. More people had joined the fray. Maybe they’d been following us the whole time, and I hadn’t noticed them in my struggle to keep Eli away. But soon, everything was red. The feet falling in front of my face; the pavement being shredded by gunfire; the broken glass and metal shells; my blood. It was all red. All I could see was the screens, sitting there on the curb, not ten feet from my face.

And then, just like that:

00:00:00:00:00