I ran out of soda today. 

That’s not what disqualifies me — it’s just the starting point of the most recent crisis.  A crisis that most of you would be able to handle in a calm and rational manner, and really would be more of a minor annoyance.

As I said, this story begins in the way many of my stories begin: I woke up nearly out of soda.  That meant I had to find a way to get more. 

Fortunately, a way existed, and it was all set up.  In fact, our roommate was on his way home when I went upstairs to find appropriate out-in-the-world clothes. 

To find clothes, I needed to turn on the lights in the bedroom.

That’s when it happened.

The lights flickered.  Bright, dim, dimmer, half-bright.  All while a noise came from the switch.  A crackly sort of noise. 

A bad noise.

A noise I’d learned to fear in a situation that proved I’m terrible at handling a crisis anywhere.

Pretend I’m waving my hands here to indicate a flashback.  Also, that ‘flashback’ got all fade-away-echoey.

So there I was, half awake, having not slept all that well away from home.  We were at a friend’s house, and that friend and Gremlin had gone off to a breakfast buffet.  I was not hungry, as I’d just woken up, and eating is not my favourite activity in the first five hours of awakeness. 

I was outside, having a cigarette, when I heard a strange noise.  A noise that some low-level, instinctive part of me identified as very bad indeed. 

So I looked around, kinda wondering what it could be.  Something big in a tree?  A plastic bag caught on the fence in weirdly regional high wind?  Huh, there’s a big, flickery, yellow-red thing on that tree up there. Perhaps someone was practicing with their Tesla Coil.  Industrial popcorn popper?

Wait…flickery…where was that.

A fucking tree was on fire.  And the power line that ran through it was sparking.  And quirky, rational me?  Ran right out of my sphincter and bounded away like an innocent young unicorn. 

All that was left was puddle-of-anxiety me.  The me that needed help to figure out what to do, because I didn’t even know where the fuck I was. 

So I called the friend who lived there, because he was first in my phone’s list. 

He told me to call 911.  He also told me the address, but it didn’t stick.  And I didn’t think to look around for mail, so I ended up trotting down the street, barefoot and in sleep pants, neighbours-a-watchin’, all because they needed a street name to go with the number.  And then they needed to transfer me to the appropriate 911 office, because, oops, my phone was locked in to the wrong one.

Everything ended up okay.  The fire was out before the firemen even got there, and they couldn’t have done anything about it anyway.  I felt retarded, and everyone got a funny story about how I didn’t know what to do.

End Flashback.

So I froze in the bedroom, with the light switched firmly off.  And I was afraid to touch it, because ‘electrical sounds’ means ‘electricity’.  That means electrocution. 

I ran out and told Gremlin. 

He came in, switched it on and off a few times, and said it’d be okay while we went to get soda.

I was not convinced.  I couldn’t be convinced of anything a this point. 

I needed to take a whole dose of lorazepam.

Because we were still out of soda.  Soda was needed.  Troubleshooting could come later.  But I also needed pants, which lived in the bedroom, which was now the home of  an angry electricity-beast, and a potential fire-beast.

I did not want to go.  But I  had to anyway. 

I rushed through everything, terrified that I’d come home to a crater and a dead cat.  And it was the ‘dead cat’ part that hurt most.

The house was still there when we got back.  And, in a haze of panic and lorazepam, I played a game of Cards Against Humanity online with a few people. 

Then, I got right back to panic.  Which led to dumping on a few people, and some suggestions [they were all pretty helpful, but, honestly, telling me it’s going to be okay?  Not exactly the biggest help.  A rational part of my brain probably knows this, but panic isn’t rational, and there’s not much I can do except remove the source of the panic].

Remove the source of the panic.  Well, that means, what, finding out what was going on?  So I remove the plate and flick the switch to see if there are sparks. 

None that I could see.  Good or bad?  Probably good.  Might mean it’s the switch.  Maybe.  But…no, I do not feel safe yet.

That meant a trip to the back yard.

So I hired a native guide, put on my adventuring hat, and went out to the big metal box full of mystery switches, and played a game of ‘talk on the phone while trying to keep the flashlight app running’. 

And I found it. 

That’s the good news.  The power to that room should very much be off.  At the very least, the power to that switch seems to be off.  I won’t know for sure until I test it properly. 

Bad news, or possibly ‘terrible person to live with news’ — that breaker also controlled the lights to both bathrooms. 

So we’ll all be bathroomin’ in the dark until I get it fixed. 

As long as it’s just the switch, and not Electricity Gnomes, or wall dragons [they like to chew on electrical wiring — it’s like their catnip].

For now, I’m just going to, well, finish up this post, because here we are, roughly at realtime. I’m on the sofa, with the fan from the bedroom set up down here, so I can try to sleep in a place that isn’t, well, dead-but-most-certainly-plotting.

It’s going to be a long night.