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The power went out just after sunset.
One moment the house was normal—quiet, familiar, softly lit by the glow of evening screens—and the next, everything dropped into darkness.
No TV.
No Wi-Fi.
No hallway lights humming in the background.
Just silence and the sudden awareness of how much we rely on electricity to make a house feel ordinary.
I reached for my phone and turned on the flashlight, already thinking about candles.
That’s when I went into my son’s room.
Looking for Candles—and Finding Something Else Entirely
He was asleep.
Completely unaware of the blackout, curled up like nothing in the world had changed.
I knelt beside his bed and reached underneath, expecting the usual clutter: old toys, forgotten socks, maybe a box of art supplies.
Instead, my hand touched something hard.
And strange.
I pulled it out slowly.
The flashlight beam caught it immediately, and I froze.
It looked… wrong.
Jagged. Symmetrical. Covered in sharp-looking spikes that threw strange shadows across the walls. It had an almost mechanical design, like something between an alien artifact and a weapon from a science fiction film.