BACK TO VIOLET

By J.L. LaFazia

Sean awoke to the lights flashing in his bedroom. He jerked his body up to a sitting
position. The lights stopped flashing, and all was dark. He looked cautiously around.
A summer breeze blew in through his partially opened window. He swung his legs
over the edge of the bed and proceeded to the window. Pushing aside the curtains,
he looked out over the quiet neighborhood. From the second floor of this house at
the head of the cul-de-sac, he could see both rows of houses marching up the road
to the main avenue. The housing division was dark. No porch lights. No street
lamps. Even the moon was shy about its light.
The floor outside his door creaked. He turned to the door and jumped. The
startling sight was just his sister, Emily. She jumped in response, holding a trembling
hand over her heart. The taunt fear subsided, and Emily stepped into the room.
"Is it a blackout?" she asked.
"I think so." Sean turned back to the window. The large oak trees waved to the
melody of the wind.
The lights flickered again. But not in unison. First, the lights in the ceiling fan,
then the desk lamp, then the lamp on the nightstand. Lastly, the ceiling fan lights
flashed on again and stayed on, growing brighter and brighter. Emily and Sean
watched the lights until they became too bright and they had to look away; their
gaze taking them to the window again. Sean blinked rapidly to dispel the sting of
the light still lingering in front of his eyes. He scowled in confusion when he noticed
that no other light in all the neighborhood was on. Suddenly, the lights in his room
went out again.
He turned back to the ceiling fan. The filaments in the bulbs didn't glow orange
as they typically did before they completely waned to dark.
"What's going on?" asked Emily. Her voice quivered with trepidation.
Without a word in response, Sean walked deliberately to the bedroom door. Emily
followed close behind, hugging her brother's shoulder with her body. He peeked out
into the hallway. Darkness. He took a few steps out of the room. He stopped when
he saw the lights in the bathroom shimmer. When the lights stopped, he continued.
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Their parents bedroom lay ahead with the door closed. Light crept from the cracks
around the door. Like his ceiling fan incandescent, these grew brighter and brighter
until POP! The light went out with the sound of electric surge.
Sean approached the door. He whispered through, "Mom? Dad?"
No answer.
He turned the knob slowly and gave a slight push. He stared through the growing
gap in the door at his parents bed. The lights in the hall flashed on and off, startling
them both. The erratic flickering of the lights made it difficult for their eyes to adjust
to the dark. He looked back through his parents' bedroom door to the bed. He
squeezed his eyes closed, forcing his night vision to correct. Finally, he could see
the disheveled mess of blankets and headless pillows. A little less cautious, he
walked in the room and up to the bed to make sure his pupils weren't lying.
"Where are they?" Emily asked, staring at the empty king-size bed.
Sean slowly shook his head and shrugged.
Flashing reflections off the hallway walls called their attention back to the light.
Turning with a jerk, "Downstairs," Sean said.
He ran to the hall with Emily close behind. From the top of the stairs, the yellow
flashes of the entry lights reverberated with a corporeal beat. The beat of which
grew and grew causing the pounding in their brains to increase in intensity.
Shielding their ears with their hands didn't help. The pounding pulled them to the
floor. They squeezed their eyes shut as if the action suppressed the pain.
Then it stopped.
And with it, the pain. They opened their eyes and unstopped their ears, standing
up slowly. Gripping the banister in one hand, they descended as the sloth. Their
eyes rapidly focused from one light to the next as if this would desensitize their
surprise when it happened again. Stopping at the bottom floor, they continued to
hold to the rodden banister as they turned their heads this way and that. They
inspected the dining room, their gaze stopping at the sliding glass door. A ball of
light peeked through the part in the curtains. The orange light brightened their
faces as it grew bigger. Startled at being caught, the two siblings dashed into the
entry room and hid behind the wall that separated the entry from the kitchen.
Confused, Sean whispered to his sister, The light was coming from outside.
Then it went away. Sean peered around the corner. The floor just before the
basement door glowed in slow transitions of color. First purple. Then green. Now
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blue. Red. Orange. Back to violet. He proceeded into the dining area when a
crackling made him pause. Emily stayed back by the wall. Sean looked all around,
frantically trying to discover where the crackling was coming from. It was then that
he noticed the blurred burn marks along the walls and ceiling where wires met light
switches, outlets, and bulbsblack as the light outside.
The crackling subsided.
Emily quickly stepped up close to her brother as he now stood staring at the
basement door.
"What is it?" asked Emily.
Sean took another step toward the door, bringing his hand slowly to the knob. He
tapped it with his fingers before grabbing it whole-handedly. A slight creak of hinges
followed, but this itself was almost inaudible to the noise the closed door had been
suppressing. Humming and buzzing like a million bees came in waves from the
basement. The stairs illuminated with the dancing rainbow of lights. Sean and Emily
proceeded down the steps.
The downward slope of the ceiling blocked their view until they were to the
middle steps. They stopped here when the basement came into open view. Tiny
balls of light, varying in color, waxed and waned as they floated through the air,
creating a melodrama of fluorescence. Treading lightly through the starry opera,
Emily and Sean walked the basement in awe as new ones flicked on and others
faded out. They caught view of their parents in the opposite corner. Their arguing
was inaudiblebackup singers to this humming mash-up of fuzzy luminescence.
They almost interrupted their parents and ran to them, but the sight of their
dad's fingers and thumbs quelled their hasty advance. The tips were glowing white.
He held them out to his sides in the air. Dad suddenly looked up past his wife and
children to the small window ahead of and across the room from him. His gaze went
from window to window, following the ball of orange light. Sean looked to the
windows. At one, the outside light stopped and peered through, then went to the
next window and did the same until it came to the window where his father stood.
Unblinking and unfazed by the obtrusive light, his dad looked passed it to the
bespectacled face wielding the light.
Eyeglasses resting on the unusually large nose, the eyes widened when they
recognized his dad. "Hey, neighbor, what's-?" His dad's right hand shot out, his
fingers breaking through the double-pane and piercing the eyes of the nosy
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neighbor, sending shards of glass into the man's flesh. With a forceful pull, the
neighbor came through the window and landed with a thud onto the basement floor.
His flashlight crashed to the floor beside him and went out; as did the rest of the
lights. Twinkling filament dust floated to the floor. Like a shadow, his father stood in
front of the now bright moonlight pouring in through the window.
His eyes ablaze, he intoned with ferocity, sending a tinge of fear creeping down
their spines, "No one may know our secret!"

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