Night Lights by Ancel K Houchen
“When the county announced that they were gonna be installing motion sensor streetlights along the road, I was good with it. My local Congressman said that the new ones would save energy because they don’t turn on unless something bigger than a Rottweiler passes by. It was a good idea. The old streetlights were just burning tax dollars lighting up empty sidewalks. They were dull and the light coming from them made my skin look yellow and sickly during my nighttime walks. Plus I like how less light at night makes the stars stand out better. When I sit on my porch they look like they’re just about ready fall out of the sky and right into my lap.
But now I don’t know if I like the new lights anymore. A few months after the county installed them they’ve stopped working. And what has me worried is, that I think it has something to do with that dream I keep having night after night. I used to have bad dreams when I was a kid. They were so bad my mom let me sleep with a nightlight right up till High School. I’d wake up sweating and shaking in my bed. When I got older I looked it up and found that my type of bad dreams had a name. They were called night terrors. I usually can’t remember the worst ones and this dream wasn’t nearly as bad as a night terror but still, I didn’t like any part of it.
I had stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to change when out of the corner of my eye I saw something large coming at me. Then pieces of glass went flying everywhere, getting in my clothes and hair it was like I was thrown into a washing machine that somebody set on spin, ‘cause all I saw was sky and ground, sky and ground over and over again until everything faded out.
That’s all I remember of it. Come to think of it, that’s just about all can I remember. I feel like that dream was the most important thing I did or the most real thing I’ve done in a long time. Now when I take my evening walks the streetlights don’t work, well at least for me but I can’t be too sure about that because I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone else on this road but me. And it seems like I’ve been out here walking alone in the dark for a very long time.”
End.