No More Time

Chapter 2

If daytime was dark in the streets of Hirkton, then night was even worse.

A lot of the street lamps had been uprooted by the event, and some of the remaining were still recovering from power failure. Only a minority were still able to give meaningful illumination. It didn't help that a lot of houses lacked electricity too. People used whatever they could find for light, such as lanterns and candles - or more commonly torches.

Chester was carrying a hefty one, powered by several 9V batteries. It was doing a good job of lighting up the narrow corridors of his grandmothers house. Standing at the edge of the staircase on the second floor, he could make out three rooms to the left hand side with another set of stairs at the end winding up to the right.

He hated this darkness. The meaning of pitch black hadn't really hit him until this event hit the earth. At 25 years old it wasn't because he was scared of the terrors that the dark could bring, instead it was the lack of technology that followed.  Although it wasn't so bad in the city where he lived as they had already started levelling out the pavements and restoring electricity to the vast majority of areas. However Hirkton was a rural town on the outskirts of city life, so they didn't have as many emergency services and often had to wait for outside help.

Chester ran his hand through his fluffy auburn hair, his face crumpled in a frown. He was trying to suppress the rising desire to go home, reminding himself that the only reason he was here was to take care of his grandmother. Her bad knee and old age meant that she found it hard to mobilise around her three story house, in which she lived alone. Now that there was an absence of electricity, it made her even more vulnerable.

Right now he was on a mission to find some very essential items for her - hot water bottles. No electricity meant no heating, so they were keeping warm the old fashioned way. The three rooms on the second floor consisted of a bathroom, his grandmothers room and a room full of his grandmothers junk, which was the room he needed.

As he stepped through the threshold his nose was attacked with the overwhelming stench of mothballs and musk. Dust flickered and danced in front of the yellow stream of light coming from his torch. Recalling where his grandmother had told him the hot water bottle was, Chester made his way over to a dressing table at the back of the room, picking his way over unknown objects littering the floor. Second drawer down in the old wooden dresser, just like she had said, was the familiar hard rubber and strong PVC smell. Chester immediately missed his electric powered blanket that warmed his double sized bed in minutes. But while he was in Hirkton hot water bottles wrapped in felt blankets would have to do. He sighed and made his way back downstairs.

***

"You took a while, Chet, I thought you'd gotten lost up there!" Chester's grandmother sat engulfed in a large green recliner that faced the living room door. Her long silver hair lay down her left arm. Her kind warm brown eyes were sunken in the wrinkly skin, but her smile still made her look radiant. Chester stood in the threshold of the door. He wanted to tell her he almost did get lost, with all of the junk that was up there. But he didn't dare want to hurt the feelings of the woman who raised him for fifteen years.

"I'm just going to fill these up." He said as he walked past her chair through the large living room. Towards the back of it he slowed down, remembering there was a dining room table which he had walked into too many times  in the past week. The glints of glass and silverware sitting on the table made him dread to think about the dust caked on it. He knew he should help with cleaning but the house was so big that he couldn't be bothered to do it by himself.

Guided by torchlight he walked through the double doors behind the table that lead to the kitchen and stopped to try and recall where the matches were.

"The matches are in the cabinet!" his grandmother called out. "Above the sink!"

He smiled, she was like a mind reader.  "Thanks Gran!"                                                            

Luckily the gas was still working and with the lighting of a match the hob was ablaze. He picked up the torch again to fill up the aluminium kettle. As he let it boil he took a moment to reminisce in his childhood.

"I think I'll make us some tea too Gran!"