David woke up exhausted and disoriented. The room was dark and it took him a moment to realize that the utter darkness was a result of there being no power. The LED's on his alarm clock normally would allow him to get his bearings, at least, but the total absence of light furthered his confusion, not to mention the simple fact that he had no idea what time it was.
He briefly considered the merits of just rolling over and going back to sleep, but the feeling in his bladder told him that the attempt would be useless. He threw back the covers and swung his legs to the floor. Reaching to the nightstand, he found the alarm clock and felt for the cord to make sure it was still plugged in. It was.
Still trying to shake the sleep from his legs, David used the nightstand as a crutch to stand and make his way to the door to the master bathroom. Through the bathroom was a walk in closet and when he opened the door, he finally could see some light coming from a window in the closet. The light seemed muted and hazy and David was drawn to the window to see why. His eyes were still adjusting to the light when he looked out. The sky seemed to have a peculiar texture to it, like how the world looks right before a big thunderstorm at dusk, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky. He flipped the light switch in the closet to check the power, but the light didn't come on.
He made his way back to the bathroom and relieved himself before washing his hands and putting on some clean clothes. The reflection he saw in the mirror was not impressive, especially in the odd light. His short brown hair was prematurely turning grey, which was accented by the shadows and a three day old beard that looked particularly haggard this morning. His formerly trim and athletic body was getting soft in the wrong places and the sight of a small gut hanging over his belt line made him feel depressed. He vowed to not look in the mirror again.
He decided that a shower could wait until he figured out what was going on with the power. He assumed that his fiancee, Allison, was already downstairs working on the problem. She was reliable like that, he thought, always there to solve the practical problems. Unfortunately for David, it was often the impractical problems that caused him the biggest issues.
As he stumbled through the hazy darkness down the stairs, it seemed as though everything in the house had been moved about three feet. He had lived there for five years, but the hallway seemed a little longer, the stairs a little steeper and the railing didn't feel familiar under his hand. The absurd thought that he was in the wrong house briefly occurred to him until he remembered all of his own clothes hanging in the closet. He wrote off the feeling to the confusion of the morning and the darkness.
When he got down stairs and looked around, Allison was no where to be found. The clock on the mantle had stopped at 4:49, but David had no idea how long ago that was. He stupidly picked up the remote control and attempted to turn on the television. Nothing happened, of course.
David had been unhappy in his relationship with Allison recently, he just wasn't sure if he was ready for the "couples" lifestyle, and he vaguely wondered if she had finally had enough and left him. Even though he was the one that was unhappy with the status quo, the thought of Allison leaving him made him surprisingly unhappy.
David couldn't think of anything else to do, so he poured himself a bowl of cereal and hoped that the milk hadn't gone bad in the refrigerator yet. It still felt relatively cold to the touch, so he figured that he was ok. He emptied the carton into the bowl of cereal and went to the garage to throw away the empty carton. He was surprised to find that Allison's car was still in the garage.
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