And last night was fun, in a sheer, mind-numbing terror sort of way.

About a quarter of the way through Roswell the power started going out. I say started because it pulsed on and off repeatedly for about a minute before going out completely, creating an eerie strobe effect with the lights which was accompanied by an even eerier heartbeat effect with the surround sound speaker system. The lights flashing on and off helped me to see just long enough to make my way to the kitchen, clutching Fizgig tightly along the way, and find the rechargeable flashlight. The power went out completely just as I reached for the flashlight, which turned out not to be charged and did not work. As I stood in the dark, clutching my powerless flashlight and my poodle and realizing that all of the lights on my end of the neighborhood were out and that it was really, REALLY dark and that I was going to have to hunt my car keys in the dark and then go outside in the dark to my dark car to get my Maglight and that except for the pets I was alone in my mother's big-ass house and it was DARK, I realized that the situation lended itself to a horror movie plot, and I was much afraid.

Have I mentioned I'm afraid of the dark?

So I started talking to my little dog, telling him how everything was going to be okay, as I fumbled around to find my keys (thankfully this time they were exactly where I thought I'd left them), and then I took Jake, my mom's black lab/chow/possibly some pitbull mix, with me and made it to the car. When I got there, it still felt exactly like a horror movie, so I got inside the car (checking the back seat first for killers) and locked it. After a few minutes I got hot, and sat there debating whether to just start the car and run the air conditioning and stay in there until the power returned, or to drive around for a while and see how far the power outage went, or to quit being a baby and go back in the house, when I saw several flashlights coming towards me from different directions. Soon several neighbors, including my brother and his son, converged on my mom's driveway to ponder the loss of power. I got out of the car and tried to accuse my nephew of causing it, to which he replied "Nuh-uh!" A compelling argument, so I dropped it. My neighbor insisted that I go in the house and pull the main breaker switch in case of a power surge when it finally came back on. I told him that I didn't know where it was and that everything was plugged into surge protectors anyway, and considered the matter dropped. Then my oh-so-helpful big brother piped up and said the fuse box was in the garage and really easy to get to, at which point my neighbor insisted on following me into the garage to help me pull the switch. Then he went away, and my brother and nephew went home, and I was again alone in the dark.

This time I was armed with my big-ass flashlight/battering club, so I went up to my attic space and gathered up several candles and brought them down stairs. I set them around the front room and lit them, and once satisfied with the quality and quantity of light in the room, I settled down to read Batman comics, and convinced myself that all was well and that life was not like a horror movie.

Then the dogs had to go outside.

I couldn't just let Fizgig out because he's tiny and hard to see, and not quite bright enough to move out from in front of approaching vehicles. So I had to go outside, too. Of course Jake went with us, and then he took off. Jake is very black, and it was very dark, and I didn't want to leave him out because he would be hard to see and might get hit by a car. Plus I'd heard gun shots (not really alarming seeing as how my neighborhood rests on a cliff that overlooks woods where lots of hunting takes place) and worried that one of the gun toting neighbors who didn't like Jake in the first place might use this as an excuse to off him. So I figured I should go look for him and bring him home.

I got to the end of the driveway when I heard rustling in the tall grass across the street. I shined my light over there and called out for Jake to come. Something ran out of the grass, and it wasn't Jake. It looked much more like a person than a dog. So I figured Jake was a big dog and could take care of himself, grabbed Fizgig, and ran inside and locked the door.

Again, I was much afraid.

Now for the anti-climax: I sat in the dark, having blown the candles out so I could look out the window without being seen, hoping that whoever had been lurking in the grass was not Michael Myers and was not coming for me, and eventually Jake came back and whined to be let in. I let him in and for about two minutes decided that everything was okay, then he started barking uncontrollably at something outside. So I grabbed my poodle and my comics and my flashlight/weapon and ran to my mommy's bedroom where I camped out behind locked doors reading Batman by flashlight until, simultaneously, the power came back on and my mommy came home.

Life is not a bad horror movie; but I'm still afraid of the dark.