No warning hum, no gradual fading: an instant darkness that engulfed the entire house. An almost physical darkness that oppresses your eyes and disorients you. The refrigerator ceased its low hum, the clock stopped, and even the faint glow of the nightlights went out.
For a moment, I stood there, trying to adjust.
Then I remembered the candles under my son’s bed.
I walked slowly down the hallway, guided only by my memories and the blurry outlines of furniture I’d passed thousands of times. The house seemed different in the darkness: bigger, quieter, so strange that the slightest noise seemed amplified. Each footstep echoed a little too long, as if the walls were listening.
Arriving in his room, I carefully knelt down beside the bed. The air was still and slightly dusty, like in those forgotten places where things accumulate over time: lost socks, broken toys, various objects that children insist on calling “important,” even without being able to explain why.
I reached under the bed, expecting to find candles.
Instead, my fingers brushed against something cold.
Hard plastic.
I removed it slowly.
At first, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
It was a strange blue object, irregular, angular, and oddly unusual in appearance. It resembled nothing I could immediately categorize. Not a toy in the obvious sense of the word. Not a household item. Not something that belonged in a child’s bedroom, or even in an ordinary house.
Its shape was irregular, almost aggressive: jagged curves, sharp protrusions, and strange points that caught the faint light from my phone, giving it an almost lifelike appearance. The blue was deep and muted, but paradoxically intensified by the surrounding darkness, as if it absorbed my gaze rather than reflected it.
I slowly turned it over in my hands.
Nothing made sense.
No inscription. No markings. No instructions. No apparent function. Just an object that seemed to have a purpose, but refused to explain what it was.
For a few seconds, my mind did what it always does in the absence of information: it started inventing possibilities.
A broken electronic device?
A kind of experimental device?
