It was almost 8pm and I was crudely awakened from my much needed sleep. I rested early that day from the heavy drinking the day before. Still in my groggy state, I saw a blurred image of Emily before me.
“Dear, your aunt’s house is having a blackout and she wanted you to help her out…”
Coincidentally, I also recalled my mom told me the same morning that my aunt suspected her apartment is haunted. A female ghost has been infesting her place, she said. I wasn’t very sober at that moment, but I was alert enough to realize the bummer I was about to be in – my aunt’s haunted house is having a blackout, and she wants me to go fix it. Right… right…
It took Emily a few more minutes to persuade me, and I finally relented. Alright, I’m going over – I said. I won’t get my sleep if she keeps talking to me anyway, might as well do it, right? So I went over (her apartment is just 2 doors away from mine). It was pitch black when I reached there (no shit, that’s why it’s called a ‘blackout’). I immediately took charge and ordered everyone (my mom, Emily, my aunt and a neighbor) to help switching off appliances – and myself repeatedly yanking the tripped circuit breaker switch. A born leader that I am… everything seems to be leading to the right direction with my presence.
Anyway, the switch kept tripping for no apparent reason. I couldn’t seem to find the cause. Very spooky. Could it be some kind of evil spirit at work there? A fucking poltergeist – I thought. I wasn’t freaking out but, I was kind of annoyed already because I needed to get back to my sleep. Not wanting to waste anymore time, I decided to do the troubleshooting myself – maybe those housewives weren’t doing their job good enough. So I went scouring around the apartment in the dark by myself, armed with only a miniature torchlight.
I then headed towards the master bedroom (my cousin’s room). Her room was the center of the evil influence inside the apartment (that was what my aunt said). The portal to another dimension or something like that. So, I elevated the sense of caution when I entered my cousin’s room, lest there would be some fucking vampire pouncing down from the ceiling above. Emily and my aunt were following from behind. My mom was too freaked to even enter the house.
The moment I got inside the room, I could immediately smell the evil there. Stench of death. Bantal busuk, tilam kotor, moldy toilet, ughh… demonic indeed. I was thinking of burning the place down but, I didn’t have a lighter handy at that moment so, I scrapped the idea. Anyway, after a few careful scans in the dark, I managed to spot 2 switches that were still left in the ‘on’ position. That must be it – I thought. I flipped the first one off… which was suppose to be the toilet light. The second one was unreachable – it was the air conditioner power point located almost near to the ceiling. So, I asked my aunt to bring me a chair, stool or anything… so that I could reach the damn thing and switch it off.
She then went out from the room (supposedly to get a chair), but ended up chatting with my mom at the corridor. That kind of reinforced my belief that housewives can’t be fully relied on. *shakes head in disappointment*. I then asked Emily to look for a chair instead, and off she went. It didn’t take long for me to realize then, that I was the only one left in the room at that moment. This is not good – I thought. The weakest and most vulnerable moment for a person .. is when he’s alone deprived of sleep, without help. I was in some situation there – I could have bailed the fuck out of there, you know, but I didn’t.
It took Emily like, forever, before I decided to go get a chair myself. My wife, apparently, suddenly decided to be creative and went to look for a ladder – which was the reason why she took so long to get me a stool/chair. I gave her a short nag about why it is important to stay on a given objective and went on to grab a nearby stool – which I used to off the air con power point, and then scurried to flip on the main breaker switch. *SNAP* And there was light again.
My aunt then asked me what happened. I told her that the damn ghost shorted the switch… and she should get an electrician to fix it. I took my leave after that, leaving my aunt feeling awed and such…