Under the Flickering Light

### Under the Flickering Light I had just settled into the worn couch my grandma left me when the streetlight danced again, flickering in that way it did every few nights. People always brushed it off. 'Old wiring,' they said. No one noticed. But I did. And this time, I was ready. Living in a town like Evergreen Hills, you'd think excitement would be limited to the annual kids' bike parade. That's what most believed — until the flickers started talking to me. Not like in a creepy, whispered-in-the-dark kind of way, but more Morse code, blinking out patterns that caught my eye. Maybe just a random guess led me to notice, or all those hours struggling through a college engineering course I'd eventually flunked. Who knew it'd come in handy in small-town America? The first time I really cracked it was last Monday when the power went out during dinner. Isn't it funny how quickly hubbub turns to chaos when the lights go out? My fork clinked against my plate, missed by the chicken, and I started piecing together patterns. "Julia, you alright?" My old friend, Brian, nudged me as everyone here handled the outage with their phones' flashlight. I nodded, frying his hair with the beam of my eyes. "Anything interesting?" "Incendia," I murmured, as the bulbs started losing their breath again. "Huh?" Brian was munching away, not a clue his future was among the supervised. "Nothing, Brian," I shrugged. The next few days, I paid attention. Not just to the consistency; there was a message there. Each flicker was time in seconds, each pause a space between the words... Or numbers? That's when I realized Evergreen Hills was too quiet because someone wanted it that way. Everyone dismissed my findings as crazy-talk, but I took my intel to Mrs. Donahue up the street, who was always the town's faux-Miss Marple. An over-excitable garden lodge sixties woman but dang was she plugged-in. Found her poring over documents, old ones, splayed across her dining table like a proud teen showing off her collectibles. "Julia, have you ever wondered how people started thinking these were...well, just flickers?" She fluttered, waving a newspaper bearing a yellowed headline. "Signals, my dear," she added, as if imparting some dusty, arcane wisdom. I scuffed my sneakers on Grandmama's rug, soaking in my findings. ***My*** findings. "Ever read about _Project Evergreen_?" Mrs. Donahue's whisper carried the weight of gossip vastly unfinished. What started out as a simple flickering phenomenon unravelled into something Marvel in scale but all-too-much-ridiculous-spy-movie in seriousness. One evening amid the uninvited rain, I lured Brian along with the risk involved. As I predicted, the flickers pinpointed a cluster at the end of Pinelope Lane, a blackened, wooden box buried gallons deep under unruly hope for quiet life. "Julia, this is..." Brian was out of breath, spittle-shaped realization mixed with muddled disbelief. The machines still hummed, years behind their time but working across the networks, archives... and twigs. We ventured further, spying on faint blips of faces going about... routine. A camera spinning unsupervised recorded nothing unusual amid life's daily checkpoints. We survived days on phone calls, punishing search operations, and evasive scours through levels underground, encapsulated in feelings bubbling amidst a town unceremoniously revealed. ``` But the day came, and so did panic — it was controlled for days by regular flickers until what I stopped mid-scroll was unexpected. ``` Among fiery conversations built of commander's croons funnelled into discrete papers, I tiptoed through courses foregone and friends left behind. Brian struggled for lives left? That night was where good vs evil wore the faces of debate, the marketplace of ideas informed by regrets. . But Mrs. Donahue and Brian were there, peering over one clandestine array of wires connecting nothing of unique importance — with five computers in tow — all marking edits I had just planned. That night awarded freedoms because mistaken alignment foreboded one town's sake complete... I hadn't known. Took just the dim light from another familiar flicker flare to defuse chaos and release. Mrs. Donahue looked very smug as she finally broke a bit into her heirloom knickknack's whispers. Faces blurred by truth, sundering identities as the town struggled to stumble into... customs? With an untouched tear, I rushed through calls, eyes crinkled by a jubilant belief, "Are people aware now?" squeaked Brian, and we're friends again years mature. Evergreen Hills knew of flickers far too well now, and those made accountable dwelled into silence — because nothing said everything. Adventure reigned with triumph, suspect speech muted by familiar essence. **Grandmother's sofa remained unassuming spare... Now I knew.**