How many nights do you stare at the moon?

.Eight Light-bulbs.

He sat in his rickety two-story house and he was happy. Planks of wood were nailed over the windows; the chimney bricks fell every few days, either through the roof or down into a pile near the front door, and everything smelled of age. The house was very old but he was very young.

I’m not that young, he scowls over my shoulder, and I tell him to quieten because this is my story.

So he was young. He sat in a room upstairs that was absolutely empty apart from eight light-bulbs attached to string and tied to the ceiling.

He was young, alone, sitting in an empty room and he was squinting. He’s the forgetful type (you are); he’d rather play with paper dolls than turn up at an eye appointment.

But he was not alone. No, someone found his weary house that smelled old and decided to let herself in. She was brave, or foolish. Sometimes bravery can seem like foolishness until victory, but whether she was brave and foolish or one or the other is beside the point. She opened that squeaky door and walked through the narrow, dark, eerie hallway, and she was quite ignorant of the faceless portraits hanging on the walls and the broken lamps scattered about.

She was brave but she was also impatient.

She was not impatient, he scowls again. I remind him what I once said about scowling and I tell him that he is quite right, of course. One cannot assume impatience isn’t fear. And fear can make you fast.

I watch as he reads and assesses, and then I ask him if I can continue. He nods noncommittally.

So she was fearfully impatient, glancing around and not seeing, wondering who could live in a place that echoes loudly and sighs despondently. She took the stairs quietly and crept past locked doors until she came to the room with the light. The room she had seen from outside in the darkness. She had counted the windows and now she was here, she was standing at the closed door but was not ready to open it.

He didn’t see the way her hands shook or hear her breath hitch in her throat. He was too busy sitting in his empty room staring at the light in his hands.

Light is power, he says from behind me. I smile because I know he wants my opinion so he can argue his point, and I continue.

So. She stood in the faded hallway with peeling flowered wallpaper and she took a deep breath to calm herself. Then she opened the door.

He turned around slowly, surprised at the spontaneous intrusion and stared at the girl who had just walked into the room with eight light bulbs.

“Oh,” she said when her eyes fell upon the lights hanging from the ceiling.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She looked down at him, crunched up on the floor in summer clothes while the snow fell outside. “You’re the boy with too many light bulbs.”

He watched her as she stood silent and still. He liked her sandals but couldn’t imagine her wearing anything else. “You’re the girl who lost her way.”

I could, he says, I imagined her wearing those lace-up shoes with flowers on the toes.

“You’ve got so many,” she remarked. Now that she had entered the room and found the light, she wasn’t afraid. She walked over to the nearest one and reached up, as high as she could, and because the ceiling was low she was able to touch it with her fingertips.

It went out.

“Oh!” she cried and jerked her hand away.

He leapt up, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to touch things that aren’t yours?!”

“I’m sorry!”

He stared at the dark globe and the shadows it cast and he felt something go out inside himself. He felt empty and he had never felt empty before.

“Get out! Go on! Who told you to come in anyway?”

She looked down at the worn floorboards and said, “It’s cold out there.”

“Yeah? Well you’re not welcome in here!”

She felt a sudden rise of anger at this stranger for telling her where could find welcome. Certainly, if the boy didn’t want her company then the walls and doorknobs would?

“Why shouldn’t I be allowed in here?” she retorted angrily and waved her hands about.

I found her hand gestures tiresome, he says and I tell him that the small, irksome habits of others are the things we miss the most.

Her hand grazed another light-bulb, as she had moved a few paces while talking, and it, too, went out.

“Stop!” he called, his eyes wide and frantic. “Don’t move!”

She stopped moving and caught sight of his left hand clutching something so hard that his knuckles were turning white. “You have a light yourself. Why are you so worried about these ones?”

He glared at the clumsy, impulsive girl who took up too much space. “There’s no room for you in here. Go!”

She laughed at his words, a giddy feeling bubbling up inside her as if she were a can of freshly opened soda, and she said, “There’s nothing but room in here.”

“It’s full!” he yelled. The emptiness he had felt before seemed to double as another set of shadows settled into the room. “Go away!”

“Stop telling me what to do! Didn’t your mother ever teach you to share?”

And this foolishly brave girl reached up to the third light, she pushed up on her toes as far as she could and stretched her arm as high as it would go, and she snatched it free from the string.

“STOP IT!”

Nearly half of the room was now bathed in blankets of black and he felt as though he had suddenly started falling.

I thought I would never breathe again, he says quietly. I tell him I remember and continue.

She looked down at her own dark light bulb, shook it carefully at first, glancing up at his as she did so, and when that didn’t bring it to life she brandished it so hard he thought it would break.

“Why did mine go out when yours is still alight?” she demanded.

He took a deep, trembling breath and said, “Leave n-” but he didn’t finish.

She had reached up once more while he had been steading his nerves and thinking up reasonable requests. This impatient yet courageous girl had reached up, as high as she could just like the last time, and yanked down the fourth light.

“NO!”

He lunged at her as the fourth bulb went out in her hands.

“Why does it keep doing that?!” she cried in frustration, oblivious, yet again, to her surroundings.

It is hard to see in a room that is only half lit up and even harder for someone who spends all of his time never seeing anything for how it really is. But fear made him strong.

She looked up to see his furious, blurry figure and she, too, felt fear. Fear pushed all the sensible thoughts out of her head like a dripping tap until the only thing that made sense for her to do was the one thing she shouldn’t.

She threw the two broken light-bulbs up into the air.

I pause and wait for him to comment. Surely there is something important to add at this crucial part of the story?

There is nothing, he says. I recognise the undertone in his voice and continue without a word.

So she had flung the two bulbs away in regrettable haste and they had sailed up into the light. He crashed into her as the two dark bulbs hit two light bulbs and there was a monstrous smashing noise that had never been heard before in such a dispirited and sensitive house.

They fell and glass rained down around them like the falling snow.

“WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING EVERYTHING!?” he shouted.

“Get off!” she screamed.

His free hand grabbed at her cardigan in rage and she, in turn, tried desperately to push him off with both of hers. Anger, like fear, enhances strength and he was overflowing. His lonely, sad, bright world had been safe without rash irresponsibility, her rash irresponsibility.

“WHY?!” he yelled with so much force that his throat ached, “WHY?!”

He glared, wide-eyed, down at her scrunched-up face streaming with tears, and he quite forgot himself. She stared transfixed up at all his fury and she watched as his left hand suddenly moved. His arm rose up, seemingly without instruction, while his right clenched and clawed, and the brightest light she had ever seen flew out of his grasp.

Shadows descended around them. She felt his other hand join its brother around her neck but she was waiting. Her eyes followed the glowing trail as it flew up to meet the others.

I would have killed her, he tells me.

And so he would have, had the last two light-bulbs not shattered upon impact and plunged them into darkness.