The Problem With LEDs by Gerry Hayes
The lights are not so piercing now. They struggle against even the flat gray of the day’s gloom. No need to look for broken bulbs. Twenty-first century. Light emitting diodes adorn the plastic Christmas tree. Clean, clinical, white light fights sharply with the pale day but fails to impact in its accustomed manner.
They fade very gradually to nothing before climbing back up again. It’s better than that frantic, feverish pattern. Who wants that?
She bought the crib when she was in Israel on business. It’s carved from olive-wood apparently. It sits next to the plastic tree with the slowly pulsing, palely envious, lights and neither one looks right.
I don’t believe in God. She does. I think. She used to, anyway.
I think about last night and wonder if it was my fault. It doesn’t feel like it but I suppose it’s possible. I’m probably not easy to live with. I used always be the grown-up after arguments. I used always be the one to instigate some sort of reconciliation. I was generally the first to say sorry.
I don’t really feel like saying sorry.
The day outside is uniformly leaden. A washed-out watercolour comprised only of one colour. Even the low clouds are featureless; a blank canvas biding its time for some change in the weather.
I think it might rain soon.
Inside, shadows without definition fill every corner. They have no edges, each a smooth transition from shadow to deeper shadow. It’s one of those days where you wonder how day can be defined in the almost-absence of light.
The problem with LEDs is that they’re cold. There’s no warmth there at all. I gaze at the tree and see no warmth. Even the shards that reflect from red and gold baubles seem somehow shrill.
I watch.
The LEDs ebb and flow cold light. I think of Sisyphus.
Getting up, I switch the lights to the fastest pattern.
–
Gerry Hayes mostly sits around all day and drinks tea. Occasionally, he writes stuff and sends it to strangers so they can humiliate him and debase his efforts. Apart from the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it’s not a bad life. Like I say, there’s tea. Gerry’s blog is stareintospace.com and you can have easily-digestible, bite-sized pieces of him at twitter.com/gerryhayes
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i was there within this story the whole time….i lived this little glimsp of life in this moment….very satisfying…very…thank you for sharing this
[...] My itty-bitty bit of flash fiction, The Problem With LEDs, has been published over at Metazen. [...]