Solar Thief

By Sydney Fowler  

According to several sources, if the sun were to vanish instantaneously from the sky, we would still be able to see it for at least eight minutes. The moon would, by our standards, also go missing when no longer reflecting light from the sun. It would still technically be in the sky, but most people wouldn’t find this fact reassuring after already losing the sun. 

The sun had disappeared approximately nine minutes ago. A young man named Charlie Moss had begun counting the seconds after the sky had gone dark about sixty seconds ago. He had been blankly staring out of his kitchen window, waiting for the sound of his morning coffee to start pouring into his mug. He stopped counting after sixty-seven, quickly giving up the hope that the sun would flicker back on and grabbed his now finished coffee. 

Charlie stepped out onto his porch still wrapped up in a raggedy teal robe over his pajamas. He made sure to take a sip from his mug before observing his street.  

The lamps guarding the sidewalks on either side of the road were still on and several windows along the street lit up, casting geometrical shapes into the lawns in front of them. Good, electricity was still working. Charlie hadn’t bothered to check before walking out of the front door. 

Neighbors began spilling out of their homes, eyes immediately locked onto the sky. Charlie followed their attention and looked at the spot in the sky where the sun had been. Where it should have been. Instead, he could see a few faint stars looking back at him, waiting patiently for the chaos that was sure to unleash soon. Charlie also noticed the sky glowing in several spots along the horizon, the largest being in the direction of a decently sized city about twenty minutes away. 

“Charlie?” A voice called out from his driveway. Marching at a steady pace up the pavement was Hazel, the older woman living in the house next to his. She always approached him like this, steps full of purpose and face stern. She was still in her pajamas with a blanket draped over her shoulders. 

“What the hell happened to the sun?” She asked in such a way that Charlie almost believed that she suspected him of snatching it out of the sky himself. 

“Vanished,” he said flatly. “It just kinda…” He waved his hand in an odd fluent motion that resembled a magician making a coin disappear before taking another long drink of his coffee. Charlie found it difficult to think before he was able to consume at least one cup in the morning. 

They stood in silence for a minute with Hazel staring up at the sky from the bottom step of his porch while Charlie took another look down the street. A teenage girl was using her phone to take a photo of the empty sky and Charlie could only imagine how crazy social media was about to become. A woman clung to her partner’s side as she began to outwardly panic. A gruff looking man began rallying his neighbors together with passionate shouts of rage about the end times. He quickly decided to usher Hazel inside before things got too rowdy. 

He took the time to make two more cups of coffee, placing one in front of Hazel as she settled down at his kitchen table. Only two people lived in Charlie’s house, but Hazel had brought a folding chair from her shed due to her frequent visits for weekend brunch. It very quickly became a permanent eyesore in Charlie’s kitchen.  

“What happens now?” Hazel asked into her mug, looking past Charlie and out the window. 

“I don’t know,” Charlie replied bluntly. “It’s not like this has happened before. My best guess is probably something you don’t want to hear right now.” 

“Figures. You’ve always been a pessimist.” 

“I’m a realist, Hazel. I’m more curious as to where it went. The sun can’t just disappear without some kind of explanation, right?” 

“Of course.” She scoffed. Hazel looked around the kitchen for something before turning her attention back to Charlie. “Where’s the kid?” 

He stared at her confused before the realization that there was one person missing at the table. Louise should have already been in the kitchen eating breakfast right before the bus arrived to pick her up. Charlie must have skipped noticing that step in their morning routine when he was out on the porch. 

“Probably running late for school. It’s not that unusual for her,” he thought aloud, peering at the stairs in the house’s entrance. Had she even gotten up? 

“Not to tell you how to be a parent or anything, but I doubt she needs to go to school today.” Hazel grimaced when Charlie looked back at her, and he was quite sure their thought process was similar. Letting a small girl out of their sight any time soon was probably not the smartest idea. 

“Do you think she’s noticed?” 

“Charlie, she’s young, not stupid. If she’s awake right now, then she knows something is wrong.” 

“Right.” He muttered, abandoning his mug on the table and leaving the kitchen. “I’ll go get her.” 

Charlie felt his stomach tighten with nerves as he stopped halfway up the stairs. How exactly was he supposed to explain impending doom to a child who had just started second grade a few weeks ago? It obviously was a topic too confusing and heavy for her. At least that was what he believed. He had never been very good with children and understanding their thought process. 

Louise had been living with Charlie for only a few years, left in his care by Charlie’s older sister who dropped her daughter off before a month-long vacation in Europe. He quickly realized he was stuck with Louise permanently. His sister wouldn’t answer any attempts of contact he, or the rest of their family, had sent. Louise hadn’t seemed to mind, only asking Charlie a few times when her mother was coming to get her. No tears had been shed on her end, much to Charlie’s surprise, when he told her she wasn’t coming home. The subject had rarely been discussed again. 

He looked back down into the kitchen at Hazel, who was watching him with her normal stern expression. She rolled her eyes and stiffly motioned for him to keep walking, as if he had forgotten. He frowned in response. He wasn’t sure he wanted to have this conversation without backup in case he messed it up, but Hazel wasn’t one to coddle so he continued climbing. Once he reached Louise’s bedroom, he tapped on the door a few times and called out to his niece. 

After no answer for a few seconds Charlie tried again, this time opening the door thinking she must be asleep. It came to a quick stop, thumping against something blocking the entrance letting the door open just enough for him to see her bed was empty. 

“Louise?” He called out again, unsure of what to do. Was she even in the room? How would she have left if the door was blocked? He was on the verge of panicking when a response finally came from inside the room. 

“Hold on Uncle Charlie!” 

He now heard the sound of movement coming from inside as well, things being tossed around as well as something being closed. A moment later whatever was blocking the door had been moved and the door slowly swung open at the loss of the obstacle. 

Louise stood in front of the entrance, looking up at Charlie with an awkward toothy grin and hands behind her back. She was half dressed for the day, still in her pajama pants printed with stars. The flannel she had haphazardly put on was misbuttoned and one of her socks had somehow been put on backwards. She hadn’t even brushed her unruly hair back into the ponytail she normally wore to keep it out of her face. 

The room itself was a mess. A small chest used for her toys was now pushed behind the door. Several blankets had been ripped off the bed and were bundled together in the middle of the room to make some kind of weird nest. Louise’s lizard, a bearded dragon named Scratch who Charlie had gotten her during her first birthday living here, was nestled uncomfortably on top of the pile. 

A slight breeze hit Charlie’s skin from an open window he could have sworn was closed last night when he tucked her into bed. She must have noticed the sun wasn’t rising in the sky this morning and poked her head out to check. He sighed and made his way over to the window. 

“I’m guessing you saw that it’s still dark out,.” he said, looking out at the rooftop of the porch as he closed it. He noticed one of the shingles was oddly out of place, hanging on desperately by a single nail. In the back of his head, Charlie tried to recall if the weather had been rough enough lately to cause any kind of damage to the house. 

“Yeah…” Louise responded softly. When Charlie looked back at her she was now looking down at Scratch, her pet lizard. All evidence of the smile she had tried to keep on her face was gone. 

 Another pang of nerves hit him, and he could feel himself begin to warm up. It shouldn’t have been that difficult, right? All he really needed to do was assure her that, right now, everything was fine and that she didn’t have to go to school today. That should lift her spirits. Charlie was pretty sure almost every kid hated going to school. 

“Well, I’m not really sure what to tell you Lou, but everything will be alright. Maybe the sun will come back later today. Hazel came over to hang out with us today, so you don’t need to go to school-” Charlie paused when he noticed Louise didn’t seem to be paying attention. He watched her stand lost in thought and noticed how pink her cheeks were. “Louise?” 

He crouched down in front of her, resting the back of his hand on her forehead that he could now see was also pinker than normal. Warmth crawled over his skin, and he felt a slight flinch from Louise at the contact. Charlie guessed she had woken up sick, which explained why she was running late this morning. 

“I’m sorry Uncle Charlie…” She sniffled, looking around the room and over at the desk near the window to avoid his gaze. Charlie watched in shock as tears began to well up in her eyes. 

“Hey, calm down. No reason to be sorry for being sick. It happens to everyone.” He tried his best to soothe her, resting a hand on her small shoulder as the crying became stronger. 

“I didn’t mean to do it Charlie. I was just trying to help Scratch!” Her words came out in a flurry of sobs and hiccups that confused Charlie to no end. 

He looked down near their feet at the pile of blankets and at the lizard half buried inside. Scratch wasn’t the most energetic pet. It was half the reason Charlie had gotten one for her after Hazel had suggested getting Louise a pet would be good for a girl her age. Normally though, if Scratch was able to run around outside of his enclosure, he took the opportunity to explore as much as he could. Seeing him lying there, perfectly still with his eyes half open like he could barely stay awake, told Charlie that something was definitely wrong. 

“Louise, what are you talking about?” He asked, reaching down to touch the top of the bearded dragon’s head. Cold. A very strange feeling in contrast to the heat that was still radiating off Louise’s pink skin. 

“Everything alright up here? Figured you’d be downstairs by now, so we could start breakfast.” Neither Charlie or Louise had heard Hazel, who was now standing in the doorway, trudging up the stairs. Her eyebrows furrowed together while looking down at Louise. “Why is she so sunburnt?” 

Louise left Charlie’s grasp and clung onto Hazel’s leg, hiding her face in the blanket Hazel was carrying around and continuing to sob. Even more puzzled at her hysterics, Charlie went to examine the desk Louise had been staring at.  

It had been something he had found at a yard sale, already rough from use. Now it was covered in small scuff marks made by Scratch when Louise would let him scurry around her desk after school and smudged marker stains Charlie had desperately tried to remove. Scratch’s terrarium sat on the back of the desk against the wall. Nothing inside seemed out of place, but the basking lamp next to it was currently off. Charlie fiddled with the switch a few times to no avail. The bulb inside must have died in the middle of the night. 

“I’m sorry, Charlie! I was only trying to get a piece because Scratch was cold, but I slipped!” Louise’s apologies were muffled by the fabric covering her face. No matter how hard Hazel tried to soothe the young girl with soft shushes and a hand in her hair, her crying was still going full force. 

“Breathe kid. What happened?” Hazel soothed, picking up Louise with a soft grunt and resting the girl on her hip. More nonsensical blubbering came as a response as Louise roughly wiped the tears from her eyes. 

Charlie glanced back to the window nearby and focused on the out of place shingle. Fear turned his stomach and a wave of nausea hit him hard enough that he leaned against the desk. She wouldn’t have, right? Louise had always been a headstrong and brave girl, but also smart enough to know when something was too dangerous. Surely, she was clever enough to know that the roof was absolutely not safe for her to be walking on. But she loved that lizard to the moon and back, and she would do almost anything for it. 

Charlie recalled one time he had caught her chasing crickets around her room. She had tried feeding Scratch by herself for the first time because she was certain he was hungry right then and there. The container of bugs had been spilled after she got startled by one jumping out at her and resulted in chaotic scrambling to try to get them back in. The two had to spend a night at Hazel’s while their house was swept for any more loose critters. 

He felt warm again, hands becoming clammy against the desk. Had it always been this warm in Louise’s room? Maybe that was why her window was open. She had just gotten too warm while sleeping and was hoping for a breeze, definitely not to perform some dangerous stunt he still didn’t understand. 

A small scraping sound caught his attention underneath Louise’s cries. It took him a few seconds of sweeping his gaze across the room to see Scratch, now out of his blanket nest, and clawing at the bottom of the closet door behind a pile of discarded clothes. Charlie watched him try to dig through the carpet and wiggle into the crack under the door, which revealed a light shining in the closet. Charlie didn’t remember there being a bulb inside. 

“Louise, what’s in the closet?” He questioned, prying his hands from the stability the desk brought him. His niece was shaking her head, fists wrapped tightly around Hazel’s blanket.  

“I can put it back Charlie. Please don’t be mad.” Louise whimpered.  

“Lou, I’m not going to be mad. I just need to know what you hid in there.” 

“I only wanted a little piece! I scooped up too much! I didn’t mean to take it all.” 

Charlie looked at Hazel as he tried to get some kind of answer from Louise, hoping the older woman would have some kind of inclination into what the girl in her arms was so worried about. Hazel stared back, eyes flickering briefly towards the closet occasionally. Charlie wasn’t sure if she had been silently urging him to look inside or if she had been nervous that whatever was in there was bad enough to warrant this kind of reaction from Louise. 

Mustering his courage, Charlie made his way to the closet. He reached for Scratch and when his hand grazed the door, he noticed how warm the wood felt against his knuckles. The lizard wriggled in his hand unhappily, claws stinging his hand. 

The doorknob was hotter than Charlie was expecting, and he took a step back to retreat from the door in surprise. His first thought was fire. That maybe something Louise had hidden had overheated enough to produce a flame, but he surely would have smelled smoke by now or some kind of alarm would have begun to scream at them to leave the house. 

He tried again, expecting the heat this time and slowly opened the door. The light he revealed was bright enough to force his eyes shut and he felt the warmth that was being stopped by the door spread over his entire body. He was too distracted to keep a tight hold on Scratch and the lizard practically jumped out of his hand, landing with a soft thump on the floor and scrambling into the closest. 

Charlie struggled to open his eyes, blinking wildly to adjust them to the light. He pushed some of the clothes hung up to the side to see into the back of the closet. 

Wedged in between a box of old baby clothes and Louise’s barely used roller skates was Scratch curled up around a bright red bucket. He bobbed up and down happily next to it, outwardly enjoying the heat that came from it. Charlie peered down inside, squinting at the aggressive light shining out of it and swallowed roughly with realization.  

“Holy shit.” Hazel gasped as she shuffled up behind him. Charlie leaned against the closet door in an attempt to ground himself as he looked at his niece with shock. He heard a sniffle from Louise as she spoke up.  

“Please don’t be mad, Uncle Charlie. Scratch was so cold.” 

However bad Scratch had been feeling before had been quickly erased. He now danced greedily in the heat of the sun that had been captured in this toy bucket just for him.