Record 4 – The Thing Called Electricity

For a whole morning I thought the world was dead.
Silent streets.
Empty halls.
No humans anywhere.

But then I heard a sound.
A tiny one.
A quiet, steady hum coming from the kitchen.

I froze.
Humans make noise.
Animals make noise.
But this sound wasn’t alive.
It was something else.

I followed it, step by step.
My ears twitched.
My whiskers shook.
The hum got louder.

It was the fridge.
Still buzzing.
Still glowing inside.
Still doing its strange fridge-things even though nobody touched it.

I put my paw on the door.
Cold.
Alive-but-not-alive cold.

So electricity was still here.
That invisible thing humans always worry about when they say,
“Did we pay the bill?”
or
“Why is the power out again?”

I never cared before.
Why would I?
I only care if food is inside.
But today it felt important.
Like the world wasn’t fully broken yet.
Just emptied.

I left the fridge and walked to the living room.
The TV’s red dot was glowing.
A tiny red eye.
Watching.
Waiting.

I don’t know why, but my paw lifted on its own.
Touched the remote.
Just a tap.

The screen exploded with light.
Too bright.
Too sudden.
I jumped back and puffed up so much I looked like a scared balloon.

Then I saw it.
Human faces.
Talking.
Pointing.
Looking worried.

But no sound came out.
Only silent mouths moving.
The same few seconds repeating again and again.
A loop.
A frozen moment stuck on repeat.

I stepped closer.
Very slowly.
I looked at the bottom of the screen.
There were words there.
Small, running words.
Tiny lines I never cared about.

But today…
I could read them.
Not guess.
Not sniff.
Read.

My eyes followed the letters.
My mind understood them one by one.

“Breaking news…”
“Unusual global event…”
“Authorities urge calm…”
“State of emergency…”

And then it cut off.
Restarted.
And played again.
And again.
And again.

The same warning.
The same human fear frozen on their faces.
The same red stripe across the bottom:
STATE OF EMERGENCY

I sat down.
My tail wrapped around me tight.
My heart thumped so loud I thought the TV would hear it.

State of emergency.
Big words.
Heavy words.
Human words.

And now they belonged to me too.

I don’t know what happened.
I don’t know why the people left.
I don’t know why animals can think now.
But the humans knew something was coming.
They tried to warn someone.
Maybe even me.

Tomorrow I will look for what they meant.
I will follow those words until they make sense.

They said “state of emergency.”
And I’ll find what that means.