Should Have Been The Bad Guy - .1 Lightbulbs and Their Sockets

1. Lightbulbs and Their Sockets

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The day had been an ordinary and perfectly normal one, until I made the mistake of sticking my fingers in a light bulb socket.

Don’t worry, there is a perfectly logical explanation for what I just did. And no, my ‘logical explanation’ is not that I was dropped on my head when I was younger, contrary to popular belief. It is not that I misplaced by brain or that I have the IQ of a dead snail either, in case you were wondering.

My logical explanation is…

…

Okay, I admit it, I’m an idiot. I don’t have a logical explanation. Not even a scientific one. Hell, I don’t even have a spiritualist explanation for my actions. Unless fate counts.

The truth is, I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing. I’ve changed light bulbs hundreds of times. With a creative license, I dare say I’ve changed light bulbs thousands of times. It’s not really an activity that (and I’m sure you’ll agree with me on this) requires much concentration. If we only use 10% of our brains, I dare say that changing a light bulb only requires about 0.001% of it.

My mother always says that, one day I am going to choose the wrong time to not be concentrating and it will cost me dearly. Well, she was right. I almost died. Luckily, my life didn’t flash before my eyes, because if it did, I would have died just from the trauma of seeing that.

So how did it happen? How was I stupid enough to stick my fingers in a light bulb socket, lack of concentration or not? Well, as I said before, it was a mistake. But how do you accidently do that?

Quite easily, actually. In fact, to further improve your comprehension, I’ll even describe it like one of those nature documentaries do on the Discovery Channel.

Our human subject grabs a step ladder from the supply cupboard and places it beneath a blown light bulb fixture. This human specimen is a pubescent male, although, thanks to his shoulder length brown hair, from behind an onlooker could easily mistake him for a member of the opposite sex. He reaches up and twists the blown light bulb from its socket, before stepping down and placing it on the counter. He sorts through a draw and triumphantly surfaces with a new bulb, fresh from the packet.

He is so immersed in his daydreams that he fails to notice the light switch on the wall behind him has the small red horizontal line showing at the top. This is a rather primitive but not stupid method that his race uses to tell if the power is on or not. In this case, the power was most definitely on.

Still deep in his daydreams, he carries the new bulb over to the empty socket. His failure to notice that the lights are turned on is quite astonishing and it is a great wonder why his hair colour isn’t blonde. This subject’s name is Timothy Darlag, although many others of his race wonder why his mother didn’t instead choose to call him Daydreaming Idiot.

None know exactly what his race chooses to waste their time daydreaming about, but because our specimen is a teenage boy, we can assume it has something to do with big tits and video games. He climbs the step ladder and traces his hand along the ceiling for support. He then lowers his hand from the roof and raises the light bulb with his other. As you can tell, we have just reached a crucial part of the procedure.

Suddenly, the step ladder wobbles and lurches beneath him. Shocked back into reality, our subject falls forward, desperately reaching with his free hand for a hand hold, something to grab on to, anything.

Luckily, his hand finds something to hold on to and his balance in returned. It’s metal. His finger are right inside it. It’s the light bulb socket.

I’ll stop with the third person commentary now, because I don’t really remember how the rest of the incident went. But I do remember it was painful. Have you ever stuck your fingers inside a light bulb socket? Let me tell you what it’s like. It’s painful, painful enough to warrant the bold formatting. It’s a thousand times worse than one of those joy buzzers. You can feel each jolt of electricity run down your arm and fry your muscles. It was truly horrible. But luckily I didn’t have to deal with it for long, because I blacked out within moments.

Which leaves me to the present. Hello, my name is Timothy Darlag and I am currently lying awkwardly on the ground with a massive headache, trying to remember how that whole body moment thing works.

But you can just call me Tim.

I foggily open my eyes, not entirely sure if they were closed in the first place. Dim light swims around me, sending why head into a frenzy of painful throbs and drum beats. For a moment I am convinced that I am underwater. Am I? I manage to breathe in without coughing up a lung or two, so, unless I have managed to morph into a merman or some other weird type of fish, I can assume I am not underwater. Well, that’s a relief.

I try to get up, and manage to succeed in twitching my left foot. Great. Just great. I try to move my fingers. I think I have my left hand in motion, but I’m not so sure about my right. Damn. This is bad. I breathe calmly and try not to panic. But who am I kidding? Being almost immobilized isn’t the most calming situation.

“Tim!” I hear someone shout. It sounds like a thirteen year old girl. Oh, for the love of… not now.

“Are you alright? I heard a crash down in the shop and…” My little sister, Amy stands over me. “Why are you looking at me like that, mortal?”

Why? Well because, I haven’t figured out how to look the other way yet. Loss of motor function does that to you. I try to say this to her, but all I manage to do is to get my lips to part. Well, that’s a good start, I guess.

“And now you are pulling fish faces at me. I know you like to act like the world’s biggest weird-o, but please, control yourself before I have to put a sheet over you to shield myself from this visual attack.”

Did I mention that she has about the empathy of a dead snail? But believe me, she makes up for it in ego. My little sister makes the phase planetary ego sound like golf-ball ego.

“Why are you lying on the ground, anyway? Did you fall of the stepladder? Moron.” After several seconds of silence on my part, she continues. “Can you not move or something? Did you, like, break your neck as you fell, mortal?”

That’s a really good question. I hope I didn’t break my neck. That would be… annoying. Okay, more than annoying. I think I can safely say that it wouldn’t be very good for my health if I broke my neck. Visions of being stuck in a wheelchair and with a caretaker for the rest of my life fuel me, as I try once again to move.

“Urgh.” I groan. Now would be a good time to remember how to sit up. I manage, after some concentration, to lift my head and push myself up on my elbows.

“Do you want some help?” Amy smirks at me as I groan, before reaching down to grab my hand. She curls her fingers around mine, before suddenly letting go and jumping away in shock.

“Ah!” She yells. “You shocked me!”

Suddenly my headache subsides and I regain some control of my muscles. They hurt like hell, but I manage to push myself up to a sitting position.

“That was a mean prank!” My sister yells. “Pretending to be half dead so you can shock me with a joy buzzer.”

“I…” I rub my jaw and attempt speech. “I’m not wearing a…”

“Urgh!” She rudely interrupts with an air-piercing screech. “Stupid mortal!” She spits the words in my face, before storming off. “I’m gonna get you back for this!”

“…joy buzzer.” I finish. That was weird. But I’ve had weirder, I suppose. Whatever I did to my sister, it did make me feel better. I grab onto the step ladder and use it to haul myself to my feet. My foot crunches on something as I tentatively stand. It’s a broken light bulb.

I sigh, clean up the mess and then, using extreme concentration, find another light bulb and screw it into the empty socket. Yes, I remember to turn the lights off first, this time. That wasn’t an experience that I plan on reliving anytime soon.

Around me is my mother’s shop. It’s a spiritualist shop, actually, the kind of shop that sells not so enchanted rocks, tarot readings and crystal balls, amongst other things. I think it’s a total scam, but my mother begs to differ. Well, as long as she thinks she’s doing well for others, who am I to judge?

I put away the step ladder and head upstairs into our flat. My sister isn’t in sight, but she left the television on. Unfortunately, it’s on the music channel and is blasting a hit track from one of the world’s many numerous boy-bands. How do the girls even love them so much? They aren’t even that good. It makes me want to grab my mate Josh and start a boy band of our own. Hmmm. Maybe that’s the long-lost secret to hooking chicks these days.

I grab the remote and go for a bit of a channel surf. A news headline comes up, titled: “Insurers refuse to cover super related damage.” Sounds about right, but… boring! I switch channels again. This time it’s a talk show. A smartly dressed lady shakes hands with what looks like another one of the cities supervillains. I’m about to change the channel again, but my jaw drops when I see just who the villain is. The red and black patterns on his spandex suit are familiar… It’s Superto Thefto! No way! Let’s just say I’m a bit of a fan.

Hold on, I guess I should explain. You’re probably thinking; “Super? Supervillan? What the hell is going on? Is this guy on drugs?”

For starters, I think I should clarify that I am not on drugs.

Well, a few years ago in the city I live in, people started developing supernatural powers. Nothing unusual. I think we were like the fifth or sixth place to.

But then, it got weird. Instead of, like in other, slightly more normal cities the superpower carriers dividing themselves into the factions of heroes, villains and the I-am-just-going-pretend-I-don’t-have-superpowers-and-live-a-normal-life-because-I-am-a-wimp’s, then the heroes and villains having an endless battle for justice and glory and other important stuff, my city’s supers only divided themselves into two categories. The villains, and the I-am-going-to-live-a-normal-life-so-go-f#*k-yourselves.

You can see why this is weird, right? Hold on, where’s the superheroes, to fight the villains and stuff. Well, there isn’t any. After the first few people started to gets powers and pursue the life of evil, pulling off big crimes, robberies, heists and that kind of thing, I don’t think anyone could be bothered stepping up and saving the day. The bad guys were having way too much fun, and it was way better to just join them. The occasional hero has popped up… but let’s just say that they got taken down pretty quickly.

Don’t worry, supervillains running everywhere isn’t actually as bad as it sounds. They usually spend a lot of time fighting amongst themselves or dominance over the city and when they do decide to commit some crimes, I think the city council has some kind of system worked up. Every villain gets a yearly quota of how much crime they can commit or something. I don’t know how the system works. It sounds confusing.

What I don’t get, however, is those who get given the awesome gift of superpowers and choose to do nothing with them and continue to live a normal life and all that crap. Lame! Man, if I had superpowers, I’d make sure to have as much fun with them as possible. Forget the whole normal life thing. How boring is that?

Anyway, back to the television. Superto Thefto is ‘da man’! If I was a supervillian, I would be him. Not only does he get all the babes, but he is also the biggest name in crime. Whenever a big heist goes down, you can be sure he is behind it. If the villains had an organisation, which I think they might do, he would be their leader. No wonder there is no superheroes! Superto would whip all their arses!

I go to turn up the TV some more, but suddenly the remote in my hands flashes rapidly, before bursting into a shower of sparks. I drop it in surprise. What the… Luckily, it stops sparking before it can start a fire.

I look around rapidly, half expecting my sister to jump out from behind the couch and yell “Revenge is sweet, mortal!” or something equally cheesy. Rigging the remote to explode in a shower of sparks sounds like Amy’s idea of revenge for me shocking her. I am still confused to how I achieved that, by the way.

This day is just getting weirder and weirder.

I turn off the TV and walk down the hallway to my bedroom. My computer sits innocently in the corner, my escape from all this craziness. I sit down at my desk and press the on button.

And the screen lights up in a multi rainbow of pixelated colours upon my touch. The monitor’s many lights flash at a rapid and non-epileptic friendly rate. It would have been beautiful… if it wasn’t my computer! I break contact with the computer and the screen instantly dies. Needless to say, it doesn’t turn on normally on my second attempt, either.

“Ah!” I roar aloud and smash my fists down on the desk. I’m quite mad now. Knocking myself out wasn’t that bad, I don’t really care that I shocked my sister or that the remote spontaneously sparked itself to death in my hands, but now my computer! Whatever weird was going on, I didn’t like it one bit.

I press the on button on the computer again and smell smoke. Oh great. Now the freaking back is sparking.

Then, before I can even fathom doing anything about it or even panicking, I hear the phone start to ring and its soon followed by a chorus of “mortal, go get the phone” coming from my sister’s room.

“Get it yourself!” I tell her.

“I’ll tell mum you broke a light bulb!” She threatens.

“So?” I say back, but sigh and walk to the hall phone anyway.

“Hello?” I ask. The response is a loud beeping noise and an eardrum fill of sparks. It doesn’t hurt, although it probably should. All it manages to do is annoy me.

“Argh!” I roar and slam down the phone. There is something weird going on with me. I look down at my hands. They look normal, they’re not sparking or anything. But ever since that electric shock…

Oh no. First the remote, then my computer and the phone. This isn’t good. I have a sneaking suspicion of what is going on… but first I must test my theory. I walk back to my room and claw through my cluttered wardrobe and the endless pile of junk that lives inside.

“Ah ha!” I found what I was looking for. An old Mc Donald’s toy – one of those ones where you press a button and…

The little lights go into seizure flashing mode, and sparks burst from every hinge. It’s quite incredible, really. Plus, it’s all the evidence I need. A grin forms on my face. It seems I have just… gained the superpower of… to…

Destroy electronics?

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