Sleepless Nights - Uncle Percy

Ugh, I'm so sleepy! Last night was such a mess. I couldn't sleep at all. Come to think of it, no one could. We all had one heck of a night. Thunderstorms, a power cut, way too much caffeine before bed. That's the last time we decide to spend half the day binge-watching. And it's not like the shows were any good. 'All of us are dead' has just ensured that I will never again watch a Korean Drama on Netflix. First 'Squid Games' and now this. What is the K-drama industry thinking, trusting Netflix to make dramas. Anyway, I'm just gonna finish this story and then go and try to get some sleep.

"Hurry up and put on the last episode. It's already "11:30!" I'm trying, but aunt fell asleep holding on to the remote." Binge-watching series in this house is more of a task than something fun. It's such a ruckus, and, right when your show gets interesting, someone gets a phone call and needs to leave, or the popcorn and soda run out, or there's a power cut. But that's not what this story is about. I'll probably make a new one out of that but that depends on how taxing school is. Anyway, back to the story.

Our show finally ended at 12:10, much earlier than we expected it to. We had finished two huge bottles of soda, five family packs of Cheetos, seven mugs of coffee, and other snacks just loaded with caffeine. But, me and Tamara had promised aunt that we would sleep as soon as our show ended. So, we had no choice but to clean up and go to bed.

While washing the coffee mugs, there was suddenly a loud crash. We looked outside and saw that a thunderstorm was underway. It didn't bug us much, but to the triplets and poor Uncle Percy, this was hell. It started with Millie. The loud thunderclap woke her up and she started crying. Tyson and Rebecca followed. And, of course, there was uncle, hiding under the sheets crying. All the ruckus woke Pepper up, and she got out of bed and started looking for aunt.

In less than a span of thirty seconds, what had earlier been so calm and tranquil, was now full of chaos and screams. Aunt was half-awake, trying to calm everyone down. Uncle was running around the house crying, thinking there was a ghost at home. Pepper was looking for a glass of milk so she could go back to sleep. And Tamara and me were just doing our level best to clear up all the stuff we had while watching our show before someone found out just how much we can eat if we're hungry.

Once the triplets were asleep, Pepper had been given her glass of milk and Uncle was assured that there was no ghost hiding in the mirror ready to attack him at night, Tamara and me headed up to our room and got ready for bed. Pepper was already asleep, and the air conditioning was on. Sometimes I wonder how Pepper functions. She needs the AC even in the middle of December when it's snowing outside. Turn it off for one second, and she's up screaming her head off at the person who did it. It's scary.

After an hour of tossing and turning in bed, we finally started to feel sleepy. That is until the house suddenly went pitch dark and the AC turned off. In a second, we were all up again. Uncle was now sure that there was a ghost in the house, the triplets were so scared because they couldn't find their teddy bear, and aunt was doing her best trying to find candles and flashlights. The first thing me and Tamara did was make Pepper think the AC was still on before she woke up and started screaming for it.

We took off her duvet cover and replaced it with a thinner blanket, and put buckets of ice around her to keep the room cool. Then we closed the door and ran out of the room in case she woke up. The next thing was the triplets. We left that to aunt and decided it was easier to work with uncle. Of course, we didn't intend to help him go back to sleep. Oh no. It was his job to go check the circuit breaker in the basement. We got him to wake up and told him the ghost would leave the house if he went to the basement and checked the fuse box. That was the best thing we could have said to him. In ten minutes, the electricity was back on. So we survived a power cut, a thunderstorm and four crying voices two times, in a span of three hours. Not bad for one night!