***
Veena reached a hand into her bag and looked for her doodle book that she always carried with her. As she was looking for it, it suddenly went dark.
For a small moment, she thought that she had somehow gone blind, as she could suddenly hear screams from where seemed to be the inside of her head, but then she heard Amar’s voice saying “Alah, blackout ke?” and she heaved a sigh of relief.
It seemed as though the whole campus’ electricity had been cut off. Even the street lights were dark. Being a campus that was a considerable distance away from the nearest main road, they couldn’t see just how badly the area had been affected. All they knew was that the cafeteria and all the buildings around it was out of electricity.
“Haiz, at time like this got blackout also ha?” She asked almost to herself.
“Okay lah, we postpone meeting lah kan?” Amar suggested while standing up, bag in hand right after the ruckus of the group died down a little. He probably wouldn’t be able to continue watching his Running Man episodes, so he figured he’d probably go out for shisha with the boys.
“Hey, cannot! We need to prepare the performance! Don’t got time already!” Shirley rejected the motion, looking to what looked like the silhouette of Amar.
“Yeah, we should probably find somewhere else to continue the discussion,” said Hani into the darkness of the cafeteria. Their eyes were adjusting to the darkness and they could make out each others’ faces in the dark now.
“Okay, so where should we go?” Jasmin inquired.
“Hey, is it just me, or has this cafe gotten really quiet?” Rafiq suddenly asked.
The group fell silent and tried to listen for all the other people that filled half of the cafeteria with them just moments earlier.
Pin-drop silence.
“La, phone ada torchlight, guna ajalah!” Amar said while taking his phone out of his pocket. To his horror, his phone was dead. “Alamak, takdak bateri plak, Fiq, suluh tengok!”
Rafiq took out his phone and pressed on the home button several times. Nothing. His phone had died on him too. “Phone aku pun habeh bateri!”
Everyone else at the table quickly took out their phones and checked too, only to find out that all their phones would not turn on for them.
“Okay, this getting really creepy now! Let’s go out of the cafeteria first,” Shirley was trying her best to keep calm, but she knew that she was failing.
“Yeah, let’s just go outside,” Hani said while putting her bag strap over her shoulder.
They left the table and headed for the door.
