Note: I made a list of prompts, and wrote a bite-sized story for each one. They don’t live in the same universe, but they’re all a little off-kilter from what you might expect from holiday fare. And if you pay attention, you’ll notice that the last line of each story becomes the first line of the next. Also?  You can listen to these stories at my podcast website: BathtubMermaid.com.

“The wind changes,” she said, “just before something big happens. Haven’t you noticed?”

He looked up from the living room, already half smiling.
“Oh no. Not the Weather Witch routine again. Last time you said that, the sump pump exploded.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” she replied, her tone making it clear she’d been waiting years for him to bring it up again. “And you have noticed. Every big storm we’ve ever had starts with this.”

He opened his mouth to argue, then shut it again. Because she was right — she always felt these things a moment before they happened. Thirty winters together had taught him that much.

He stood, listening with her.
The pressure in the air shifted.
A faint metallic tremor ran through the holiday lights on their balcony.
The house seemed to inhale.

“Yeah,” he admitted quietly. “Okay. I feel it.”

The transformer outside gave a low, uneasy hum, faltering just long enough to make her pause with the mixing bowl in her hands. Then the lights blinked once — sharp, warning — and everything went dark.

No gentle dimming, no slow fade.
Just out.

From the living room he called, “Well, Merry Christmas to us.”

She laughed softly. “We didn’t forget the bill, did we?”

It was an old joke, one carried forward from a time in their lives when forgetting the bill was a genuine possibility. Back then, humor had been their only reliable light source. Using it now softened the edge of the sudden dark.

“We paid it,” he said, already feeling his way toward her. “This one’s the grid.”

They met in the hallway as they always did during storms — hands first, then foreheads touching, a simple ritual formed in the years when they’d had so little and leaned so much on each other. After three decades, they could have found each other blindfolded on another planet.

“Should I check the breakers?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Get the lantern.”

He hesitated.

Not because he didn’t know where it was, but because the lantern lived in the box they rarely touched — the one from a winter they didn’t talk about often, when outages weren’t inconveniences but everyday realities, and that small metal lantern had been the only light they could count on. Touching it meant touching all of that again.

“The one from the old place?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, though he couldn’t see it.

He went to the bedroom closet — top shelf, box marked MISC. though they both knew exactly what was in it — while she moved toward the front window. Outside, their suburban cul-de-sac was dark and still. A few neighbors stepped onto porches with tea candles or phone flashlights, their voices drifting low, softened by cold air.

He returned carrying the lantern gently in both hands. Tin sides. Tiny punched stars. The fabric-wrapped handle from a winter they survived together, even when they weren’t entirely sure how.

“Oh,” she murmured. “I really thought we’d lost it.”

“You would’ve noticed,” he said, though his voice held the same soft relief.

They lit it together. The wick caught with a small, golden bloom, casting star-shaped shadows across the bookshelves, the framed photographs, the holiday cards lined along the mantel. The lantern glowed exactly as it always had — modest, steady, familiar.

“It still works,” he said.

“It always did.”

They settled onto the couch, shoulders touching, the lantern resting on the coffee table between them. Its warmth didn’t heat the room so much as ease it — smoothing the edges of memory until Then and Now sat comfortably beside each other.

For a while, they simply breathed in the quiet, letting the dark be gentle instead of heavy.

Eventually she stood and looked out the window.
The street was dark. Still. Waiting.

Snow began to fall.