KILLING THE LIGHTS
by Stephen McDonald
Copyright 2011 Stephen McDonald
Originally Published in Out & About, May 2011
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*****
Killing the Lights
By Stephen G. McDonald
"Helluva thing," the cop says. "Losing your house over light bulbs."
The police are collecting boxes of bootleg incandescents. My wife had helped me manufacture
them in the basement of our now-burning Tudor.
I recognize the cop – Collins – but she doesn't recognize me. Last time we met, I was wearing a
suit while arguing before a judge. Now all I have on are flannel pajama pants and handcuffs.
A competitor must have ratted us out. The cops raided us in full assault gear, pulled me and Kim
out of bed. I guess we did enough business to be considered traffickers because they'd been able to get
a nighttime warrant. The kids were taken out and handed to a woman I assume was from Family
Services.
I knew to remain silent, and they just sat me on the curb. Kim's former life as a schoolteacher
hadn't prepared her for arrest. She cursed and spit at the cops like a third-grader off his Ritalin until
they'd shoved her into the back of a cruiser. She screamed at me, "Look what they're doing! How can
you be so calm?"
I'm not calm. I just look that way when I'm thinking.
Still, I was glad they drove her and the kids away quick. My family didn't need to see our house
burn, feel its heat against their faces as I do. Even from across the street, warm as an autumn sunset.
Light bulb filaments are tungsten – it takes a lot of heat to work that metal. Our shop wasn't
exactly up to OSHA standards. No doubt a stormtrooper had knocked into something, and the place had

caught.
Or maybe they'd just torched it to send a message.
We packaged a shipment yesterday, and stored it in the garage. The fire takes its time spreading
there, and so the cops are able to save the evidence.
Neighbors are gathering in the street. Some of them had been our customers. Now they're just
spectators to the morality play: you don't want this happening to you.
Collins is holding a tactical shotgun, which is what you give patrol officers so they can seem
hardcore during these SWAT ops. "You look familiar," she says. They've already Mirandized me, so I
know that anything I say can and will be used against me, et cetera. But I haven't invoked my right to
counsel yet, mainly because I can't bring myself to speak, so the cops can still talk to me. "You used to
be in the AG's Office. Steve, right?"
I'm impressed she remembers, but I don't say anything to her.
I'm still thinking. The next few moments are going to determine the rest of my life. Other people's
too.
Collins can't take a hint. I remember her being chatty. "We had some misdemeanor domestic
violence trials together, right? You were still new to the office, and I was pretty rookie too."
I liked those days, getting to be the good guy. Despite myself, I smile at the memory. Collins takes
it as an invitation for further running commentary. "What happened to you?"
Simple. A lot of people don't like being told what they can and can't buy. Other folks don't like
compact fluorescent bulbs. After all, the old-fashioned incandescents – you know, the bulbs Edison
came-up with – didn't give your home's interior the same ambiance as a truck stop bathroom. Just
because someone says the ban's necessary to stop global warming/cooling/climate-change, doesn't
mean that people believe it, or that the demand goes away.
Bless her, Collins does her best to get me to talk. "You seemed so together. How'd you go from
prosecutor to criminal?"
Kids need to eat, decent schooling costs money, and when inflation turns your savings into
Monopoly money, you'd be surprised what kind of careers you'll suddenly find yourself open to.
Besides, I'd gone to law school to beat-up on criminals. Who's the real felon: the man breaking a
stupid law, or the man writing it?
"Some guys in my platoon did heavier cases with you. They always said you did a good job," she

says.
The nice thing about being a prosecutor is the variety. Robberies, assaults, homicides. Learning
about ballistics, seeing how computer forensics can strip a computer, and how cell phones can be
tracked – it's all interesting stuff. Even the mundane protocols of smuggling drugs and weapons, and
the in's-and-out's of gang recruitment are fascinating. I used to joke that the best way to learn how to be
a criminal was by prosecuting them.
"I remember hearing you did a case involving bombs," Collins says.
It was just a single bomb, a college student more interested in the challenge of making explosives
than with any real aspirations of being the next Timothy McVeigh. The kid's design specs were so
complex they were practically artwork. I had them copied and framed as a gift to my father. He'd been
a combat engineer, so appreciated the gag. Those specs are still safely at his house, while all my family
photographs burn.
Now she pretends to be my psychiatrist. "Something must have set you off," she says.
I'm sure something did, but the funny thing is I have no idea what. When did it really start? In
2007 when the ban was passed, and no one was even paying attention? In 2013 when it went into
effect? The year after that when I had my first bulb-dealing case? Or maybe a little later when Kim got
pregnant with our third child, and I wasn't sure how we'd cover the extra mouth and the mortgage?
Sometimes it's hard to pin down life's turning points.
My mind churns. The lack of conversation hurting her feelings, she cuts into me, "Isn't it kind of
silly? Losing all this over something so minor?"
I'd been selling them for $75 apiece, but she has a point. It is silly. So is sticking guns at people
over it.
Fire engines finally show. It's been, what, twenty minutes? They can tell you how to light your
home, but the fire department comes with all the timeliness of a day-old newspaper.
"Not going to be fun for you," Collins says. "Trafficking has a one-year minimum-mandatory.
There are probably some people you sent inside that would be anxious to see you."
They won't plea me to anything other than the trafficking and its min-man sentence, either. The
Usual Gang of Idiots running things can't do anything about 15% unemployment or gasoline at five-
bucks a gallon. But they have to show the electorate that they're capable of doing something right. So if
the only thing the government can do half-way competently is police black market bulbs, then by God,

black market bulbs shall be policed.
"You used to be one of us, Steve. A good guy. But you broke the trust. Look what happens," she
says, gesturing at my house with her shotgun.
Ah, now I understand her anger. Not sure I'm the one that broke it, though. I don't think we were
meant to regulate everything down to illegal illumination. I mean, if they don't trust you with the small
stuff, how much longer will they let you decide big things for yourself?
Collins must see it differently because she's laughing now. Laughing at me as ash carries gently on
the breeze like Christmas snow. "Just think about it, Steve. Your wife will probably draw the same
sentence, and no telling where they'll place your kids while you guys are locked-up. Insurance won't
pay for the fire given all the dangerous equipment you guys had in the basement."
I stare as the roof falls-in with a plume of dancing embers.
Collins whistles. "There it all goes. Because you couldn't get with the program."
And I realize she's right. Look how much I've lost.
But here's the thing: if I was willing to risk so much over so little, what might I be willing to do
now that you've taken my wife and my home and my children?
A year in jail – lot of time to plan. Not to mention the street cred it'll give me when I begin
recruiting.
That's when I stop thinking about it, and make my decision. This exquisite moment, when I go
from criminal to terrorist.
###