Jason P. Burnham
June 17th 2022
Today’s daytime tasks you must perform to allow your family to survive through another night:
-start the laundry
-wash the baby’s bottles, nipples, and other miscellany
-take out the trash
-vacuum up the dog hair
-Windex all the windows so Grandpa can see inside at night
-prepare tomorrow’s school lunches
-make sure the generators have full charge after you used them to play video games
-water the plants
-walk the dog and make sure she poops twice because you can’t have her pooping in the house overnight again, even though it’s not your fault nobody can go outside after sunset
-make sure all the windows are latched and locked
-prepare the coffeepot for the morning
-test all the UV lights to make sure they’re working and then check their batteries to make sure they’re full
-related to above, make sure the guns are loaded in case a UV light fails. The kids love to see Grandpa, but nobody wants to turn into the horrifying night being he’s become.
-make sure all the safeties are on and guns stowed out of reach of the children in the lockboxes by the windows
-make sure you check the sunset time and leave early enough to have the kids home from school before it gets dark!
-make sure the kids draw Grandpa a card for his birthday. He may be an eldritch horror of the night, but he might still be able to read if they hold the cards up to the reinforced windows. Remember how he smiled last year? Maybe it was a snarl, but hey, it’s worth a shot.
Author Bio: Jason P. Burnham loves to spend time with his wife, kids, and dog. His work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Mixtape: 1986, and Nature: Futures, among others. You can find him on Twitter at @AndGalen
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