HIGH VOLTAGE -Speculative Fiction

 HIGH VOLTAGE 

 

I feared lightning before I moved to Florida, but could you blame me? Three hundred million volts, possessing my body and flinging me around like a marionette puppet. No one ever forgets such a traumatic event. My nerves sometimes replay the pain in my sleep. 

“You’d be dead if it weren’t for me,” my cousin Todd reminded me. He was the first grandkid born into the family by two days. We competed for our grandparent’s adoration and our aunts’ and uncles’ spoiling adventures. Todd scored many points the day lightning hit me because he used CPR to restore my life. The lightning bolt had stopped my heart. Thank goodness Todd, a ten-year-old boy scout knew first aid. If the lightning had hit him instead, he would have died. I wouldn’t have known how to restart his heart.

“Florida has around 3,500 lightning flashes a day. Did you know that is like 1.2 million a year?” I rattled to the now-adult Todd as he tried to convince me to move to Florida.

“So what?”

“How can you say so what? Lightening killed me once. I am not about to allow it to kill me again.”

“Listen, get over it. You survived. And don’t forget, I saved your life. You will be living with me, so if you ever need it, I can save your life again.”

I gave Todd an uneasy look, purposely squinting my eyes melodramatically.

“Besides, it is so rare to be striked by lightning and even more rare to be striked twice.”

“Yeah, but…”

“No, yeah, buts. We are going to the spring break capital of the world. It is like spring break every day of the year. Imagine all the chicks we will pick up.” Todd draped his arm over my shoulder. He had dark Cuban skin. His dapper manner didn’t match that of our family. He had no problems getting girls with his handsome face and appealing way, in contrast to me, the ugly-duckling, tag-along cousin. 

We were both twenty-three, and I was more than ready to move out of my parent’s basement. Todd provided the way. Despite my trepidation, I left to the land of party with my best cousin.

I had anticipated storms, but not multiple times a day. That was too much for me. Yet, it always stormed in Florida. Why had I let Todd rope me into moving there?

 I had never been professionally diagnosed with PTSD, but those lightning storms did something to me. My whole body reacted negatively during each storm, as if the adrenaline of a bear chasing me hit me each time. But I had to look cool in front of Todd, so I tried not to let him see my fear.

“Where are you going?” Todd asked one morning as I gathered my things. We had lived in Florida for three months, and I had yet to acquire a girlfriend. Meanwhile, Todd already had established a harem of girls.

“My company has a big job in Naples,” I said as I tied my boots. I didn’t mind doing landscaping work. I had lost ten pounds from the physical labor. Maybe soon, I would look as sleek as Todd.

“That’s a long drive from Deerfield Beach.”

“A job is a job,” I said as I left the apartment.

Of course, a nasty storm picked up as I entered Alligator Alley. The rain poured down as if the angels held a hose over the road with the faucet on full blast. My hand gripped the wheel to the point of jacking up my muscles. I slowed my speed to twenty miles an hour. 

“This sucks,” I lamented as I crawled along I-75.

BOOM! BOOM! Thunder echoed overhead.

“No, no, no,” I panicked. This stretch of road had no stores to duck into or rest stops to cower at. I had only done the adult thing for three months now. I needed my mom to tell me how to handle the storm, to hold me.

Lightning flashed in the sky, and I saw a large object on the road ahead of me. Stupidly, I slammed on my brakes. 

The car fishtailed to the left, right, and left. Suddenly, my vehicle hovered above the road as it hydroplaned. I spun dangerously close to the bumper of another car as it successfully swerved out of my way.

My heart pounded, and my fingers pulsated.

“What do I do?” I cried as my car spun more. Then, it happened.

A bolt of lightning hit the car.

The metal all around me glowed red. The hot rubber on the steering wheel stuck to my hands.

“What?” I let go of the steering wheel. “This ain’t lightning,” I proclaimed as I tried to take it in. The metal had cooled. My car spun in 360s down the interstate.

The volt that hit my car passed through my vehicle. Why hadn’t it affected me? I hadn’t felt it. I put my hand on my heart to make sure it still beat.

Another bolt hit my car. 

“This defies odds,” I screamed. Again, the metal went red, then cooled. Even though I had not accelerated on the gas since I started spinning, the car seemed to rotate faster.

Boom. Flash. Bolt after bolt pelted my car.

The bolts sprayed brilliant colors of orange, purple, and green.

“This ain’t lightning,” I argued with no one. “I know lightning, personally.”

When the next bolt hit my car, I looked up and saw it come out of something of a rectangular shape. “That ain’t a cloud.” My fear shifted to curiosity.

The shape reminded me of one of those Tic-Tac mints. 

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Three executive hits pounded my car. All of them had come from the Tic-Tac cloud.

“That ain’t no cloud.” It had a solid shape, and it stayed directly above me.

“What is going on?” I cried.

The electricity moved through the car each time, yet it never bothered me.

I looked out the window as my car sped down the interstate in wild circles. My head spun in the opposite direction, and I couldn’t stop the puke that splattered everything inside.

“Oh, oh,” the nausea and headache seemed even worse than my most debilitating migraine.

I looked down at the road.

“AHHHH!” I screamed. I hovered above the road.

More lightning hit me. The Tic-Tac glowed white, then zipped away at a speed more stealthy than man can create.

My car dropped to the road with a force that shook everything inside, especially me. The dark that created the storm disappeared, and the lightning ceased. The sun returned in its Florida blazing shine. Besides the puddles on the road, there were no other signs of inclement weather.

***

“Tell the ladies about your alien mint again,” Todd said a few days later at his small get-together. Several girls had joined us at our apartment’s pool. I looked at the lovely faces that tuned into me. I wasn’t about to squander any chance with them by telling them my story. I instantly regretted telling Todd about the strange lightning. He constantly teased me about it.

“I am fine,” I said, looking away and wrapping my arms around my chest.

“No, no, this is great,” Todd said as he dunked a chip into the clam dip. “Ruben saw an alien a couple of days ago on Alligator Alley.”

“I never claimed it was an alien,” I countered.

“Oh, it surely was. It was one of those Tic-Tac spaceships.”

I hadn’t even heard about a Tic-Tac spaceship until Todd teased me about the ordeal.

“Oh, so are you like one of those conspiracists? You know the type who still lives at home in the mama’s basement?” A super-hot girl said, but I could tell she wasn’t asking it to score points with me, more mocking me.

“I just pulled Ruben out of his mama’s basement,” Todd said, laughing at my expense. The ladies joined him.

“I never said it was an alien,” I pouted.

“He said the alien ship set lightning bolt after lightning bolt to his car. He said they had many colors, like a light show. He said that his car had turned cherry red with heat. Sounds like an alien to me.”

Todd made me look like an idiot.

“That’s enough, Todd,” I said.

The girls giggled.

“He said his car floated above the road.” Todd just kept going. 

Shut up already.

“It didn’t float, more like hydroplaned,” I said, underplaying the incident.

“I hydroplaned once,” one of the girls said.

“Hey, alien boy, how about another Pepsi?” A girl asked.

“Yeah, alien boy, go get Lacey a Pepsi. How about you bring out at least twelve of them,” Todd demanded.

I went into the apartment. Without changing out of my swimsuit, I grabbed my keys and took off to the beach. I wasn’t going to stick around and be the brunt of their jokes all night.

***

If I thought I had PTSD from lightning before the storm, it had intensified afterward. In fact, a strange occurrence occurred during lightning storms. Whenever electricity was in the air, I felt an electrical charge hum under my skin, and a slight magnetic affinity took place. I could stick metal items to my skin by bringing any body part close to them. Todd used me as a side-show attraction to his parties. Our guest saw me as a freak and not a potential date option. It got to the point that storms brought me so much anxiety. I panicked about being hit and dreaded Todd degrading me to others. 

The anxiety debilitated me, and even one time, I ended up at the hospital, thinking I had a heart problem. They diagnosed me with a full-on anxiety attack.

Then, to add hell to hell, Todd came home with the grand announcement.

“You will never believe it. I got you on the Joe Carriage show!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Joe Carriage. Surely you have heard of him.”

I picked up a pile of empty pizza boxes and put them in a garbage bag. Todd turned out to be an awful roommate. He partied almost every night, and he never cleaned his messes.

“Nope,” I said. Annoyed, I pulled out the vacuum.

“Joe Carriage. He is like Jerry Springer.”

“You got me on the Joe Carriage show? Why so?”

“To share your alien story.”

I shoved the vacuum at Todd. “Oh, no way.”

“Yes, way,” he said, clapping his hands.

“That wasn’t meant as a good thing. I am not going to go on any show so people can turn me into a freak.”

“Come on. I’ll be there with you.”

“No!”

Enough was enough.

I packed my bags and moved to San Diego, which has only five lightning storms a year.

I don’t know what happened that day on Alligator Alley. The more I read up on Tic-Tac alien ships, the more I believe alien life watches us. But my experience seems unique to me, so I am not sure an alien Tic-Tac ship visited me that day.

Maybe I had a psychotic break after the first bolt of lightning hit my car, causing me to hallucinate. Perhaps, a strange phenomenon happened, and I did indeed get hit with lightning, one bolt after another. 

All I know is that my life improved by moving away from Todd. We keep in touch on social media, and we have no hard feelings. We make far better cousins than roommates.

As for my nerves, I have significantly settled in the virtually storm-free capital of the US.

-No more lightning storms for me.

But San Deigo might be the Tic-Tac sighting capital.

 

__________________________________________________High Voltage

by Stephanie Daich