Tales From An Alternate Reality

Joltage
Idol mini | week 13 | 1820 words
Omakase (the choice is yours)

x-x-x-x-x

Benny Marks was struck by lightning when he was twenty-four. Afterwards, he was never quite the same.

His friends and family tried to help him, and eventually just pretended they didn't notice. They understood when he suddenly became hopeless at math, or got nervous around flashing lights or during the cold months that crackled with static. They talked him out of moving to a place with milder weather, knowing he'd be lonely with his family so far away.

They tried not to stare at the branchlike scars on his arm and neck that showed the path the lightning had taken through his body.

After the first month, Benny stopped talking about what it had been like and how it had changed him. The burning smell, the agonizing heat, the sheer sense of panic all stayed with him—the emotional shock had been almost as bad as the physical one. He got headaches, worse than any he'd had before, and he struggled to process new concepts or sometimes even to finish a sentence. But people were shocked when he told them about it, and some of them found it depressing. So, he learned to keep it to himself.

He definitely didn't mention the psychic abilities, and no one would have believed him if he had.

Auras were the first thing he noticed. He'd always assumed that was just some hippie concept, hallucinations maybe, but it wasn't so funny after he'd seen them himself. Certain people had a colorful glow surrounding them, sort of a "mood cloud." In the beginning, he couldn't figure out what the colors meant. But once he did, he realized they weren't terribly useful to him. Still, it was something.

He was much more surprised to discover that he could see ghosts. They were rarely in focus, and they didn't talk much—at least, not at first. But after a couple of weeks of cold gusts and dead-eyed stares, one of them finally spoke to him:

“What the–? Geez, pal, what the heck happened to you?”

Did I pass some sort of hazing test? Benny wondered, before realizing that he was now being side-eyed and insulted by a whole new population.

“Hey!” he said.

“Oh, you can hear me?” the ghost said. “Sorry, no judgment,” he added. “I was a lab experiment once, too.”

“What?” asked Benny.

“After, though, not before. ESP testing, over at the university. So what did that, anyway? Chemo?”

“Lightning.”

“No shit. Boy, scientists can be ruthless. I’m Hal, by the way.”

“Benny. And it wasn’t science, it was the weather.”

“Wow. That’s some lousy luck you’ve got there.” Hal waved at someone behind Benny. “Hey, Dave, come over here and meet this guy! He got fried by lightning!”

Before long, Benny had met five other ghosts and immediately forgotten their names. But he noticed that he felt more comfortable with them than with his friends or family. Accepted. He asked Hal about it.

“Hey, everybody hopes for a memorable death. Sometimes, it’s all we have left. And you hit the jackpot on yours, so you’re kind of a minor celebrity around here.”

“But I’m not dead,” Benny said.

“Yet…” Hal muttered.

“Huh?” Benny asked. “Do you know something I don’t?”

Hal shrugged.

Benny checked his watch. “Uh-oh. I’ve gotta go. See you around sometime,”

“Sure thing. And hey, cheer up. Snow season’s started. We don’t get a lot of lightning in the winter.”

Not all of the ghosts Benny encountered were as nice as Hal and his friends. Some of them just stared at him, which was kind of unnerving. Sometimes Benny stared back, and if no one else was around, he might say, “Do you mind?”

That usually flustered the ghosts, and inspired them to leave, which he found entertaining.

But the ghost outside Benny’s office warmed up to him, and introduced himself as Saul.

“I’ve been around here since the 90s,” Saul said. “I was alive for 20 of them, and I never left. I always liked working with everyone, and some of them are still here. It’s good to see the magazine is doing well. What’ve they got you working on?”

“Membership and renewals. Circulation’s growing.”

“Nice. That’s what I like to hear.”

Benny met up with Hal on the weekends, to go walking down by the river. “How come you can go anywhere you want?” Benny asked. “Instead of being tied to the same place?”

“I’m just here for my boy,” Hal said. “He was only ten when I had the heart attack. I try to keep an eye on him, you know? Make sure he’s doing okay. But I’m not, like, fixated. Not like Car-Crash Joey, over by the Interstate...”

“So, you could leave at any time.”

“Yeah. And maybe someday I will. But I’m in no hurry.”

As time went on, Benny eased back into normal life. He ate lunch with the guys from the office, and met up after work for a beer once in a while. He got into fantasy-league hockey, and asked a couple of women out on dates. He even started thinking that his scars were fading a little bit.

But then, winter turned to spring.

One night, he finished up a couple of pool games at the bar and headed out to his car. It was wet and windy, a sudden storm no one had predicted. Benny didn’t pay any attention to it until he thought he saw a flash in the sky. Thunder rumbled, and a rush of fear prickled the back of his neck. He spun around and around in agitated circles, hoping the noise was just a truck rumbling down the street.

But suddenly, the air grew close and tight. Then the odor of burning ozone filled his nose, bringing back memories of the last time. The urge to run rose up screaming inside him just as an arc of electricity surged through him.

Oh please, God, please–not again! The PAIN!

His thoughts scattered like buckshot as he rolled and twisted on the wet pavement in agony. Every nerve in his body was on fire, and he could hardly breathe.

“Benny. Hey, Benny!”

He knew that voice. Benny opened his eyes to find Hal and Dave looming over him in the dark. He groaned. “What happened?”

“You got hit again,” Dave said. “It was really something!”

“Yeah. You even crossed over for a couple of seconds,” Hal said. “Wasn’t sure you’d make it back out.”

Benny groaned and shivered. He felt utterly destroyed.

The bar’s side door opened, and Chip and Ronnie came running out. “Benny!” they yelled. “God, Benny–are you all right?”

“It g-got me again,” he said, his teeth still chattering from the shock. “Hurts…”

“C’mon,” Chip said. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”

Benny wasn’t the same after that. All of his old worries came flooding back, worse than ever, and he became paranoid and superstitious. It felt like the lightning was targeting him, and he was amazed he’d survived it twice. He couldn’t help thinking that his luck would run out someday, maybe soon.
So he tried to improve his odds.

“Are you going bowling with us tonight?” his brother would ask.

“No… maybe next weekend, if the weather clears up.”

Or Frank might say, “Hey, a bunch of us are puttin’ together a pick-up baseball game after work. You comin’?”

“No, sorry,” Benny would answer, “I have to get home.” But the only thing that was ever at home was Benny himself.

He couldn’t explain why going outside to his car and driving someplace seemed riskier than staying in his apartment. But he felt like he was tempting fate every second he was outside. It was March, the beginning of tornado season, and thunderstorms happened all too often. It was all Benny could do to make himself go to and from work and the grocery store.

Life settled into a dull routine that was disappointing to everyone. But Benny was still surprised when Hal turned up in his kitchen one day.

“Whoa!” Benny said. “How did you get in here?”

“I’m a ghost–walls don’t scare me.”

“I mean, how did you know where I was? And why did you come find me?”

“Because I’ve hardly seen you since the day you got zapped again, and what I have seen has not been good,” Hal said.

“I can’t help it,” Benny said. “You have no idea what it’s like when it hits you. It hurts so much, and it feels like it’s never going to end! I don’t ever want to go through that again.”

“So why’re you still living here, then? There’s gotta be places where it doesn’t storm so much,” Hal said.

“I’ve thought about it before. But my family’s here, and the only people I know are here.”

“So, you don’t want to leave because you’re afraid of being alone, and you don’t want to stay because you’re afraid of getting juiced again.”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Well, you’ve gotta choose between them. Because right now, this thing you’re doing isn’t really living. It’s more like avoiding,” Hal said. “And you’re still young. You can make new friends. I mean, don’t quote me on this, but you’re a pretty likable kid. That’ll help.”

“Really?” Benny said.

“Sure. And it’s gotta be better than sitting around here all the time. What’ve you got to lose by trying? It’ll all work out.”

Benny thought about it for a couple of days. His family wouldn’t be happy, but right now he wasn’t happy either, and there was no future in the way he’d been living. I can’t keep letting them make this decision for me, he thought.

He did some online research to figure out what parts of the country had the fewest lightning storms. The Northwest was promising. He went ahead and applied for a couple of jobs in Portland.

After several telephone interviews, Benny finally had an offer, and he took it. Never seen the ocean in person, he thought, but I’d sure like to.

He dreaded breaking the news to his family. He knew they’d make him feel guilty, and they’d try to pressure him into changing his mind.

But he hated the idea of backing out even more. He started packing, and he gave notice at his job, to make sure there’d be nothing to fall back on.

A few days before leaving, he finally went to tell his mother. She burst into tears and clung to him, clearly devastated. Benny found it incredibly hard, even though he’d been expecting it.

“But think how alone you’ll be!” his mother cried, the refrain he knew all too well.

Benny just nodded, his heart aching for her. Yes, he knew he’d be lonely for a while, and he would deal with it.

But she’d never understand that a little loneliness was better than hiding from the world and living with bone-deep terror every time the sky went dark.


–/–

If you enjoyed this story, PLEASE VOTE FOR IT along with any of your other favorites here.