4

            I’m standing in a field. All is calm. There’s no wildlife or civilization in sight. I look around in a circle. A forest distantly surrounds me at every edge. The field I’m standing on is at the top of a subtle hill. I’m standing at its center, right at the very peak of the small inclined dome. I pick a direction and I start to walk, not bothering to think of a reason why I want to go that way.

            Despite walking in a direction, there’s no real sign that I’m moving. I’m just walking forward, and the field moves with me. The forest gets no closer to me. The blades of grass on the hill are repeating their patterns. Well, there’s one thing that’s changing. A storm is starting to approach in the sky. I look upward and observed the clouds growing ever darker with each passing step. I begin to smile. Somehow, I must know what’s coming. A rumbling begins. Its source is impossible to determine; It’s all around me at the same time. It’s so powerful that it pierces my skin. I feel it deep in my body. My body’s shaking in anticipation, my bones rattling within my skeleton. Out of nowhere my head jerks upward and I see a giant flash. When I focus again, I see a bolt, stretching itself form the sky and connecting itself to my chest. My heart. With a bang, it snatches onto my body. But instead of going away like a normal lightning strike, it stays locked onto me.

A warm fuzzy feeling floods my nerves. There’s a tingling sensation running up and down my arms and legs. Goosebumps cover my skin. My hair stands up from my head and starts waving a dance. My muscles all feel like they’re getting a massage from the inside. If I had any cramps, they vanished in an instant. The feeling is euphoric. I feel my energy building, as if this one strand of lightning is charging me up like a battery. My mind is clearer, and my heartbeat accelerates. I’m getting excited. This energy is building. It’s filling my blood. I have no more room left for it. I need to release this damn energy. This whole sensation feels so right!

            I feel like I’m floating. My feet have left the ground, and this bolt is following my body’s sudden slight rise into the air. I can feel it. I’m almost there. I’m about to burst-

            My eyes flew open, and I audibly gasped. The field and the storm faded away and suddenly I was somewhere else. I blinked over and over with heavy breaths. My head jerked upward for a second before falling back onto something soft. There was a blinding light in my face. My mind went into instant panic, trying desperately to remember where I was and what was going on. I took deep breaths and squinted. In my confusion, I heard my name called in surprise. My vision’s still too blurry to make out the form that shouted, but I see them approach quickly and try to wrap their arms around me.

            ZAP!

            “OW!” a familiar voice cried, and the form backed away from their attempted hug. Realizing someone was in the room with me woke my brain up, finally giving me control over my thoughts again. My vision finally cleared, and I saw the emotional look of my girlfriend staring at me, the most relieved face she’d ever shown me. “Oh, Beck, I thought I lost you!”

            I blinked a couple of times. Lost me? Wait… where am I? I sat up and realized I was sitting in a bed, and a glance at the room around revealed… a hospital room!? “What… what happened?” I muttered.

            “Beck you idiot, what the hell were you thinking!?” Lizzie exclaimed.

            “Wh-what?” I said, clutching my head. It didn’t hurt, but something was distracting my focus. It felt like… it felt like something was buzzing and moving all around me. My entire body felt jittery, and there were goosebumps all over my skin. “Why am I in the hospital?”

            “Because you’re an idiot,” Lizzie replied with a snort. “Why did you reach through the cage!?”

            Cage… That’s right! I was in a cage. The memory started to come back. I had volunteered to participate in the lightning show by going inside a giant cage and letting lightning strike it. My memory was still a bit fuzzy as I recounted the events. I had gotten inside, I had risen into the air, and the lightning began to strike. And I… “I reached through the cage…” I thought aloud. “Why… Why did I…”

            “Beck, you scared me shitless!” Lizzie cried, tears streaming down her face. “I thought I lost you… I thought… no one should’ve survived that!”

            I blinked. “What… what happened?”

            “What do you think dipshit!? You got struck by lightning! In the fucking heart!”

            “In… in the heart?” I repeated, mind blank.

            Lizzie took off her glasses to wipe her eyes. She hiccupped a couple of times, like she tended to do when she was distressed. “It… it was horrible. You looked… you looked like you were in a trance or something. When the generator turned on you just… stared at the tower and… *HIC* I don’t know, you just walked toward the edge. You reached your fingers out I guess and… and you got struck! Right on the fingers. Everyone gasped *HIC* and Frank was so surprised. You like… fell backwards sorta onto your back, and another lightning hits. And no one knows why or how, but it dodged the fucking cage! It just went straight to your heart! And then another bolt hit you and another and…” she trailed off in tears.

            I stared in horror at her recounting of events. “I… I was struck in the heart!?”

            “Ten times!”

            “What!?” I exclaimed. That’s not possible! I’d be dead if I was struck by lightning in the heart, not to mention more than once, not to mention ten fucking times…

“Beck, I thought I lost my boyfriend forever…” she whispered miserably.

            Her tears were contagious, and my eyes watered up instantly. “I’m here baby. I’m still here.” I reached out to hug her.

            ZAP!

            “OW!” Lizzie squealed and jumped back. Huh? She rubbed her waist where I tried to wrap my left arm around. She looked back to me in surprise.

            “Oh!” I said in surprise, before I realized I must’ve shocked her with static. “Sorry…” I muttered. “I guess that’s a side effect of getting struck by electricity over and over…”

            Lizzie didn’t laugh. “The doctors can’t believe it. None of this makes any sense.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Beck, you shouldn’t have survived, and even if you did, you should’ve sustained some kind of long-term side effect. But you’re not burned anywhere, no cardiac arrest, no paralysis, nothing! The only thing that was worth noting was at some point you started giving the doctors static shocks when they were working on you.”

            I sat back processing her words, unsure of what to say. I should have died. I should be dead. And I had escaped entirely injury-free. How exactly was one supposed to take the news that they were supposed to be dead!? I looked myself over, getting a feel of whether I was in any pain. Outside of feeling a bit jittery, I felt nothing. There was some wacky disconnect in my mind. It was hard to accept that the body I currently occupied went through an experience that should kill a man, yet I sat by none the wiser. Well, except for dealing out static shocks. Though that reminded me of something she said. “Wait, did you say that at some point I started giving static shocks? What do you mean by that, was I not always giving shocks?”

            She widened her eyes. “Yeah, it was the strangest thing. You were all passed out, and they were doing all kinds of things, checking your heartbeat, your blood pressure, that kind of stuff. Then suddenly out of nowhere you gave a weird groan or something and a doctor got shocked touching your arm. Ever since then, we can’t touch you without getting shocked by… I don’t know, static electricity? Everyone’s so baffled…”

            I blinked in surprise. Out of nowhere I groaned? While asleep? And suddenly I was shocking everyone? Was I dreaming or something? I tried to think back, but everything was so fuzzy, and Lizzie’s face made me lose my train of thought. She was clearly stressed about everything, and as jumbled as my mind was with the large amount of information hitting me at once, her horrified expression wiped all other thoughts from my brain, and all I could do was just stare sadly at my girlfriend.

            “Beck, why did you do it?” she pleaded. “What happened?”

            I thought back to my strange mindset when the generator turned on. What had happened? Why did I suddenly ignore the routine? Why did I suddenly feel so compelled to reach outside the cage? “I… I don’t know,” I admitted, head down. “It was so weird. I was watching the bolts and… out of nowhere I suddenly couldn’t take my eyes off them. I… I wasn’t in control of myself or something. I don’t know what happened…” I brought my hands to my head, bringing my knees up to my chest. “I’m… I’m so lost. I’m sorry, I can’t imagine…”