Zap, Donnie, and You’re Done

by Daniel W. Davis

(Continued)
     "Oh." Donnie finished his beer, and without asking, Earl ordered him another. He took a drink from the new bottle and said, "Well, I reckon I could try. But it won’t be too good."
     "It’ll be the best," Tom Ray said. "’Cause we got to hear it from you personally."
     "Yeah," said Earl. "So come on."
     "Well, I got struck by lightning. And so did a cat. We were near the barn, and there wasn’t a damned cloud in the sky, and I got struck by lightning, and I guess the cat was close enough to me that it got struck, too."
     "Was it on fire?" said Tom Ray. "I heard the cat was on fire."
     "Yeah." Donnie nodded his head and looked at the bar. "Yeah, it was on fire. Runnin’ around on fire."
     "Were you on fire?"
     "No."
     "Did you..." Earl struggled for the words. "Uh...lose consciousness?"
     "No. Sometimes I wish I did, though."
     There were things he couldn’t tell, as you may imagine—the sound of a cat on fire, for instance. That’s a sound you just can’t describe, not that you’d ever want to of course. There was also the smell of your own flesh burning, and even though Donnie hadn’t been on fire, he knew very well what that smelled like. He often spent his nights laying awake, wishing the lightning had knocked him unconscious, so that he wouldn’t have heard the cat, wouldn’t have smelled himself melting, wouldn’t have seen the world distorted through an elec-trical haze. A vision that only lasted an instant, less than the time it took you to blink, but he could still see it when he closed his eyes, how different everything looked, how the world was distorted and ablaze in blue and white and yellow lights.
     Nor could he convey that sense of immediacy, that tingle that ran straight through to his subconscious and sparked a flame that hadn’t burned out since. He could still feel it, in his bones—they vibrated against his flesh, his teeth would rattle in the dead of night, his tongue would go dry and his eyes would roll back in their sockets as that sensation rushed over him again. Every hair on end, fingers and toes stiff, he would piss himself, the hot liquid steaming against his cold thighs. His lungs would seize, and he would lay there in his own urine, choking on bile, straining for some meas-ure of calm, some sign of sanity. It would come, eventually, it would come in a languid flow, just slow enough for him to remember every minute detail, to relive it a hundred times in as many seconds.
     But those were things he couldn’t say. Things he’d never even tried to say, and he wasn’t about to attempt it here in a bar whose name he barely even knew, with two guys he wouldn’t even nod hello to on the street. So he sim-ply let his voice trail off, left the two men on either side of him staring at him.
     After a moment Earl grew impatient. "Well? That it?"
     "It was the worst feeling of my life." Donnie shrugged. "Yeah. That’s it."
     "Huh. The papers made it sound more interesting."
     "They would, I reckon."
     "They still talk about it, too."
     "Yep."
     "What are the odds, you think?" Tom Ray asked. "What do you think the odds are of that happening? I mean, one day, you’re just walking around, it’s not raining or nothing, and then bam"—he slammed his fist on the counter—"a bolt of lightning comes down and fries your ass. Think about it, Earl. I mean, goddamn."
     "Then you’d be a goner," Earl said, laughing. "You’d be done." He paused. "Done. Donnie, my man, were you done? A done Donnie tom turkey?" He laughed.
     Tom Ray laughed, too, and Donnie laughed with them, and both men slapped him on the shoulder again and then wandered off. Donnie stared at the bar for a minute or two, until the bartender came up and said, "You really the guy who got struck by lightning?"
     Donnie nodded. "Yessir."
     "How long ago was that? Five, ten years?"
     Donnie didn’t think that could possibly be right, but he nodded. "Sure."
     "It really as awful as you say?"
     "Worse," he said.
     "Huh." The bartender picked up the empty bottle and replaced it. Then he said, "That’s got to be some kind of luck, you know."
     "Yeah."
     "I mean, imagine..." His voice trailed off when he realized that Donnie didn’t have to imagine it. After an awkward pause, where Donnie failed to even acknowledge him, the bartender said, "It’s on the house," and moved off.
     Donnie took his new beer and downed it. Then he sat at the bar and waited for the thunder to die down outside. When the storm had ceased, he left, knowing it wasn’t necessarily safe, but knowing if he could be struck by lightning when there wasn’t even a cloud in the sky, then he could just as easily be struck in some run-down bar telling his story to people who would never truly understand it, no matter how many times they heard it. Daniel W. Davis is a graduate student born and raised in Central Illinois, where he spends the majority of his time ignoring the rigors of higher education. You can follow his work and musings at dumpsterchickenmusic.blogspot.com.