Sheet Lightening

By John Beck © 2006

Sheet lightening. Rippling waves of black blank black blast. What the fuck is that cat trying to tell me?

Click. Shutters. A quiet crash. English accents do it for American women for some reason. Just about anything applies when it comes to 'English' mind you. Scottish, Irish, Australian... basically anything but Canadian. Doesn't seem to apply in reverse though. I've always wondered what American accents sound like to English speakers.

Flash, bang, pow, the storm rages and rages. Break off the peeling paint and feed it to the cat if he gets hungry. I keep a spare chisel laying around for just such an exigency.

When you get to Nine Mile Island, be sure to ask the tour director how much radiation escaped that fateful day. Then snap a picture when he informs you, 'None.' Get a picture right then, and you will have captured the Platonic ideal behind the concept of Smugness. Then dwell on the fact that he's right, and that something from the Ford administration drives exploding gas prices today.

Cough. No really. I'm talking a COUGH here. Like a sneeze from Andre the Giant after spending a week in a coal mine compressed in an instant's explosion. Imagine a lone vocal chord whirling past your head. Followed, naturally, by a pronounced Splat.

Slam. Did the window just blow out or something? Picture this: Christmas lights. Christmas lights laid out in a roughly even grid, spaced a bit too tightly, against a white ceiling. Primary colors, but very dim. Incidentally, that tingling feeling is all in your head (by way of your stomach).

Gun shots are cathartic, especially when followed by a meaty wet smack like a hand slapped against muddy wet grit. If you've ever wondered what it's like to be fired out of a cannon, just crawl outside of your head for a few minutes and wait for the sunrise (or so they say). Purple toes from the acceleration.

Have you ever stopped to wonder what happens when a light bulb breaks? Slow motion: spider web lines, the first shard clicks free, implosion from the vacuum, the hair thin filament sighs. Then everything just goes to pieces. Entropy reigns. It always does.

"Don't come crying back to me when your leg falls off!" she shouted. She was always shouting. The emotion is a funny one. Start off standing in rain pouring down so hard it hurts. And cold. Unimaginably cold. In place of drops, sleet dripping off of your outstretched finger tips. Now: you're in the middle of Kansas with nothing visible all the way to the horizon, and you must walk or die. Something like that. Not really sure where legs enter into it, but pretty sure they come into it somehow.

That cat's howling again. The cat always howls when there's a storm. I think it has something against precipitation. And it turns out there's no such thing as Santa Claus, which makes explaining the cat's very presence, shall we say, challenging. Nose? Pink, naturally.

Wind chimes are not for the faint of heart. People fail to realize that if they're not in tune, they'll drive you insane. If they are in tune, they'll hypnotize the unwary. They like to sneak up in the night when everything's quiet, then unleash a cacophony of dischordia. All hail Eris!

John Beck is an energy trader (think Enron minus the malfeasance) living on the East coast against his will. While he's never written professionally, he has always been an avid--if deranged--writer who originally began writing upon founding a political blog. While it has become largely defunct, he's transitioned into the roll of professional guest blogger, writing intermittently for a number of different sites on topics ranging from neo-libertarian politics, cosmic drunkenness, and poker, including his favorite site, Jaxia's Steal The Blinds.