Lightning X

Lightning X

The sliver of a new moon hazed over in what seemed the no motion of cloud with its light filtering away as though slowly being turned off. Scudding clouds at a much lower level raced above me from port to starboard until they disappeared all together into a nothingness that was my night.

Off to the port bow was a barely visible thumping show of dull light flashings. A small ball of a lightning storm on an invisible horizon. I become a bit lonely having nobody to share the intoxication of it. I was beam reaching with mounding seas smoothly moving at a steady tiny tilt of deck. There was no spray but I felt a bit chilled.

The helm being steady, I picked up my rolled foul weather trousers and pulled them on over my shorts. The always get caught on my knife and I always have to tug them over it and get the shoulders traps mixed up on a not hard struggle to balance myself by knee leaning on the lee side of the cockpit.

The helm was still steady and though the trousers felt a little clammy I thought the jacket would be too hot so left it rolled in the corner of the bridge deck and coaming.

My eye caught another little lightning ball off to port, I was on a port tack. I had two storms off to port to accompany my little voyage and smiled at their beauty and nodded to the fact that they were quite a distance away.

I sat down and rested my hand on the tiller and studied the compass with its red glowing on white numbers. She was steering herself on soft moulding seas without mechanical or human aid so I felt proud of her and took my hand away.

A crack resounded behind us and I turned to see the lighted bottoms of cloud, then darkness. I looked around off to starboard to see two distant balls of light splashing then disappearing. The breeze dropped considerably and Magic’s sails started slatting and her blocks rattling. I pulled in sheets and put her back on course. The breeze was light making me feel like I had just started the sail. I was now loosely close-hauled but had to keep my hand on the tiller in what was now a light almost head breeze.

Several simultaneous cracks with drum rolls glowed behind me. I did not turn to look.

I wasn’t afraid. I just hoped they would go. To make myself busy and to focus on the bottom of the cockpit I grabbed my jacket saying aloud, ‘It’s probably going to blow. It’s probably going to dump on us.’

There were repeating echoes of thunder now. It started behind me with glows that I wouldn’t face. I was growing afraid now. Ahead, and off along my port the balls became the lit bottoms of a great overcast that created an horizon of pulsing light that sent growls of thunder my way.

I looked behind at the cracks and louder thunder to see a whole line of horizon illuminated by lightning strikes descending from the grey bottoms and villainous formations of cloud creatures. This horizon was not far away and stretched along my starboard side almost to the bow. I told myself that dawn was just an hour away and all would be well once I could see everything.

I poked along with the waters barely moving by the hull and the sails reacting more to the swelling than to the breeze filling them. I sat down next to the tiller and unconsciously put on my jacket being aware of my eyes roving the darkness and flashes. I didn’t feel the need to count between flash and sound since the strikes were not in one area. My jacket was snapped and zippered up but I felt no comfort being surrounded by the noises of thunders and the picture of lightning strikes around me.

I tried to think of what to do but the vibrancy of my situation left me numb. I stood up and sat down. Crashings, cackles, screaching bolts, rolling rumbles every where. I thought of stereophonic and surround sound but those words satisfied nothing.

The first horizontal strikes that I witnessed moved in slow motion on my port side and stretched for what seemed miles with a cadenced echoing drumbeat. My thought centred on one that I saw divided into many strikes that streamed up and down and ahead. I thought of power. I saw Medusa’s head of twirling illuminated snakes and felt my face to see if I was stone.

I thought, looking around at all of this might, that I had died. I thought that I would die. I thought that I was completely helpless. I felt a little lonely.

My heart beat loudly. Was my body challenging all this shit? I tried to calm it down by consciously exhaling and inhaling in some kind of rhythm and felt the warm relaxation of piss cascading down my left leg. I smiled and almost laughed but that would have been sacrilegious with the lightning coming closer and striking the waters to disappear. Too near to laugh. The horizontal streaks of effervescence were surrounding me. I witnessed lightning coming from the sea to shoot out into space. My slowly passing water took on a near fear that reminded me that fear didn’t mean a thing.

I thought to go below to just wait it all out, but thought it better to point the boat to that gap in this orchestration just off the starboard bow. Morning was just a little bit away. That gap was morning and mornings came every day. I started to wonder about what I was saying to myself and I started to wonder if that was a gap?

Sulphur made me close my mouth and cover my nose with my hand. Then, the rain fell like a door turned bucket it fell so thickly that I could not see the lightning as well nor hear the sounding of thunder. I lifted my head to this solid curtain of water almost drowning myself with an open mouth. I felt relieved, not seeing the lightning, but still hearing the thunder rumblings and glowing sheets of rain I knew it would all still be there when the downpour let up.

I could feel a cold breeze on my left ear and saw that this thick rain was falling at a slant toward starboard. The mainsail was shiny and staying full, at lease what I could see of its bottom. The mizzen seemed the same but the staysail was lost in the dark rain.

I looked at the compass, corrected to where I imagined the gap to be and let out the sails by vibration measures from the lines to my fingertips. Magic was creating small slow moving phosphorescent wakes and they were disappearing too slowly behind us.

The rain stopped suddenly but the lightning and thunder didn’t. We were moving toward a wedge of stars, through a valley of effervescent horror. There was a flicker of charcoal that was absorbing the starlights but I had to blink and that greyness disappeared and the stars came back but slightly dimmer. Now that I saw a hope of leaving this I became scared. I needed to get to that relief morning and I was not moving too fast. I needed to get to morning. I needed to live.