19, 8, 5, 10, 3, 25, 7

19, 8, 5, 10, 3, 25, 7

The woman sucked in a giant gasp of air. She looked frightened, her face pale, eyes darting, a sheen of sweat covering her brow. She put her hand to her chest trying to calm her racing heart. She took small sips of air, trying to save herself from tumbling into a full-on anxiety attack. Or maybe heart attack — based on how hard her pulse was pounding.

“Are you alright?” The voice was coming from behind her left shoulder.

She turned to face her husband. “Yeah … I think so,” she said.

Greg and Eloise had been married for seven years.  They were good together. Not great, but not awful. Good. Right now though, Greg was looking worriedly at his wife.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” she said, heart still thumping in her chest. She looked around, suddenly realizing that she was in her own kitchen. She was so confused.

Eloise’s heart still hammered in her chest, and her head pounded — an almost debilitating pain.  

WTF! What the hell was that? she thought.

A little voice in the back of her brain said, You know exactly what that was.

She did. But she was not ready to admit it.

She just sat there, gripping a small pencil that she had been holding before — before what? — tears streaming down her face.

*****

When Eloise had been thirteen, she had been struck by lightening. A direct hit, those who saw it had said. She had been playing baseball — centre field — on a cloudless afternoon, when the strike happened. She remembered standing there in the ready position, then she was on her back, people around her yelling for help. Her parents, who had been in the stands that day, said that she had flown backwards about two metres, landing near the warning track. Technically, she had been dead, but before anyone could start compressions, she had given a giant gasp of air (not unlike the one today), and tried to sit up. Her hair had been singed, her shoes blown off of her feet, and the baby toe on her left foot blow off. She had been taken immediately to the hospital by ambulance. MRIs had shown a shadow in the prefrontal cortex, but after extensive testing, the doctors declared her fine. 

But she wasn’t.

Physically, she had a scar on the back of her head shaped almost like the lightening bolt that had struck her, where no hair would ever grow. The doctors believed it was the place where the lightening had entered her body. Her left arm was a mass of Lichtenberg scaring — scars that looked strangely like the fibrous roots of a plant grown in water, with a large tap root and fine root hairs growing from the main stem. It reminded Eloise of a tattoo she had seen once of the tree of life — everything below ground looked like her Lichtenberg scaring. And her poor baby toe, vaporized — or so she assumed because it was never found.  

But those were not her only injuries. The injuries to her mind were private, and she never spoke about them. The most significant were the headaches. Before the accident, Eloise had never had a headache in her life. But after — man-oh-man — there were some doozies. They were blinding, painful, completely debilitating, but, thankfully, very short. The longest lasted ten minutes, but they were the worst ten minutes of her young life.

On top of the headaches, she saw things. Not all the time, and not necessarily important things. It was just “things.” Once she saw where a lost kitten was, and had rescued it after holding its collar. The kids across the street were so happy to have their pet back, it made Eloise smile. Sometime she would know what someone was going to say when she touched them. Sometimes she would know what they were thinking, which was particularly difficult, or helpful, depending on the situation. She had been dating a guy named Eduardo in high school. Once, when they were holding hands she had known exactly what he was thinking. It was sex — he wanted sex, the kind of sex he wanted, how he could convince her to have sex, where to have sex, whether he should tell her he loved her so that she would agree to have sex. That relationship didn’t last long.

She had a more difficult time at school. Sometimes she would see the answers for tests when she touched a test paper. She didn’t know what to do about that. She studied, and most of the time she already knew the answers, but knowing the answers made her feel like she was cheating. Luckily, it happened rarely.

Eventually, by the time she finished high school, she rarely saw anything anymore, and the headaches were gone completely. By the time she finished university, she had outgrown her gift, or so she supposed. She was no more psychic than a bag of rocks. And that was more than okay with her.  

Now, here she was, thirty-one years old, and it was back. Her hand went unconsciously to the back of her head, and traced the scar on the back of her head.  

Yes, it was back. But it was different this time. This time it was a big thing — bigger than anything else she had ever seen. And it was scary. She wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, or what to do about it. She just knew that it was not good.

Okay, she thought. I had been sitting at the table, writing a grocery list, then BAM!

“El, you okay?”  

She wiped the tears from her cheeks, and turned to face her husband.

“I don’t know what happened.”

“You were sitting there, the all of a sudden you were zoned out. I called your name, and you didn’t respond. It was like you were in a trance. You were just mumbling something over and over. It sounded like numbers.” He paused. “You had me worried.” He came over and rubbed her back.

Greg knew all about the lightening strike when Eloise had been younger. She had even told him a little bit about her clairvoyance, making a joke of it, but not getting into too many specifics.  She made it sound more like co-incidences, rather than something other-worldly.

But today had been different from all the other times. Today she had a sense of impending doom. She wasn’t sure, exactly what, but she knew something terrible was going to happen.

“I just felt dread, as if something horrible was waiting on the horizon.” She looked down at the little pencil she was clutching in her hand.

“Where did we get this pencil?”

“Uh, I dunno.” He looked at it. “Lotto centre, maybe. Looks like the ones you use to fill out your ticket.”

Eloise dropped the pencil on the table, and looked down at her shopping list. There was no list of things she needed to buy at the store. Instead, there were seven numbers listed one below the other — 19, 8, 5, 10, 3, 25, 7.

She gasped.

Greg looked over her shoulder. “What the —“

“It’s nothing,” she interrupted.

“Those look like —“

“It’s nothing,” she said more stridently, putting her hand over the numbers.

“Are you, you know, ‘seeing’ things again?” He made air quotes around the word seeing, still eyeing the paper where Eloise had written the numbers.

Eloise was getting angry. “I don’t know what I’m doing!” she snapped. She got up and walked out of the kitchen. She went into the bathroom and washed her face. She needed time to think.

When she walked back into the kitchen, both Greg and the paper with the numbers written on it were gone.

Eloise picked up the pencil again. This time it was less shock and pain, more of a story revealed in flashes of light and images. As the kitchen disappeared around her, she saw Greg, smiling, happy, hugging her, then her crying, then Greg as a black outline, indistinct, walking away from her.

She gasped. She needed Greg to come home, right now!

As it turned out, Greg had gone to the lottery kiosk in the mall, and bought a single Mega Millions ticket.

When he got home he showed her the ticket. “We’re gonna be rich, El. Rich, rich, rich! Tonight’s jackpot is fifty-three million dollars. We’re gonna make it rain, Baby!”

“Greg, you can’t — you have to destroy the ticket. It’s not right. It's dangerous. You need to get rid of it!”

Greg looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Why would I do that? This is the winning ticket. I know it.” He waved the ticket in the air, in front of her face.

“You have to get rid of that ticket. Something bad’s going to happen if you don’t.”

Instead of asking her what she meant, Greg just laughed. “No way, El, this is our ticket to the good life.”

“Please, Greg. Please. Just rip the tickets up. Please!”

Greg stopped laughing. He looked at her. “No, Eloise, I am not going to rip up the ticket. Instead, we’re going to be rich.”

“If that ticket wins, something bad is going to happen.”

Greg snorted. “Uh, could you be a little more precise and a little less dramatic, please.”

“Why don’t you believe me?”

“Because you haven’t told me anything. If we win, I’ll do what ever you say so ‘something bad’ doesn’t happen.” Again with the air quotes, she thought. “If we don’t win, then no harm, no foul. I’m just out a buck.”

“Let me hold the ticket, then,” she said, hopeful, but knowing there was no way he would agree.

Greg laughed out loud. “Sure, El, sure. Right after you told me to rip it up.” He laughed again. “No, I think I’m going to keep the ticket right here” — he patted his shirt pocket, “— until tonight’s draw.”

She knew they would win, and she was right. They won fifty-three million dollars. Greg was over the moon.  He called everyone he knew, sharing the good news. All Eloise could do was cry.  

Later that night, while Greg celebrated with his friends downstairs, Eloise lay in her bed looking up at the ceiling, waiting — waiting for whatever doom was about to befall her and her husband.  She held the little tiny pencil in her hand, hoping that it would give her a clue about what the future held, but there was nothing. She heard people laughing in the living room, glasses tinkling, music playing. Eloise had never felt so scared and alone in her life.

Eloise’s eyes flew open, her heart hammering in her chest.  

What was that?

She was disoriented. She must have fallen asleep, but something had frightened her awake. She reached out for Greg, but only felt empty space where he should have been, his side of the bed empty. She turned to look at the clock, but the face was black. The power was out.

As she swung her legs over the side of the bed, and started to rise, the smoke detector started to blare, its incessant blast spurring her to move faster. She moved to the bedroom door and threw it open, only to slam it shut again as the wall of flame licking along the hall in front of her bedroom leapt at the door. 

Fire!

“Greg!” No response. “GREG!” still nothing.

She grabbed her phone and ran to the bedroom window. Their bedroom faced the street, and the porch roof was right under the window. She threw up the sash and lowered herself to the porch. The drop to the ground from the roof of the porch was higher, but she grabbed the eavestrough, swung over the edge and hoped for the best. When she hit the ground, she stood up, and immediately called nine-one-one. Where was Greg? She couldn't wait for the fire department to arrive. She ran around the house, looking for him. His car was still in the driveway, and he wasn’t outside. That meant that he was still in the house. She approached the front door — locked. She looked in the living room window. There was Greg, passed out on the sofa, flames creeping towards him from the hall.  

She smashed the front window, and tried to climb in. Halfway through, there was a giant explosion, that jettisoned her onto the front lawn, knocking her senseless. By the time she regained consciousness, the fire department was pulling into the driveway.

“My husband is in the living room. I can’t get to him. Help him, please!

Eloise watched as the firefighters ran toward the house as another explosion knocked everyone to the ground, raining debris from the house onto the lawn.

*****

Eloise had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, given to her by a paramedic while being checked out for injuries. She watched as the firefighters wound up their hoses, and prepared to leave the scene. All that remained of her home was a smouldering crater. Earlier, she had watched as Greg had been pulled out of the inferno, and placed on a gurney. She saw as the firefighter shook his head slightly. The EMT covered Greg’s body with a blanket. Greg was dead.

An older man, with Fire Marshall written on his jacket approached Eloise.

“What happened to my house?” she asked.

“Lightening strike.

Eloise was gobsmacked. She wasn’t sure that she had heard him correctly. “I’m sorry? What?”

“Lightening strike.” Eloise looked from the Fire Marshall to her house and back again.

He continued. “The lightening started the fire on the second floor, a tree crashing into your house ruptured a gas line, causing the inferno. The two gas explosions caused the majority of the damage.”

“Lightening?”

“Yes ma’am. Lightening.”

Eloise couldn’t comprehend the serendipity — no, whatever the the opposite of serendipity — of her situation.

Lightening giveth, and lightening taketh away.