At ten years old, I knew I would die from a lightning strike. It was then that my mother told me the story of what happened when I was two. According to her tale, I was in the living room, standing on the couch at the time. I didn’t ask her why I was doing such a thing. It was always forbidden to stand on the couch in our house, but on this occasion, I was either doing it behind her back, or the rule only came into effect after the incident I’m about to share with you.

While I was indulging in this perhaps-forbidden activity, my mother was in the kitchen of our small bungalow preparing our dinner. My oldest brother, nine at the time, was with her. As a thunderstorm rumbled, and a bolt of lightning apparently shot through the house via an electrical socket. My mother screamed in terror and yelled at my brother to head for the front door. He did as instructed and ran toward the exit, which necessitated a trip through the living room. I jumped in the air as he ran by, and without breaking his stride, he caught me in his arms and carried me to safety, my mother close on his heels.

This incident sparked (pun intended) my mother’s lifelong fear of thunderstorms, a fear I absorbed through osmosis. Not only was I afraid, I was obsessed. I read everything I got my hands on about the natural wonder of lightning storms. The librarians at both the school and public library aided and abetted my obsession. Apparently, a pre-teen boy with an intense interest in something other than comic books or the bare-breasted indigenous women in National Geographic magazines deserved encouragement and someone to provide reams of research material for his favorite topic.

I memorized statistics of deaths and injuries caused by lightning. I could recite the effect lightning has on the body upon striking and the effects that can linger for months, years, or even a lifetime afterward, if the victim is lucky enough to survive. I lectured anyone who chose to listen about the various types of lightning and the average strikes per minute around the planet. I blurted unsolicited explanations about ions, neutrons, electrical fields, and high-energy radiation. 

Despite the fact ninety percent of people survive lightning strikes, I indisputably believed it would be my cause of death. During a thunderstorm, I never ventured outdoors. I closed all windows to prohibit the lightning from entering the apartment on a draft of air. I didn’t shower or wash dishes during a thunderstorm in case it penetrated through the faucets. And, of course, I kept a safe distance from all electrical sockets.

As I traversed my teenage years, I learned something else. Girls were only very briefly impressed with my scientific and statistical knowledge of lightning. They soon tired of the subject, and if I wanted to maintain a relationship, or at the very least, make it to first base, I needed to stifle my fixation in public. In private, I continued to conduct research. The internet became my new best friend, and while most of my friend’s computers were disrupted by viruses accidentally downloaded from porn sites, my search history would only titillate a high school science teacher. 

To describe me as a geek was an understatement. I consoled myself with the fact Bill Gates was also a geek as a teenager. Yet, I had little hope of achieving his level of success before nature sealed my fate with a super-charged blast from the skies.

With maturity, I learned to curb my public urge to ramble on about electrical storms. I saved my passion for those precious private moments in my apartment where I tracked storms around the world and documented statistics. I was like a crack addict who hid his dirty habit from his family and friends.

In fact, I was lucky. I aced all my college courses and became a meteorologist, beginning my career at Newark Liberty International Airport. It was a dream job, but not without its bumps. Several times, my boss admonished me. He tired of reminding me my job involved all types of weather, good or bad. It included sunshine, rain, and wind. Of course, those things interested me, but they weren’t my true soulmates. When a more open-minded candidate became available, I found myself without a job at the ripe old age of thirty-two.

My sudden lack of employment didn’t discourage me. I would invite the world to share my obsession with lightning. A writer’s life for me.

My apartment’s décor took on the hue of the sunshine I rarely wanted to discuss when I worked at the airport. Yellow sticky notes covered all surfaces as I tried to organize the structure of my text. It needed to be perfect, but I had too much material for one volume. I broke it out into three books. The notes for one inhabited the kitchen. The other was in the living room, and the final book took shape in my bedroom. I decided to leave the one remaining room, the bathroom, untouched. I needed a sanctuary somewhere, away from the demons that haunted me, and where better than the room reserved for other private matters?

Fortunately, I had no family, no wife, no friends, and no life. I had saved a substantial amount of money while I was employed, and it allowed me to subsist for four years, the time it took to produce three volumes of facts about a fascinating natural phenomenon. 

The final products were printed and bound with elastics, in several copies, ready for an agent’s scrutiny. Of course, most publishers wanted submissions via email, but I was convinced my specific books needed a personal presentation. They’d see with their own eyes that I was an expert in the field, and they’d experience my positive energy. I was also a stone’s throw from New York City and the biggest and best literary agents in the world.

Because of the sheer volume and weight of the paper, I decided to limit my visits to two per day. I carried two recyclable grocery bags, one on each shoulder, three dreams in each bag. Climbing the stairs out of the subway station, I raised my gaze to the high-rises that housed the people who would scramble to acquire the rights to my books. I smiled. This was the culmination of everything I had worked for in my life. My obsessive research, my studies, my job. Everything led to this.

Hundreds of people streamed around me, jostling me as they pushed past. “Freak” and “Weirdo” were tossed about, along with other more colorful names I won’t repeat. My smile remained firmly in place. Soon my photo would be on the back of my books, and I’d be invited to appear on talk shows. They’d have other names for me then.

Unfamiliar with the downtown district, I gazed at the address on my phone as I stepped off the curb. A horn blared a split second before intense pain shot through my body. 

Airborne, I twisted and turned in the sky above the yellow taxis and heavily populated sidewalks, thousands of papers following my path. My precious manuscripts. 

I crashed onto the dirty pavement, my body hopelessly broken, beyond repair. My last view before life slipped from my body was the red glare of brake lights on the large, black pickup truck that had catapulted me into my final spiral. A Ford F-150 Lightning.