I am a Lightning Rod

My daddy's luck ran out at the throne of Old Sparky. My mama went via toaster in the bathtub. I guess you could say electricity runs in my blood.

I feel the currents flow through my veins like wires in back of a socket. There's a thunderstorm brewing and I'm gonna be a part of it.

His bible jostles around in the breast pocket of my old hand-me-down dress. Tiny words of God jumbling around on thin, gold-edged sheets of paper compacted under a worn leather cover, like a sleeping baby bird in its mother's nest. I am running, panting across this vast prairie, kicking up dust as it swirls around me like a vortex, reminiscent of the wild-eyed tornado that tore up this town just days before. There's another one due soon. I can feel it. Everything in my body has a heartbeat, syncing up with the thick voltage in the air.

This earth doesn't want me.

The wind is howling, beckoning for me to come dance with it. I let out a strained laugh when the thunder cracks through the broken, pregnant clouds and serenades me. I'm just so happy. God's hollering at me through the thick humidity and the wild tempest fermenting above, but I won't listen.

Daddy's dead. Mama's dead. And now I'm gonna be, too.

Just like that, it happens. The roar of the storm screams in pain over my head; an explosion so ear-splitting it could deafen God himself. I feel a jolt unlike anything I've ever felt before and I swear it goes straight through my heart and stops it as I hit the ground. I'm being excruciatingly stung all over my body, inside and out. If I wasn't momentarily paralyzed, I'd cry out in pain and anguish at the feeling of my body melting into molten lava, pooling out from under my dress and scorching the earth in its wake.

I blink and stare at the pocket-sized bible now lying in front of me in the dry, billowing grass, its pages blackened and its cover blistered from the lightning bolt that has just invaded my being.

I'm not dead.

I should be dead, but I'm not. To my disappointment, I'm alive with vigor, sitting up gradually, marveling at the numbness of my skin and the paralysis of my joints. I feel cheated.

As I pull back the singed sleeve of my dress, I see the mark it's left on me. Raw, pink scar tissue branches out in thin channels down my neck and my chest, forever disfiguring me. I'm not dead, and this is my perpetual reminder. This is the lightning mocking me, teasing me, pushing me down—but not hard enough to knock me out. This is my transformation into an electrified monster. This is my realization that death doesn't want me, either.

This is me rising up from the ashes after being struck down by the storm. I am alive. I am unstoppable.

I am a lightning rod.