#litfict

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Echo In Love

“I’ve always fantasized about being struck by lightning. Is that weird?”

Amos keeps his expression neutral before answering.

“Naw, that’s not weird at all... though it is a little unconventional..”

Echo just stares out the window, lost in the raging storm beyond, her eyes glistening with emotion. She had not been speaking to him.

The rain falls in torrents and the wind tosses the trees in a comical violent dance. With every vicious, deafening clap of thunder, Amos flinches and Echo smiles.

All of a sudden, Echo turns to him, eyes bright, face shining.

“Let’s go out!” she breathes like she’s in love.

“It’s dangerous. I just got an emergency alert on my phone, it says to stay indoors till the storm passes.”

Echo shrugs and makes to leave herself.

“You could get struck by lightning!” he exclaims, forehead wrinkled in worry.

Echo just lifts an eyebrow and says wryly, “ Thanks for convincing me.”

She’s out the door in a flash and Amos curses, throwing on his raincoat and bolting after her. She’s running and spinning in the tall grass, completely drenched, arms outstretched. Her face is upturned like she wants to drink the sky. All of a sudden, a powerful bolt of lightning strikes an elm tree at the far end of the meadow and a large branch bursts into flames. With a sickening crack it falls, followed by a shower of sparks and leaves. For a moment, Amos’s vision is hazed by a brilliant purple.

Echo screams in delight and then she’s racing toward the tree, eyes like fire, heart pounding. And Amos, poor Amos, he chases after her, his stomach hollow with dread, shouting warnings that she laughs at. Echo has reached the tree now, and she surveys the carnage of the elm, stroking it’s blackened bark with reverence, with envy. The elm is still smoking.

And then from the turbulent sky, a thin white lighting bolt like a crooked spine emerges and hits Amos. He spasms and falls to the floor, shaking with tremors like the aftershock of an earthquake. All he sees is a blinding white and the sudden pain is so excruciating that he thinks he has died.

But death would not have been as terrible. From the left side of his jaw down along his shoulder and across his torso, purple and blue spiderweb scars bloom on his smoking skin. His charred clothes sizzle when the rain hits them and his eyes roll in terrified uncertain jerks. Nearby, Echo falls to the grass, head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. She gazes at Amos red eyed, trembling with emotion, and whispers three words.

Marina’s Handwriting

“Lucas, Darling, with his hands dripping blood of love he is coming after me. I know that you can stop him, because you have the same blood descended into you. Save me from this world so cruel and take me to those mountains shaded in blue under moon where we can listen to the calmness of pond blended into our love so pure.”

With ‘y’ stretched like a scar made by sword in her letter, and every other word holding each other for lifetime, she wrote me for the last time; those letters were a pure blend of love and war.

The ease of childhood; the ease of life.

I remember when I was a kid. Sleeping under an open starry sky, making a wish in mind, every-time, after seeing a falling star, and then opening sleeping with a hope were those days. That star was God to me, a visible God, covering all the darkness behind himself, which used to scare.

One day I questioned my dad, “daddy, what if one day a sky becomes starless? How will I run away from the dark…