Lightening

The sliver of a new moon hazed over in a high thickening cloud covering with its light 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 was beam reaching with mounding seas smoothly moving at a steady 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 helm was 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.

My eye caught another little lightning ball off to port, I was on a port tack with the breeze playing at the left side of my face. I had two storms off to port to accompany my little voyage and smiled at their beauty and nodded to the fact that there were quite a distance away. They made me a bit lonely. There is a beauty to them that should be shared.

I sat down and rested my hand on the tiller and studied the compass with its red light glowing pink 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 dropped to barely filling the sails. I had to keep my hand on the tiller as the breeze wasn’t sufficient to move the vane and steer us.

Balls of light poundings surrounded me. They would go on and off never quite in the same places. Soft beats and little the light shows. Several simultaneous cracks with rolling drum rolls sounded behind me. I did not turn to look.

I wasn’t afraid yet. I just hoped they would stay off in the distance.

To make myself busy I intentionally focussed on the bottom of the cockpit, grabbed my jacket and yelled down as I put it on, ‘It’s probably going to blow. It’s probably going to dump on us.’

There were repeating echoes of thunder now. I pulled up the word stereophonic, trying for humour, I think. Maybe I was getting a little scared, or just frightened a bit. I knew that there were glowings behind me that I wouldn’t face. I was starting to think of the word, afraid, now. Ahead, and off along my port there were growing bottoms of light created a horizon through the reflected dividing of the a sea of bright diamonds that surrounded me with growls of continuous thunder.

With a fast beating heart I looked behind at the cracks and louder thunder to see a line of lightning strikes descending from a black sky painted in flashes of villainous formations of cloud creatures. This horizon was not far away and stretched out and along my starboard side almost to Magic’s 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 a breeze filling them. I sat down again next to the tiller and unconsciously took off my jacket again 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. I put my jacket back on, snapping and zippering it up but I felt no comfort being surrounded by the noises of thunders and lightning strikes.

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, tearing bolts, rolling rumbles every where. I thought of stereophonic again, 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 a 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 was conscious that I felt a little lonely.

My heart beat loudly. Was my body challenging all this shit? I tried to calm it down my exhaling and inhaling deeply 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 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 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, seeing the lightning through glowing sheets of rain but still hearing the thunder rumblings and 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 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 on the sheet lines to my fingertips. Magic was creating small slow moving phosphorescent wakes but 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 star lights 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 really 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.