Night Visions #1

Last night I dreamed of lightning. Again. There was a vast unbroken stretch of flat land, like a dead prairie or a desert. It was night, and there were no stars, no moon, just an unspecified glow that illuminated the unending vista. And then blindness, as a white sheet tore across the sky. The afterimage of the heavy clouds had not even faded from view when thunder broke the silence, assaulting my ears and shaking my every cell with a deep, echoing growl. No sooner did the ringing in my ears stop than a coiling, writhing ladder of blue-white bolts came crackling down from the clouded heavens and danced like mad faerie creatures upon the not-so-distant plain. This column of raw power shimmered and flashed as each bolt was replaced by the next, all the while moving slowly closer to where I stood, transfixed, deafened by each fresh rending of the atmosphere, unable to move, unable to look away. At some point, the wind appeared, the dead air came to life with a biting, swirling fury. After a few moments of dumbstruck awe, the column was before me. And, just as it reached me... it was gone. The wind stop, the clouds were silent. For the span of a heartbeat, and then a single bolt ripped through the dark clouds and struck me, square in the chest, just as the thunder began... and then I was awake.