A Strie of Lightning

This story is very loosely based on a true story. Actually, the only true part about this story is that the person was, indeed, struck by lightning twice -- and survived!

Despite that, I am not an electrical pro so there may be some holes or not-quite completely right information about weather vanes and grounding processes. I hope my research paid off.

Otherwise the information just fits the story.

All characters are over 18 and all sex is consensual.

This story is a transcript of the author's imagination so any likenesses, either real or imagined, are completely coincidental.

As is usual, constructive criticism is welcome.

A Strike of Lightning -- Part 01

The lightning was violent. The sky was a new lace of electric, hardly rhythmic lines of force every few seconds. The following thunder was a drum solo in the sky and the time between the enforcement of sound was growing shorter by the moment.

Stan Parchek stood on the veranda-type porch of his family's relatively small cabin in the empty nor'easter part of the state, hoping for a sign of his two older sisters. They went a-walkin' through the surrounding forest, supposedly meeting up with some friends who had their own cabin half a mile away. Now, Stan knew, half a mile in a forest of thick and close trees was like a marathon if you didn't know where you were.

Luckily, though, Stan knew every part of this area of forest for ten miles or so in every direction. He wasn't some super tracker-forester-hunter guy but since he'd been coming here with his family for the last twenty-two years, well, you learn stuff.

The cabin was surrounded by a hundred feet of open ground in every direction. This discouraged most animals and left no hiding places for the young to get immediately lost nor for ne'er-do-wells to cause issues. This also allowed any fire possibilities to be mitigated if not controlled: if a fire starts in the cabin then it has a long way to go to get more fuel from the forest. If a fire starts in the forest then, again, it has a long way to go with no fuel to get to the cabin. Any fuel to be had was bright green grass that would take a little bit more to burn.

As well as all of that space all electrical lines were run underground therefore any fallen trees, of which a few could almost reach the cabin, had no lines to snag onto. Fire problems could come from those tall trees but the reach was minimal, at best. Water lines were also underground. Stan thought his grandfather did a wonderful job of designing this place. It was only a few years old in comparison to some of those elsewhere in the forest but it was comfy and well-stocked. Screw that sleeping bag nonsense.

There were a few issues, sure -- any electrical problems had to be dug up -- very carefully, and the same with waterline issues. All in all, though, everything worked and worked well.

Now with this crazy lightning and thunder one could feel the electricity in the air and it worried Stan since his sisters had yet to return. Sarah and Gab, short for Gabrielle, knew the signs and they knew to call if there was something in whatever they were doing that was going to cause them to be late. Whether going to someone else's cabin or having issues in the field their SAT phone would have no problems getting through.

"Anything yet," came a worried question behind him. The voice was a little shaky in its fear and Stan knew very well how worried his mother could get.

"Not yet, mom." He didn't to turn to look at her when she spoke. Instead he tried refocusing his eyes in an attempt to make them sharper than they already were. And, he tried letting it go but, no, he dreaded the oncoming words.

"I wish your father was here," Melanie Parchek said, her voice now quavering in fear and loss.

Stan knew well that David Parchek would have all the answers and knew how to relax his wife when she needed it. Unfortunately, this would be the second year that the Parchek family had been without their patriarch. Jokes were poorly made that Stan was the new leader but he well knew that he wasn't. He didn't have half the knowledge or wisdom his father had, he wasn't given the same level of courage nor the same level of tenacity to face the difficulties of the world. Oh, Stan knew well that he could be intelligent or courageous or tenacious when it was needed but these characteristics were a long way from being considered by any of his family. His mother and his three sisters respected him well enough but they still compared him to their father and Stan knew he would never be able to stand up to the awesome that was David Parchek.

There was no resentment or anything but it struck Stan as a little unfair sometimes...what was that?

Stan's thoughts were broken by a movement in the north face that, just stumbling out the trees, were what appeared to be two figures. One was dragging the other, backing out of the trees so Stan couldn't see who was dragging and who was being dragged. Without a word to his mother Stan jumped from the covered porch and ran full tilt to his two older sisters. He vaguely heard his mother calling for Teresa, his younger sister, to get some...thing. He was going so fast he missed the rest of it.

One hundred feet really isn't that far but Stan felt like it was taking forever for him to get to edge of the forest to help his sisters. When he finally arrived he saw that Gab was dragging Sarah from under her sister's armpits. Sarah's head lolled to one side and Stan could immediately see that she was unconscious. Without saying anything Stan bent and lifted his oldest sister into his arms and turned back to the house.

Holy crap, this girl is heavy, Stan thought.

Sarah's head bounced up and down with no control against his shoulder as he tried to run. He had no thought at that moment to look at his sister and see her swollen face and neck. Considering that both his mother and younger sister, Teresa, were nurses he had no doubt they could take care of whatever was needed for his unconscious sibling.

Stan reached the porch in what felt like record time and laid her out on the small couch that the veranda held. He called on his mother and then was going to say something to Gab when he realized she wasn't there. Quickly looking back out over the expanse of field he saw her trying to run but had a bad limp. As an odd cogency of thought he once again jumped off the porch was that she must have sprained something so that was why the drag was a little weird. Still, he ran.

There was something building in the sky around Stan as he ran. It felt like he was covered in static electricity and that was making running difficult. The hair on his body was standing and giving off that strange sensation of having something dry rubbed on you. Still, he reached his limping sister and without saying anything he scooped her up and into his arms, turned and began a worried move back to the cabin. Just thinking about weather caused a brilliant spark of lightning that seemed only feet away. The thunder behind it was almost instantaneous and Stan looked to the side of the cabin where stood a grounding pole. Lightning would be, should be, drawn to the metal pole and shove it into the earth -- grounding it. There were other grounding poles and weather vanes across the roof as this area had bad lightning and thunder storms every few years. The place was beautiful, absolutely, but there was some danger here, too.

The bummer of the moment was that the lightning that struck was nowhere near the grounding pole. All Stan saw was a white flash. His eyes went from crazily lit to completely black. The weight in his arms was gone and he felt as though he was flying. The gravity of his head was gone and he couldn't tell up from down or there from here. Stan didn't feel himself slam into the ground.

Then there was pain. A white-hot and searing pain up and down his back and then down through his legs to his feet. Stan thought he felt his shoes simply go away and he was that villain that shoots electricity from his body -- he couldn't seem to remember the name of the guy or the hero he fought.

There was now no feeling anywhere to the extremities of his body -- no lying on the ground, no sister's body in his arms, no head feeling the pass of air as he ran. The middle of his body, however, was a screaming vortex of pain. Stan could swear that his heart was about to simply explode. Breathing was difficult. There was still no sight.

The last thing Stan Parchek thought about was that it felt like his shirt had been torn off.

**********

Stan woke inside the ICU. The waking was slow and caused him nothing but pain when he tried opening his eyes. Unlike the little while ago, to his thoughts but it had been actually two days, when the world was black he could see now but in blurry dysfunction. His sight was slowly clearing the longer he lay with his eyes open but the pain to keep them open was ridiculous. Still, he had to do it. Maybe he had some of his father's tenacity. Thankfully it seemed that the lights in the room were out.

Everything in and on his body hurt. His arms and legs felt like they'd been stretched too far and everything was pulled, bruised or missing. His back hurt the worst and when he finally realized that he was being held away from whatever he was supposed to be laying down on he figured he must have done something really bad to his back to have to have some kind of surgery.

His eyes were adjusting now and what he saw was shaded light. The lights outside of the room all had something over them, something shiny and almost reflective. As he turned his head he noticed that there were no devices plugged into him to measure his vitals. The only thing that was connected to him was a saline drip being held from a pole that looked like it was made of plastic. There were no beeps so a count of time was lost on him.

When Stan tried to call out for someone his voice broke and cracked and it took him a couple of tries to get enough saliva worked up to wet his tongue. "Hello," he was finally able to get out.

The call didn't seem loud to him, more muffled, but it must have had some strength behind it as someone rushed into the room and began taking his vitals the old fashioned way -- a handheld sphygmomanometer -- the one you had to squeeze to fill the bag around your arm and then they let a little of the air out and read the mercury inside the standing tube. This one looked old and rarely used, though. Then she tried a mercury thermometer and looked as though she couldn't actually read it very well.

"How are you feeling," the nurse asked when she was done.

"Terrible," Stand said.

"Well," started the nurse, who Stan thought was one of the prettier nurses he'd ever seen -- only his mother and sister could really be called pretty nurses, "that's how you're going to feel after getting struck by lightning."

Surprise must have shown on his face as the nurse looked down to him and said, "Twice."

Nurses and doctors came and went, drilling him with question after question and then pulling aside to discuss how someone could be struck twice and survive. As one doctor tried to roll some gadget into the room one of the nurses screamed and told him to get that thing out. It was expensive enough. Needing to replace it when you didn't need to break it would be stupid.

"Uh, someone please explain that one to me," Stan said, trying to impart nonchalance as well as concern.

One of the doctors turned and said, "Son, your body is so filled with electricity that any device we bring in explodes. It also seems to be causing your Priapism and we haven't figured out how to help you yet."

"Priawhatisitism? What are you talking about?" Stan's voice took on a little anger not being talked to like a regular person. His mother and sister probably knew what that was but he was a mechanic.

"Oh, uh, sorry," the doctor said. "You have a prolonged erection."

"How long?"

"Two days."

"A two day long erection?"

"Yes."

"Sex or medicine? Which one did you use?"

"Well, medicine, of course. We can't have our nurses trying to help you out." The doctor looked at Stan like he was a six year old kid trying to get calculus for the first time. "Besides, some of them are married and that is unprofessional anyway."

"Why can't I feel anything but pain? Especially a hard-on."

The doctor looked down at Stan and tried to put on a face of understanding. He didn't do it well but he finally said, "You've just had a million volts pumped through you -- twice -- so that might be why." As he said the last line the doctor smiled and then turned away to give the nurses orders.

Not terribly long later the Parchek women entered the room. Stan saw that Sarah looked a little worse for wear but otherwise fine, Gab was walking almost normal but had a few scratches and scrapes on her face and arms, Teresa was looking at him and then the missing telemetry devices in the room and his mother ran to him and kissed his face with such excitement his face was wet with saliva and tears when she was done. Her touch felt like she was trying to rip his skin off but he said nothing, only grimaced. All three of his sisters saw him wince but they, too, said nothing. They all knew their mother would go ape-shit if she knew how much pain he was in.

The ladies gathered around the bed and the five discussed what had happened: Sarah had been stung several times by a group of wasps and she was terribly allergic. She was able to get her epi pen out and shot before her throat closed but being stung more than once was a problem that she couldn't cover. When Stan had put her on the porch mom and Teresa pumped her with more epinephrine and called the ambulance.

Gabrielle had tripped over a tree root trying to get away from the wasps but when Sarah went down, well, she had to help. While not allergic to wasps or bees she got stung a few times, as well, but it wasn't all that bad, Gab swore. The bad part was size of the bruise around her ankle.

When Stan had Gabrielle in his arms and was running for the cabin he got struck by the first bolt. His sister was shocked out of his arms but Stan took the full blast -- thus the empty arms. That first blast blew off his shoes since there was nothing to ground on. The second blast got Stan while he was on the ground but since most of his clothes were either blown off or cooked off there was nowhere for the lightning to go but into the ground -- through Stan. His feet and back were blackened but seemed to still work and much of his body hair had been burned away. All that was left was a white Mohawk that would barely stay flat.

Stan Parchek's hair had been one length of dark brown hair that rested on his shoulders. While he usually kept his hair in a ponytail it wasn't on 'Lightning Day' and most of it was gone now. Stan felt sad inside because that was really his only vanity. His hair had been thick, lustrous, soft and beautiful. The rest of him was in decent shape but not overly muscled or crazily toned but he always thought he looked good.

As for Gab's survival, while there was a definite shocking from the blast she only seemed to take an outwardly close touch to it. She had been shocked but the timing of Stan's releasing her and her taking in any of the lightning was so close that she was mostly unharmed. Gab showed a few tinges of burn but nothing near to what Stan went through.

**********

After speaking with his family for a few minutes the doctor pulled Melanie aside. The doctor knew the Parchek mother was a nurse as they'd worked together here in the hospital. The doctor's eyes were sharp as he said, in quiet tones, "Obviously he's going to need some help for a few days but our main concern is the amount of electrical output he has. As well, his penis won't stop from staying erect.

"We're looking at his case as a type of non-ischemic Priapism because there's nothing else to call it. His blood flow is fine but when we try to do an x-ray the whole place lights up and then shortens out like Stan is the one causing it. When that happens his penis becomes erect, or more so, and then we have to find something to absorb the electrical output. As well, and this is just from an outside observation, he seems to be absorbing electrical voltage."

Melanie asked a few questions about care and the two figured that somewhere with no electrical wavelengths would be the best idea. Melanie knew there were cabins not far from theirs that were completely barren of electrical lines -- some of them had water, others didn't -- but it was going to take a day or two before she could get the stays lined up.

Another few minutes of conversation and it was decided that Stan would be released five days from then, if they could get the electrical charge out of him, and they could find a way to get him to the cabin using an old truck or something.

**********

The five days of recuperation in the hospital was quick but painful for Stan Parchek.

The hospital staff spent the time trying to get the electrical charge out of Stan's body by trying to ground him in some places, wet him in other places (the function of letting the water draw the voltage out versus the possibility of electrocuting him) and then overload him in still other places.

Success was finally had when an electrician actually happened to be visiting his wife in the hospital and told the staff the best way -- cover the boy in ESD matting, ground his feet with metal cable to an empty lot of dirt and give him a small shock. This would force the movement of the particles and draw them out. It worked but Stan screamed the entire time and his feet were somewhat more blackened by the experience.

Thankfully there seemed to be some kind of protection to Stan's body that the skin wasn't just peeling off and other professionals were brought in to look at that. Being poked, prodded and primed for recharging the city's energy station was not in the least comfortable for the young man but he persevered and made it.

The one thing the doctors were thankful for was that after getting most, if not all, of the electrical charge out of Stan his erection finally dropped. A close second was their equipment was now safe.

**********

The end of the five days later Stan Parchek and his mother and younger sister, Teresa, were on the way to the deep backwoods only a couple of miles from their own cabin. While there was water there was no electricity. The family was warned about using cell phones around Stan and that, of course, caused all sorts of complaints. All of this was crazy and since their living house and apartments were thirty miles away -- yes, not very far for a vacation spot but being in the lee of a mountain and a forest sometimes just make things easier -- the family was able to get to and get away from the cabins fairly quickly.

The truck they drove in was borrowed from a neighbor. The 1955 Chevrolet Heacock Classic had no electrical anything beyond the battery so Stan was setup in the bed of the truck, as far from the battery as possible.

After a trip to the market for supplies the three made it to the cabin, interestingly called "The Hidden Boudoir" by the owner, and unpacked their gear. Stan was moving slowly and a little shakily but he was moving. The women did most of the work but Stan tried to keep moving. He knew that being out of the hospital so soon after something like being struck by lightning was pretty incredible but he was actually feeling okay.

Unfortunately, the market and the street lights went shaky due to Stan absorbing some of their power. But during his stay in the hospital Stan had almost mastered shooting little jets of blue flame from his fingers so as soon as they were away from the power he let some out of from his hands.