Probably Sort-of Safe

The story so far:

Chapter 1: https://medium.com/@TheTrueBrendanF/probably-sort-of-safe-126ea5d30926#.adn6rnua1

Chapter 2: https://medium.com/@TheTrueBrendanF/probably-sort-of-safe-953fdf006e2b#.8ajf8763d

Chapter 3: https://medium.com/@TheTrueBrendanF/probably-sort-of-safe-beba9889c810#.8h84bodwq

Chapter 4: https://medium.com/@TheTrueBrendanF/probably-sort-of-safe-f650f93955c5#.4toslzdxn

Chapter 5: https://medium.com/@TheTrueBrendanF/probably-sort-of-safe-38f373218b40#.i332clgw0

Chapter 6: https://medium.com/@TheTrueBrendanF/probably-sort-of-safe-1c985512552d#.ivgspvn6i

Chapter 7: https://medium.com/@TheTrueBrendanF/probably-sort-of-safe-d813bce6c813#.6o1m73xwi

And now…Chapter 8

The Lightning Rider

Nicholas had read his magazine cover-to-cover at least three times already. He eyed the store’s big clock. Eleven thirty-two. Only three minutes had passed since he last looked. Twenty-eight minutes still stood between him and closing. The racks were piled high with disposable food and the freezers were playing their hypnotic drone.

He beat a rhythm-less drum line on the counter top. Half of him wished for a customer to arrive just so he could have something to do. The other, louder, half thought that this was the dumbest thing it had ever heard and ordered the other half to be silent.

Nicholas cast a glance towards the backroom. Liz had been back there for quite a long time. This was becoming a frequent happening. She insisted that she was going for naps, that she’d been sick in recent weeks and needed the lie-downs. Nicholas had his doubts, but he had always struggled to tell Liz “No” about the things she wished to do.

Something was troubling him about her trips to the backroom. Though the door was shut tight and he had no way of knowing, he could swear that he felt a certain emptiness emanating from the room. It was as though he could tell that Liz was somehow melting into the walls of the backroom, leaving only cold stone and empty boxes.

He had just had it in mind to go and knock on the door when, without any prompting, the cash drawer opened itself up with a small ding.

‘Huh?’ he thought.

The lights in the freezers and refrigerators began to crack and flicker. The racks began to shake, food packets crinkling and colliding. The wire racks caught a non-existent gale and began to spin rapidly. The freezer and refrigerator doors open and shut in unison, once, twice, three times.

And then all was still.

The front door bell did not ring to announce the new customer. The old man simply appeared in the middle of the store.

He approached the counter and laid his palms upon the top. His eyes were an electric blue with pupils that seemed to crackle and pulse with some kind of inward energy.

“Hello,” said the old man.

“H-hello,” stammered Nicholas. He was sweating, though he had never, never before in his life, been as cold as he was in that moment. “H-how did you get in here?”

The old man smiled. “Why, I rode the lightning. It was perfectly simple. Anyone can ride the lightning if they have half a mind to learn. It’s really not so hard, once you get the hang of it.”

Nicholas’s only lifeline back to sanity was the faint belief that perhaps these strange events were all parts of some elaborate joke. Perhaps he could catch it out.

“But there isn’t any lightning,” he said, trying to add a smug tone of logic to his voice. He hoped against hope that if he felt superior to the situation, maybe it would not seem so insane. His voice cracked when he spoke.

The old man’s smile tightened. His lips drew thin and seemed to vanish. His teeth were quite long and quite white and very sharp.

“My boy,” the old man said, “you don’t know what you talk about. There is lightning everywhere, at all times. You people…you walk and run and sleep, and all the while the lightning surrounds you, flows through and around you. So much potential goes ignored. Did you know, a single particle of the stuff can loop around the world five hundred times a day, and that’s if it is taking the scenic route. It really is remarkable, don’t you think?”

“Wh-what is?”

Those blue eyes flashed. Whether with rage or amusement, Nicholas could not tell.

“How much you people miss. How unaware you are of what is in your midst until it becomes too late and only when someone is struck down by the great unknown do you finally take heed.”

Nicholas had had enough. Whether this was a prank or not, it had gone on for too long and it was time to end. Something in that last bit had sounded not unlike a threat.

He said, “L-look, I, I don’t know what it is you’re up to and I don’t care. I-”

“Are you afraid, my dear boy?” the old man asked. “Because if you are, you are a good deal more perceptive and wiser than I had given you credit for.”

Nicholas noticed the insult buried within the statement. Fear began converting into fuel.

“Alright,” he said, “enough. Unless you’re going to buy something, I suggest you leave before there’s trouble.”

“And you,” the old man said, “could do to follow your own advice.”

“What is this?” demanded Nicholas. “Did Liz send you? Did she get you to come out here and freak me out while she laughs her butt off in the other room? Liz!” he yelled.

“She is not in there, my young friend,” said the old man. “And in answer to your question, yes, she is responsible for my being here, in her own way. But she did not know what she was doing. So, if you will excuse me.”

The old man drew a long silver blade from his belt and moved towards the back rom.

“Hey,” yelled Nicholas, “stop right there!” He grabbed the fire extinguisher that was kept behind the counter and positioned himself between the old man and the backroom. “If you think I’m going to let you-”

“‘Let’?” roared the old man, and this time there was no mistaking the malevolence that brimmed from those blue eyes. After a moment, his expression softened. “Oh, I see. A good lad, stepping up to danger when he couldn’t be more frightened. It is very impressive, I must say.”

He sheathed the blade.

“Tell me,” he began, “can you guess what the most difficult part of riding the lightning is?”

“Listen you old coot-”

A blast of light shot out, connecting with Nicholas square in the chest. He flew backwards and slammed into the backroom door. He slid down to floor, stunned.

The old man knelt beside him and placed a soft hand on his shoulder.

“Please, my good fellow,” said the old man, “don’t spoil a good thing. You really did impress me with your attitude just a moment ago, so please don’t make me dislike you. Dislike requires so much energy and results in such small rewards. Now, as I was saying: to ride the lightning is no great endeavor. The tricky bit for a beginner is getting on and getting off again. To do that, you really only need two things. Would you like to know what those are?”

“P-please,” wept Nicholas. “I, I-”

“What is required,” said the old man, “is someone to push.”

He placed a hand on Nicholas’s forehead. Nicholas’s whole body was overtaken by a bright light from within. A low humming noise filled the store. He realized it was coming from underneath his skin. It was his skin. His skin was pulsing with the light and the noise and the fuel of the stars. He began to vibrate. The light overtook all features, until Nicholas’s face, clothes and even his shape had lost all characteristics and he appeared to all the world to be nothing more than a shimmering pocket of surging energy.

The old man pulled his hand away. With a mighty CRACK! the light vanished into the air. A single blast of blue light split out into all directions and then was gone.

“Right then,” said the old man.

The Man of Locks stood up and once more produced the blade from his belt.

The backroom door swung open easily to him. He stepped inside.

Five minutes later, he stepped out. The blade was wet. He pulled the young lady by her elbow.

“But I love him!” she cried.

“He’s only using you to circumvent the Prophecy of the Last Golden Wish,” said an annoyed Man of Locks. “On the day of your first son’s birth, he would have had you fed to the goldfish before you could ever so much as see your child’s face.”

He released her, and Liz sank down onto the stool that was kept behind the counter.

“Not again,” she muttered. She looked over the elegant wedding dress she still wore. It had been sewn from the special silks of an army of one thousand royal spiders.

“It’s not fair,” she said at last. “You spend your whole life doing normal things and having normal problems and then something really excellent happens. Only then of course it turns out that the really excellent thing can’t be kept. And then it turns out that the really excellent thing maybe wasn’t all that excellent to begin with. It’s just not fair,” she repeated. She hung her head and hoped he did not see the tears that slid out her eyes and fell to the linoleum.

The Man of Locks laughed. “Don’t be foolish, young lady. Of course it was ‘really excellent’. And amazing. And whatever other words and phrases that you may care to throw at your experience. And don’t for one moment be ashamed of what you’ve done or might have done because you’ve done nothing to be ashamed of and if you’re as fine a young lady as I think you are, the same applies to anything that you might have done. You went out into the world, and you followed your heart. You were swept up in something that you couldn’t see all sides of. It happens. The important thing is to make sure you learn something from any mis-step. From this, you should remember one thing, something which every traveler, gypsy and voyager should always be sure to have.”

“What’s that?” asked Liz.

“Someone to catch you,” said The Man of Locks and he snapped his fingers.

The lightning opened up once more.

They walked home, hand in hand, her in her wedding dress and him with his scorch marks. The Man of Locks lingered just long enough to see that they were off together. A small breeze tugged at his hair and that small smile warmed his eyes for the briefest of moments.

He departed back into the shadows.

A few hours later, it was time for the store to be opened up. In the mornings, it fell to the manager, Mr. Bartholomew to unlock the doors, turn on the lights and make the coffee.

He did so in the grumbling manner with which he handled every aspect of his life.

Mr. Bartholomew had only just taken his position behind the counter when he was quite suddenly sure that he was not alone in the store. The hairs on the back of his neck tingled. He turned around and called out and looked down the aisles and in the closets. Having lapped the store, he returned to behind the counter and scratched his head.

The fluorescent lights suddenly seemed too bright. The reflection off the linoleum tiles was giving him a headache. The buzzing of the lights was a thousand insects screaming at once, and the freezers were singing a funeral dirge.

He could not stand it. Nor could he stand that sensation, that unshakeable, instinctual knowledge that someone was standing right behind him.

But there was nothing.

The only other place to look was the backroom. He eyed the closed door. In his stomach, he had the curious certainty that, though he had no way of knowing it, the backroom was not empty.

He reached out his hand, and for one brief moment thought better of it, thought to leave the door closed until the sensation had passed at which point he would continue on his day and forget about this eeriness. But he was a practical man who brooked no foolishness from any of his employees, and would certainly not behave in such a nonsensical way his own self. He dismissed his dismissal.

He opened the door.

There was no backroom.

He realized that the steady hum of the fluorescent bulbs was now silent. He spun, sure that this must be some trick, that there must be some explanation.

The doorway was gone. All that there was to see was more corridor. Corridors without beginnings or endings, only middles and tunnels that ran for forever until looping back into nowhere.

From close by, there was a voice.

“Nearly there,” said The Voice, which was attached to no owner or source. “Missed him by maybe a few hours. Terrible shame. And you, sir,” The Voice now addressed Mr. Bartholomew, “I do apologize for this inconvenience. Things get mixed up, as I’m sure your officious state of employment no doubt inclines you to know. Still, it is our lot in life to turn inconvenience into advantage. For example, my Dog was just becoming quite famished. And now, that problem has seen fit to take care of itself.”

A hungry beast came growling down the corridor.

Mr. Bartholomew saw the eyes. And he saw the teeth. And he began to run.

He only made it a few steps before he felt a great weight come down upon his back, followed by a ripping sensation that was far too quick and much too sharp to qualify as ‘pain’.