Melissa did not enjoy thunderstorms very much.
The loud noises and flashing lights, the power outages that wiped your data at the absolute worst time, and the always present (if slim) possibility of a tornado spawning out of nowhere. And tornadoes, as she knew, sucked. They sucked quite hard.
So when Melissa was abruptly woken up from her sleep by the flash and bang of a nearby lightning strike, she wasn't particularly happy.
Oh come on...not another one...now I'll not be able to get a good night's sleep for the rest of tonight... she thought to herself. Wait! I forgot! I left the washing machine on!
She went over to the washing machine, and moved the clothes to the dryer. She realized that she had left some clothes unwashed in the laundry basket. With a sigh, she pulled them out and placed them in the washing machine. One shirt wouldn't come out of the basket. It had a necklace chain tangled around it.
Oh no, she thought. I even forgot about the pendant.
She had received it that morning in the strangest way. The doorbell rang to her room, and she answered the door, only to find a package lying in front of the doorway.
Is this my order? She thought to herself. But she looked at the label, and it was strange.
"Trade Winds Fulfillment Services." I have no idea what that is, but it isn't Amazon.
But the address on the label was indeed her own. Did she forget something she had ordered? Was it a gift? She recalled overhearing one of her coworkers talking about buying a gift for someone. Perhaps they bought it for her?
Curiosity overcame her cautiousness. She cut the tape sealing the box shut, and lifted the flaps. Inside was the sort of fuzzy case jewelry came in, like those inside the little presents from Tiffany's. She opened the case.
Wow...it's really beautiful.
Melissa pulled out a sparkling pendant. It had a sterling silver chain, accented by black onyx beads. At the end of it was a smooth teardrop-shaped jewel, a translucent pale marine blue, like the sea near a white sand beach.
I have no idea what kind of stone this is, but it is very pretty. Could someone really have bought this for me?
She found a card inside the box, but when she opened it, there was no mention of who had sent the gift. Written instead was a series of care instructions. They were somewhat nonsensical.
"Not recommended for persons under 13 or over 65 years of age. Only licensed for public nonprofit use. Not for wholesale or retail sale. Store in a cool dry location.
WARNING: COLD WASH ONLY. DO NOT ALLOW CONTACT WITH WARM WATER. IF CONTACT OCCURS HEAD INLAND IMMEDIATELY!
Trade Winds is not responsible for damages and/or deaths accrued through illegitimate use of this device."
What the heck? This is just a jewel on a necklace! Why does it have warnings like it's a machine?
She put it around her neck. It looked quite fitting, and it felt comfortable too.
I guess I could hold onto this for a while...I'll find out who owns it later.
And that is exactly what she had done, and why she was having to disentangle it from the laundry basket. With a little work, Melissa separated the two.
She was about to put her dirty shirts in the washing machine when an incredibly loud thunderclap burst out of nowhere, and everything went blindingly white, then pitch-dark as the power was knocked out.
Oh God oh God oh God...thought Melissa as her ears gradually stopped ringing. What happened?!
She smelt ozone and felt the hairs on her neck stand on end. Her fingers tingled. A damp wind blew from the door to the laundry area. She slowly staggered out, feeling in the dark with her fingers.
Wind whistled through cracks in a broken window. Rain poured through the windowsill, making the walls and floor wet. She dared not venture near the window, for fear she'd step on broken glass. She needed a flashlight. Fortunately, Melissa always kept several in the kitchen cabinet.
Retrieving the flashlight, she panned it across her apartment. One window had indeed cracked, and a few pieces of glass glinted from the damp floor. Another had been blown open, the glass intact, but the shutters flapping precariously in the wind. She smelled burnt rubber and smoldering paint.
Did lightning strike the building?
Her bedroom was lit by an artificial blue glow, like it was when her computer was on. But she had turned it off before bed. Did the electrical surge somehow turn it back on?
She peeked around the door frame to look inside her bedroom.
What she saw made her drop her flashlight.
***
What...what is that thing?!
Coiling and crackling around her computer was a thunderbolt. There was no other way to describe it. Jagged luminescent edges, branching channels, the flickering in the air. It was pretty much a bolt of lightning. Except for the fact that while it undulated and writhed, it stayed put, arcing around her computer. It was much like the sparks from that band she had seen that played music with Tesla coils. Except that made no sense, because this was her laptop, not a Tesla coil!
Then the thing turned around and hissed at her.
She blinked. Was she really seeing what she was seeing? The thunderbolt had turned its head around and hissed at her.
Wait....HEAD?!
At one end of the bolt, the branches had formed a loop, and two balls of ionized gas glared from within the loop like eyes. Further branches from the loop outlined jaws and glowing fangs, like there was a ghostly serpent glaring back at her, its face framed by the channels of lightning.
Then it struck at her, knocking her to the ground.
I...I've got to be dreaming!
She edged back, into the living room. The thunderbolt lowered itself from her desk and began to crackle along the floor. It was like a snake. A thunderbolt snake.
It struck at her again, and she felt pain shooting up her arm and leg. Her arm reflexively shook. It was like driving your fingers into a wall outlet. Even after the electricity stopped flowing through her body, she felt a searing pain and numbness in her foot. Her head throbbed, and her heart had palpitations. Did she have burns where the current exited and entered her? She used the light of the weird electric snake thing to inspect her hands. No. It had to have been merely a ground strike. If it had made a direct landing on her, and brought current across her heart...
...Well bye-bye Melissa.
She got up and ran to her closet, adrenaline overwhelming the pain and numbness. The lightning snake crept into the living room as well, and struck at her surge protector. It looked like it was biting the cables.
Good...so it can't get through the surge protector. Maybe if I just hide in this closet, it will eventually leave.
But then it arced over to where she was charging her phone.
NO! IT'S GOING TO WIPE MY PHONE!
Now, if Melissa had had just a bit more sense in her, she wouldn't try to intervene. But Melissa had always had an impulsive, even stubborn streak. She couldn't lose her phone now! Not when she was waiting to hear back from medical schools! Already the snake had probably destroyed her computer. But her smartphone? Losing that might as well be death in this day and age.
She looked around her closet for something that might be useful as a weapon. Clothes hangars? Too conductive. Hers were all metal wire. Umbrella? But people got struck by lightning on the tips of their umbrellas all the time. A broom?
That would have to do. Shivering with trepidation, she grabbed the broom handle and snuck out of the closet.
Uh...take that, you slithering bastard!
She mustered all her courage, and took a swing at it with the broom.
***
Meanwhile, when the lightning had struck the building, Melissa had dropped her pendant into the washing machine. The shock wave from the thunderclap slammed the door shut. Unbeknownst to Melissa, the lightning serpent had passed through the wires of the washing room, and turned the machine on.
The wash cycle had been set to "warm."
The pendant whirled and circled about in the whirlpool of detergent, clothes, and water. As it did, something strange began to happen to the washing machine. At first it began to shake, like a washing machine often does when the load is uneven. But then the blades of the inner turbine began to move faster and faster, until they moved so fast foam began to leak out from the door and steam sprouted from the top. The shaking grew more and more violent, and the foam and spray increased in amount. Then, with a flash of ghostly light, a gust of wind, and an explosion of water, the door blew off of the washing machine, revealing two strange, spiraling figures.
One of them inflated a Mickey Mouse balloon, before deflating it after looking around.
"Wait a minute! This isn't Disneyland!" it said with a fairly deep, yet still determinedly feminine voice.
"Disneyland?" the other responded with a masculine baritone, tossing aside a bottle of tequila. "I thought we were going to Cancun!"
"No. We were headed to Florida! We were going to pass through Orlando!" the first entity groaned in frustration. It placed a band of cloud across its face like a hand on a forehead.
"Really? Because I swear we were being sent to Mexico."
"No, it was Florida! I already prepared by buying us all tickets!"
"Well, I prepared for Mexico by giving myself diarrhea."
The feminine being glared at the masculine one. "That was a really nasty mudslide," it said. The masculine spiral chuckled darkly.
"I know..." it grinned ominously.
"Well then...where are we?" the feminine being said. The two bizarre creatures spun like propellers and flew into Melissa's living room. One of them took a glance outside the broken window.
"I can see a street sign, but it says Avenue Q ½."
"Q 1/2, eh? Sounds vaguely familiar."
The two paused and thought for a second.
"What exactly is half a Q anyway?" the baritone one said. "Isn't that just a C?"
"But one of the halves isn't like the other. Maybe the half that gets the little nib from the Q is like those C's with a hook in Spanish?"
The two floating spirals paused again. Then at last they noticed the screaming coming from Melissa, who was yelling and batting at the thunder snake with a broom.
"Oh my!" the feminine spiral exclaimed in shock. "A girl is in a fight with a thunderbolt avatar!"
The masculine spiral looked at Melissa, and just shrugged. "She won't win like that. She's lightning bait."
"We need to save her from the thunder spirit!"
The baritone voiced one glanced at Melissa and the snake, then back at the window. "Or...we could just leave her here to die."
"No. We cannot do that!"
The masculine spiral glared, its eye narrowing. "Why not? She's just another human girl. There's plenty more where that came from. Now, let's go. The Bay of Campeche is wonderful this time of year, and it's got my name on it."
"But you don't have a name..."
The masculine one growled. "Really, Carla? Really! We're going to go on about this again?"
"Well, I got you to pause, so it worked!" Carla said, grabbing the other creature and dragging it towards Melissa and the snake. Carla lowered down to hover in front of Melissa's face.
"Hello human. We'll take care of this lightning avatar. You can disengage now."
"Wait, what?" Melissa said confusedly, her eyes still glazed with tunnel vision from the rush of fighting the thunder snake. "What? Who are you?"
"Never mind that, there's no time!" Carla said, knocking Melissa away from the serpent. Carla then turned to the other spiral. "Come on, 1900, help me out."
"Why should I? Can I try to kill the girl afterwards?"
Carla groaned one last time. "Fine! Now get over here and fight!"
Melissa couldn't believe what she was seeing. The thunder snake danced about and struck at the two new creatures, each of which looked like a spiral vortex made of clouds. One was tinted reddish-pink, like the sky at sunset, while the other was dark grey or black, like the mountains of water that preceded storms. One of the creatures seemed to blow the lightning snake into the wall with a sudden blast of its breath. The other summoned a surge of dark water, and hurled it at the lightning snake. It sparked and hissed and thrashed aimlessly, the water shorting out its electric arcs.
A bit of the dark water splattered onto Melissa's lips. She tasted it. It was salt water.
Okay, this is getting way too weird. I'm...going to go back to my bed.
While she headed back to her bedroom, she heard glass shatter, and a horrific shriek as something was dragged outside and pummeled repeatedly. She had had enough for tonight. She buried her face into her pillow, and pulled the covers over her head.