F³ After Effects

             Two hours later, we were all miserable. Not because of a hangover, but because the bartender had had enough of us and kicked us out, and our metabolisms had taken care of what buzz we had. Storm riders burned through calories like two year-olds burned through candy.

            And after all of that drinking, we still had nothing.

“Bored!” Jack said.

We were all sitting on the low, stone wall of a nearby fountain. Kate stared at the water while Jack occasionally belted out curses like he had Tourette’s Syndrome. For that matter, Kate did, too when she yelled for Jack to “Keep your labia closed!”

I created a tiny spark between two fingers. The centimeter long white arc was as long as I could manage, and even it gave off little white pops.

Nat turned from looking at the fountain to stare at my miniscule lightning with glazed eyes.

“You’re a mean drunk, aren’t you?” Jack said.

Kate slapped Jack upside the head. “Yes.”

I started touching each finger to my thumb, transferring the lightning to each new finger in sequence. Each time it switched, there were initially more pops, but they quickly dissipated.

“Hey! No hitting without prior consent and a firm commitment to honor safewords and wear high heels.”

“Stop switching fingers,” Nat said.

I immediately stopped, holding the arc between thumb and ring finger.

“I promise to honor safewords and make you wear high heels,” Kate said.

“Switch again,” Nat said.

“Har har,” Jack said. “So, are we negotiating?”

I moved the lightning to my pinky. Big pops, followed by a steady stream and tiny pops as I held the arc.

“Think you better talk to Anna Maria, first. I don’t like poaching,” Kate said.

“Switch again,” Nat repeated.

I moved the arc to my index finger.

“We’re not exclusive,” Jack said. “She’s currently hooked up with this couple from Sweden.”

“Isn’t that a little out of her area? Thought she was covering Spain.”

“We swapped. I got tired of beer and brats. Wanted something more Mediterranean.”

“Is it hot?” Nat asked.

“The arc?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I thought about it, concentrating on the sensation near my fingers. The Reilly Tingle—Shit! now I’m calling it that—was there, but I didn’t notice any real heat.

“No.”

“Why is it white?”

 

F³ Mebatolism

             The girls left us. Not so quickly that we couldn’t follow, but it was very much two groups as they surfed down to the nearest town underneath the thunderstorm. We didn’t even know the name of the place, or even what state. We just wanted to go to the bar and get hammered. And for that, we had Jack to thank. He bought.

            “I love you guys,” he slurred.

            “I hate you, too,” I said, and laughed.

            Kate belched her reply, “Fuck you both.” That was a thoroughly impressive feat.

            Nat held her head like she was nursing a hangover, but she was a lightweight, mostly tapping out after her first bottle of Jack Daniels. “Maybe you three should slow down.”

            “Nonsense!” Jack yelled at the top of his lungs, “I have the mebatolism of a thing with a high mebatolism.

            “You’re wasted,” I laughed. “It’s not mebatolism, it’s mebatolism.”

            “What I said!”

            “No, not mebatolism, metalobism. No, wait. That’s not right.”

            “Melobotomism,” Kate said.

            “Yeah!” I pointed, spilling half my bourbon. “No!”

            “I’m telling you it’s mebatolism,” Jack insisted.

            “No, it’s meta. It’s very meta,” I said.

            “You’re meta!” Jack punched me in the arm. “Anyway, my mebatolism won’t let me get drunk. ‘Cept, I might have to go puke.”

            “Rum, please.” Nat said.

            “We’re out of rum,” the bartender said.

            “Why is the rum gone!” we all yelled.

           

 

F³ Making Things Worse

             We all recovered fairly quickly. I had a cloudboard under me before I had reached the apex of where the explosion threw me. Nat and Kat had done the same. Jack didn’t recover so much as bounce off the cloud about fifty feet away. Where he had exploded was now a spherical divot in the cloud, like someone had taken an ice cream scoop to it.

            “What the fuck was that?” Jack asked as soon as he righted himself. “Why do I sound funny?”

            “You sound fine to us,” Nat said.

            “Why are you talking like that? How are you talking like that? Step off the reverb switch.”

            “Fucking Christ!” Kate swore. “He’s hearing double, just like Reilly did.”

            Nat and Kate turned their attention to me, and by attention, it was twin gazes of contempt and hatred.

            “I have no idea what I did,” I said in defense.

            An explosion sounded as Jack tried to fire off lightning in my direction.

            “Two of them, now.” Nat sighed.

            “I say we leave their asses and get hammered,” Kate said.

            “Really tempting, right now, but they’ll probably kill each other.”

            “Having trouble figuring out why that’s bad. Not like they’re any good to us like this.”

            Another, albeit lesser, explosion sounded.

            “Oops,” I said.

F³ When in Doubt

             I jerked into full consciousness, which freaked me the hell out as before it was always one of those gradual-waking things. But my eyes snapped open, I gasped, and scrambled to my feet, assuming a martial arts pose from my Kung Fu movie binge with Nat.

            “You look fucking ridiculous.” Jack said, sitting on a cloud chair.

            “Fuck you.”

            “I wouldn’t enjoy that.”

            “I’d enjoy watching that,” Kate said. “You seriously need to get fucked over, Jack.”

            “Harsh!” Jack said, but no one was taking his side in this.

            “So, what now?” I asked.

            “We’re kind of running out of ideas to try,” Nat said.

            “Which is why I zapped him,” Jack smirked.

            “Which didn’t help at all,” Nat continued.

            Jack shrugged. “Hey, when in doubt, throw lightning at the problem.”

            The words pissed me off, and stirred something. It felt like a latent charge in me. The tingling on my skin increased. I’d say I was absorbing an ambient charge, but my skin never tingled while doing that, before.

            Whatever, just go with it.

            As usual, I ionized a channel and let loose. A pencil-thin . . . something shot out of my hand, sending out pops of white light as it flew, to collide with Jack. As soon as it hit him, he exploded, sending us flying.

F³ A Few Words

             I was already swearing. I couldn’t hear it, but my throat felt the strain of me yelling “God-fucking-dammit you fucking moron Jack! You son of a bitch, don’t you ever think of not leading with your dick all the fucking time! You have any fucking clue how much that fucking hurts? You’ve always been a dickhead, but now you’ve graduated to full-on anal-douche-nozzle! Fuck!”

            I would’ve continued, but the pain caught up to my anger. I crumpled in a ball of conflicting pain sensations. Nerve endings were on fire, like a supersized version of that tingle from before, and my eyes hurt, too, leftover from the explosion’s flash, which seemed brighter than it should have.

            My ears were still useless, just that weird doubled cacophony and the ringing, but my eyes cleared enough to see Nat and Kate were chewing Jack out. He was unfazed with his twisted grin, and he stretched out a finger towards me, probably to fire another bolt but Nat deflected his hand while Kate smacked him upside the head.

            “Fucking stop, you frog-toed-taint-pustule!” I shouted, then passed out.

F³ Almost Like . . . Jack

             “You’re going to have to do better than a tingle,” Kate said.

            “Well excuse me if I don’t have the vocabulary to properly describe something I’ve never felt before.” I didn’t try to keep the acid out of my voice. I was frustrated. “It doesn’t feel electric, not really. No shock or anything. It’s not hot, it’s not cold, not really.”

            “Not really?” Nat asked. “Come on, Reilly, give us something to work with.”

            “It feels like. . . .” I stretched storm rider senses into the feeling. There was something there, something almost familiar. “it feels like. . . .” Nothing. Absence of something. How can that be when I feel it? “It feels like. . . .” Almost like. . . .

            “Here I come to save the day!” The unmistakable voice of Jack Dailey announced as he landed on the cloud “Iron-Man-Style.”

            “Jack,” I said.

            With his sideways grin he said, “I hear you’ve got a problem keeping it up.”

            “I—”

            Before I or the girls could say anything more, Jack shot me with a lightning bolt. As soon as it touched my skin, I felt the explosion.

F³ Reilly Tingle

             Riding in a harness behind Nat as she rode lightning hurt worse than the first time I rode a harness with Jack Dailey. That time I was just terrified. This time I was pissed because I couldn’t ride it myself.

            Like losing part of myself.

            We landed on top of the anvil of the largest thunderstorm we could find, currently making its way over Chicago. The storm was kicking out inter- and intra-cloud lightning every couple of seconds. This was a nasty storm. It might even be strong enough to warrant breaking it up before it ripped the barrier between planes of existence. That was our primary job, after all. Don’t allow the nasty bugaboos bearing tentacles for lips or eyeballs for teeth into our reality. Turned out that the power of mother nature was more than reality could actually handle, so we had to kind of moderate it.

            “Well, this is weird,” I said.

            “What?” Nat said.

            “I’m feeling something.”

            “What?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Does it hurt?” Kate asked.

            “No. It just feels weird. Like . . . like when you try and two push magnets of the same pole together. A push against me.”

            “Weird,” the women said, together.

            “Also, there’s a random tingle.”

            “Like a spider-sense?” Kate asked.

            “Nerd,” Nat said.”

            “You know it, bitch,” Kate fired back.

            “No, not like a spider-sense.”

            “You have a Reilly tingle. It better not be where I think it is.”

            Nat laughed at that.

            “No,” I said.

            “You’re sure?” Nat said suggestively.

            “I will if you keep up like that!”

F³ Stop The Negativity

             Nat and I slumped on the park bench, staring cirrostratus clouds high in the sky. Kate late on her stomach on the grass.

            “I hate Iowa grass,” she said. It’s not green enough. Vancouver. Vancouver has awesome grass.”

            “I hate grass,” I said.

            “Well, yeah, cuz you’re from this area.”

            “No, I’m from Colorado.”

            “I’ve been in eastern Colorado, it’s the same as here.”

            “Well, I’m from the mountains.”

            “And the grass there?”

            “It sucks, too.” Nat said.

            “Hey,” I said, but didn’t put any emotion in it. “Whatever. Don’t fucking care about grass.”

            “Hey, stop being so negative,” Nat said. “Cynical, I get, but I won’t let you be one of these depressing bastards.”

            “Wait!” Kate sat up. “That might be it!”

            “Reilly’s negativity affected his lightning?” Nat was skeptical.

            “No, but his lightning’s negativity might have something to do with it. We almost always fire off negative lightning. It’s our default. But what about positive lightning?”

            Nat and I exchanged looks.

            Would that work?

            “We need to get you back up to the clouds, on top of an anvil would make it easiest,” Kate said.

            “That’s going to be a long cloud surf,” I said.

            “Screw that,” Nat said. “You’re riding bitch.”

F³ Lousy Peanuts

             Nat paced in front of the park bench, tapping her chin with a forefinger as she made her loop back and forth. Kate sat on the back of the bench, leaning forward, staring, but not actually seeing Nat. Her look was far off and pensive. I sat and openly sulked while eating my cobbler.

            Stupid cold cobbler. Stupid whatever this is preventing me from using lightning. I like using lightning. I’m pretty good at it, too. Chain lightning, riding lightning, ball lightning, I got those down. Sure, I can’t do the lightning sword that Jack showed me. . . .

            I got more depressed and shoved a double spoonful of cobbler in my mouth. Peach magma burned my tongue and I had to suck down some water to stop myself from spitting it out, but it launched a short coughing fit.

            The women looked at me, Kate rolling her eyes, Nat shushing me.

            Stupid women treating me like I’m four. I’ll show them. I’ll take this next bite without a drink!

            I did, and they didn’t notice even as I opened my mouth and fanned a hand to dissipate the heat.

            I finished my cobbler and sat, staring at the grass between my feet.

            This sucks. What if it’s permanent? What if this is a side effect of the Jack Frost powers? Always thought it was strange that the Frost lightning was greenish. Never took the time to study that. Maybe I should go see Maddy and see what happens when we use those powers again. Maybe it’ll reboot me? But how would I even get there? It’ll take forever cloud surfing. Might even be faster to fly commercially. God, that would suck.

            “I hate flying commercial; their peanuts suck.” I muttered.

            “Shh,” Nat said automatically.

F³ Nobody Likes It Cold

             “Wait,” Nat said. “Why did you both say ‘ow’?”

            I rubbed the back of my head where Kate had hit me, feeling as if I had been zapped with static.

            “He zapped me. Or maybe I zapped him.”

            “And you felt it?” Nat asked.

            We both nodded.

            “We’re storm riders, we hold onto lightning bolts for a ride. A zap of static shouldn’t do dick to us.”

            “Yeah, well, tell that to my noggin,” I said. The zap had felt weird besides feeling it at all, though.

            “And my hand,” Kate said.

            “Kate, were you holding a charge? Were you trying to zap him?”

            She shook her head. She was shaking her hand, too.

            “Reilly?”

            “I just popped, so didn’t have anything left.” I said, scratching the spot she hit.

            “So it might have just been the static created by her hand in your hair?”

            I shrugged. “I guess.”

            “It didn’t feel right, though.” Kate said. “My fingers kind of went numb for a second. Now it’s pins and needles.”

            “What about you, Reilly?”

            “My head itches, but that’s it.”

            “You all should probably take your cobbler and go,” our server said, suddenly, the Iowa twang, plain.

            “Why?” Nat asked.

            “You’re acting weird, and people are staring.”

            We looked around and did see that people were staring at us. They didn’t flinch as we eyed them, either.

            “Okay,” Nat said.

            “Aw, man, I don’t want to eat cold cobbler,” I said.