Footprints No Feet

Clouds are building up in the sky. Rain pellets are beginning to fall. The wind is picking up the trash and blowing it out the ocean. I chase a plastic bag down and as I leap in the air to save it from the sea, a bolt of lightening hits me on the crown of my head. I'm in the air. I'm ungrounded. The plastic bag escapes my grip. Great, I think. This is how I die, imagining I'm making a difference one plastic bag at a time. I feel the electricity rip every molecule apart. I feel the the most intense light. It burns behind my eyes. I smell my hair burning. Cinged to the bone. I don't land on the ground. I am thrown. The lightning picked me up much higher than I jump and tossed me aside like a plastic bag it had lost its grip on. My breath tastes like battery acid. I can't see or hear a thing. I know I'm still in the parking lot. I don't know how I know but I do. I just lie there for a while not knowing what to do. My body is so hot the rain drops sizzle when they hit my skin. I feel the wet pavement beneath me. My senses are returning. I blink away the mucus discharge from my eyes, wiping it away with my fingers. I can start to make out the sounds of cars parking and unparking and people pushing empty grocery carts into the star and full ones back out. At first the sights and sounds are dull, but then, everything gets dialed up way past ten. It all sounds like screeching and screaming. Everything looks surreal. The people, the parking lot, the cars, the trash cans, the telephone poles, the stores all look pixelated. And I can see and feel vibrations moving through the air rippling and splashing into each other. I can see it everywhere combining and colliding and settling down and speeding up. What the fuck is happening? I feel my car keys on the ground hoping the blast didn't fry the fob and wrap my fingers around the keys tight. I start to get up. I feel pretty good all things considered. I spot my car in the rows of cars and put on foot in front of the other mindfully keeping my balance. My head is spinning and I feel like I'm going to throw up. A car is coming right for me! I quicken my pace a little bit but the car doesn't slow down at all. What an asshole! Didn't the driver see me? Whatever. Doesn't surprise me at all in this town. I make it to the car and unlock the door. I sit down with the door open and vomit onto the ground. Then I shot the door, lean the seat back and lie down. It's funny. Part of me has always wanted to get struck by lightning. I can cross that one off my bucket list. And I survived. I feel like shit but I survived. I've seen pictures of the survivors in books before. They have the coolest scars depending on the course the electricity moved through them, depending on which part of their was grounded or not. I wasn't grounded at all, I think. Oh fuck! I bolt upright and grab the rearview mirror. My clothes are gone. And much more than that, so am I! All I see is the back of the driver's seat with an indentation and wet spots. I freak out more than a little. My pulse hits two hundred, easily, and I start to hyperventilate. Get a grip, I say over and over. Just breathe, I think. I shut up and try to close my eyes and do it, but I can't stop looking at my...well...not at myself. I can't stop looking at the lack of myself in the mirror. Is this a dream? I've had vivid dreams before. But this is a cut above vivid. I'm here. I'm definitely here. I'm definitely invisible. And I'm definitely not dead. I go through a mental list in my head. Do I go to the hospital? And run the risk of being dragged away to be experimented on by military scientists, exploited and blackmailed into becoming a supersecret spy? Tempting. Do I go home and talk to my parents? Eventually. I reach my phone out my pocket, my pockets are gone. I'm completely naked, I feel. Shit! Maybe this is only temporary. Lightning strike symptom. I reason with myself that I have lightning strike symptom. Then I just laughing. I laugh as hard as I can. I laugh it all out. Best thing to do in an emergency like this is to just laugh and calm the hell down. Maybe if I stay in the car laughing the syndrome will wear off. I'll wait it out. I stay in the car for two hours rocking back and forth and talking to myself like a mental patient wrapped in an invisible straight jacket. I'm hugging myself. I can't stop holding myself. I want to see how I look. I feel my skin all over my body. I don't feel any scars. Everything still looks super freaky. I see light waves and sound waves dancing across the parking lot and try to ignore them, but they move through the car, through me, and I'm swimming in them and they're swimming in me. Ok, I think. Time to go for a walk. The rain has stopped. The storm has passed. And there is a beautiful rainbow arching the parking lot. I step out of the car. Nobody notices the absence of a driver opening and closing the door. I stash my keys inside the axis of the front left tire. I'm completely naked but no one can see me. I start to embrace the weirdness of is all. I start to enjoy. Now for my next trick. I...