Chances of being struck by lightening in the United Kingdom is one in ten million. Out of a hundred lightening strike victims it is probably that ninety would survive. A contradiction in odds, Mike always thought. The amount of bad luck it would require to be struck in the first place, completely independent of the bad luck it would require to die. Is luck like a dice roll? Each one is independent from the other? The probability of double sixes remains the same, does whether you’ll get good or bad luck? Of course, the ninety percent are given some level of disability afterwards, how bad is it? Roll the dice again.
Mike always liked probability and statistics, he’d watch the servants in his household play poker on their breaks, he’d steal his gardener’s Racing Post and pour over the odds for each individual horse. It started when he was struck by lightening, when he felt the sudden, burning shock that took over his entire body and caused his bones to vibrate. The permanent burn marring his appearance. From then the sky was not safe. The air, the rain, the vast infinite void filled Mike with a terror that turned his scorched body to ice.
The odds of lightening to strike twice… astronomically high. And yet, Mike saw it. He saw the very lightening which struck him as a child following him when he was eighteen years old. He knew no one else could see it, and if he tried to tell anyone he’d seem crazy (plus who would care?) But he saw it. He saw a jagged, twisted, fractal ball of electricity and it was chasing him. He needed to be in the ground, close to the dirt and engulfed by what was beneath him. That was what had saved him last time, when it shocked his limbs and threw him into the dirt he managed to crawl under the bushes. He buried himself into the earth until he was found. He safe. Protected by the ground that always called to him, the mother beneath who sang.
It was DIG they saved him the second time, a Leitner he stole. He didn’t care when the old bastard of a shop keeper ran after him, Mike had been fleeing from lightening his entire life. Except now. Ever since he gave himself to the earth, he has been safe from the sky. He uses his new abilities to find treasure beneath the ground, and makes a living as a bookmakers, an illegal gambling ring, casinos, underground fighting rings… Anything that can use stats and cash to draw people in. He collects the money, the treasure, people’s life savings, and whatever else. He buries them in debt, after all - who’d think the lightening struck boy with sharp blue eyes would have good luck?
Hezekiah Wakeley, Avatar of the Vast.
Dearest Nathaniel,
I apologise for leaving so abruptly, it must worry you so. Perhaps you are picturing me drunk, lying in a ditch somewhere waiting for you to come to my rescue. Nothing of the sort has occurred. I have found a new church, a new home, a new place to experience and worship our Lord. I now understand why being a sexton was so painful to me, I am not made to be close to the earth, I am not made to have my feet be permanently on the ground. I am not meant to exist amongst the graves. Perhaps at one time I thought as much, I felt the singing from beneath the paving stones at the entrance of the house of God. Now I know that call was for someone else, that is not the Lord’s plan for me. Perhaps it isn’t God after all, maybe it’s the devil singing a false tune.
Do not fret so much for I am well, you needn’t try to get the detectives and whoever else involved, whilst I may be ‘missing’ in the traditional sense of the word I have never been more ‘found’ that I am at present. Where am I? Well. I am in the stained glass windows of the angels in heaven, I do not speak literally of course. I am alive and well, but I am amongst the clouds, far closer to God than before. Far closer than any priest or sexton at the church. Every single child’s book paints heaven as being in the sky, I remember the adults scoffing at the childish notion but I can now assure you that the naive idea created by the young of the church is in fact the truest depiction of paradise any living mortal man can create.
I have found a new patron, of sorts. A man who has far more effective ways to keep me away from the drink. It does not have the desirable effect when one prefers to reside high in the mountains, it separates me from the Sky Blue. Who is the Sky Blue I’m sure you ask? An angel. A servant of God. The blue majestic blanket above that covers the earth, protecting each one of God’s children. I feel her surrounding me with her adoration with each piercingly cold gust of wind and from the open, infinite space that exists above us. I have many followers here, many mountaineers who are looking for their saviour. I help them, send them on endless journeys of infinite steps to try and find peace, so they never quite reach the top. It is not so different from the Church, is it not? I learned from the best, as they say. The ones who work the hardest, the ones worthy of God’s love will reach the summit. They will join me in our infinite world of ice and air, they will never leave. Never want to leave. Of course, not all deserve such a fate. Ones I do not deem worthy, hikers looking for glory, looking to ruin and destroy the teeth of the earth, they must fall. They must fall and feel the atmosphere swallow them whole.
I have been rambling for quite some time, my friend, and for that I do apologise. I hope you understand now, I hope you understand why I must stay, why I cannot return.
