Painting by Bev Jackson
You know the game is on when Jeff sets up a new projector on his front lawn. Your wife says this competition has gone nuts. You fold your arms over your chest and squint across the street at Jeff's house, where candy canes and snowmen are swirling and dancing like a Disco club in the '80s. People have no idea what they get into, you say to yourself.
Inside the basement, you find the light your father once installed on his boat. This baby will blaze on your roof like a little sun. You haul it up to the ladder, imagining poor Jeff shielding his eyes when he gets up at night to use the bathroom. Ho ho ho! Santa would appreciate a bright landing signal, wouldn't he? Little do you know that a rat has incidentally nibbled the cord and your thumb happens to contact the exposed hot wire.
The initial current is not that bad, a little tingling, numb, like a bee sting. You are shocked, literally. Thank God you don't fall. The aluminum ladder is a perfect conductor. Electricity flows through your body like cars zooming on the expressway. Your fingers jerk, muscles contraction causing you to grip the cord instead of throwing it away. You spread your arm and touch the AC unit in the wall, generating another low resistance path. You are clamped on the ladder, posing like a scarecrow.
Your heart is now in V-fib, flickering 300 beats per minute, much like the crazy heart rate raging in your chest when you first met your wife in high school. She was so hot. Your brain plays a slide show:, the couch, the beer, her lips behind your ear, and your hips against her hips. She set you on fire. The surging desire. The unbearable heat. Once again you are burning inside out, with a different kind of energy though.
You wish you had fallen over. Better having a broken leg than being hooked up to a return circuit and cooked away. Where's the GFCI? That damn thing tripped every time you plugged in a heater on a rainy day. Your hair stands on end, sizzling. Your jaw clenches. You can't call for help. Through the window you see your wife open the oven, close it, and open it again, sniffing the air in confusion.
