When Lightning Strikes

"You still think I'm a dream." He said it matter-of-factly, but she could see in his eyes that he thought she was loony-tunes. That look, that instant, almost broke her heart. She felt a saturating sense of isolation.

"Tell me something about yourself," she pleaded. "Something I don't know." Anything to prove I didn't create you.

He sighed. "Lady, you don't know shit about me."

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to smile. It was a dismal, trembling failure. "I knew you'd say that."

He reached for her, grabbed her wrist. "Who are you?"

She tried to wrench free, but his grip wouldn't let her. She felt his fingers, burning into her skin, bruising her. "It is a dream," she whispered, trying to believe her own words.

He jerked her chin up, forcing her to look into his eyes. "I can give you a nightmare, if that's what you want."

Lainie wrenched backward so forcefully, she fell off the bed. She hit the cold floor with a thud and crawled quickly to her feet. She stood there, breathing hard, staring at him. She was letting fear eat at her, swallow her strength, and right now she needed her strength, every ounce of it. She drew in a big, shuddering breath and straightened. At her sides, her hands curled into fists. "I won't believe this. You're not real. You can't he "

L/C. ...

"I'm real."

The words, spoken quietly and with a confidence she'd kill for, infuriated her. "I'm the author, goddamn it, I invented you."

"Lainie?"

"D

on't talk to me," she screamed, wincing at the

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high-pitched desperation in her voice. "You don't know me. ... I know you."

She backed away from him, trying to control her breathing.

Calm down, Lainie. Don't go off the deep end. She couldn't afford to get hysterical right now. She needed to be calm, to go somewhere by herself and figure out what in the hell was happening to her. There had to be a reasonable explanation.

She ran for the door and yanked it open. Before he could follow, she shot outside, letting the door bang shut behind her.

This wasn't real, she told herself over and over again, clinging to the words like a mantra as her bare feet pattered on the icy dirt.

It couldn't be real.

Lainie raced blindly down the narrow trail that bisected the outlaw ranch.

At the end of the encampment, she veered down toward the stream and raced along a grooved cattle trail that edged the water. To the left, a hillside beckoned, offering a quiet place.

She splashed through the stream and clambered up the slick bank on the other side. Rocks slid down the slope and hit the grassy canyon floor just below.

Her breathing came in great, wheezing gasps that seemed to fill her lungs with fire, but still she kept scrambling upward, ignoring the cuts and scrapes that stung her fingertips and the searing heat of dirt in her eyes.

On the crest of the hill, she collapsed, shaking and cold, to the ground. It took her about five minutes to regain her breath. For a few heartbreakingly perfect moments,

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she closed her eyes and almost forgot where she was. Where she thought she was.

Then a bird cried, and it all came back with a vengeance, staggering in its intensity. She lifted her head, blinked dully at the sleeping hideout. The cabins? about ten of them?were spaced along the dirt road, stumplike blocks of black against the steel gray stone walls. Another ten or twelve tents, their canvas roofs a paler shade of gray, were interspersed among the cabins, making them look sturdy and permanent by comparison.

In the distance, a wolf howled. The lonely, vibrating sound rode on the chilly predawn air like the last lingering notes of a sad song before it disappeared.