Lightning's Children

By: John Logue

Alec Spotsworth lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has been a newspaper reporter of minor events for seven years and a columnist for eight. His columns lay flat on the page: a cat with five toes, a hair compound of quince seed, the city’s new one-way sign that has been pointing the wrong way. Typesetters in the composing room scream curses when handed the day’s Spotsworth column. And then comes today.

He sits down and writes one name: Skeebo Wescott III. He stops. He thinks, and remembers the panties on the bus, visible for the full forty-five minute ride. He types, with no thought of stopping: The smooth bone under the skin of her legs and the deep, rising, altogether softness of her body join inside the rare, thin, swollen, breathing elasticity of soft white panties. Spotsworth’s world, and Atlanta, will never be the same.