This is a new story called “One penny for your ideas” Let’s begin… Author’s note: If you’re expecting a stroke story, you’ll be highly disappointed, so I’d suggest you move on to another one. And though there is plenty of hot steamy sex later on in this story, I’ve slowly built up to it for a number of reasons.
For one, I wanted this somewhat far-fetched idea to at least sound plausible. It’s a bit on the Dean Koontz, even Stephen King side of things with a dash of true erotica mixed in for flavor. I thought I might attempt this tale; see how well received it might be through your votes and comments. It is one I may expand at some point into a full book given the subject matter. So again, if you like it, find it interesting, please let me know. Hopefully most of you will enjoy this.
Thank you, Many Feathers, aka…Thesandman
*
I remember that day so many years ago now, out camping by the lake with my parents. The horrible thunderstorm that came out of nowhere, the countless lightning strikes hitting everywhere. Including me.
I don’t remember much of anything after that. Only waking up in the hospital, the sound of voices nearby. One of the doctor’s spoke to my parents, hearing bits and pieces of their conversation, as I lay there swimming through the fugue of coma, and waking.
“A miracle he even survived. No telling yet the effect it may have had on him,” sounds of mom crying. The sense of touch, something cool on my forehead though my eyes refused to open, to tell them I could hear things, feel things. My body is yet unresponsive. It would be a week more at least before whatever was going on deep down inside me, finally gave way, allowing me to once again return to the present.
My eyes popped open, though I hadn’t been asleep…still listening, still feeling.
Someone called out to a nurse…mom now standing by my bedside, tears running down her face as she leaned over kissing me, still calling out for someone to come.
“He’s awake!” She charged as one of the nurses finally did come in.
“I’ll get the doctor,” she stated, almost as happy as mom seemed to be.
“Welcome back to our world Brian,” the doctor told me as he began writing in my chart. “You’ve been away for a while.”
That was nearly ten years ago. I was ten at the time. A lot had happened in the course of those ten years. Some remarkable things in fact. Slowly, gradually…for whatever reason, finally manifesting themselves to me with the onset of puberty for some strange reason. I remember the first time I felt it, sensed it. This “little spark” as I called it, though later I called it “flicking my Bic” for lack of a better explanation for what it was.
It was several weeks after returning home from recovering in the hospital that I first sensed something unusual had happened to me. Too afraid to tell anyone about it for fear of having to go back while they performed all sorts of tests on me, I simply ignored what I’d discovered, locking it away, too afraid to explore it, test it…revel in it. That little spark. That little something that felt so very, very strange.
I had stumbled across it quite by accident. Walking home from school one day, watching my own feet more than anything, trying not to step on any cracks in the sidewalk as a way of amusing myself. A simple penny. Stopping, reaching down in order to pick it up. It felt hot, hot from the sun perhaps, I flinched just for a second. But as I did, I felt this spark, this thing…and then saw it between my fingertips.
A bluish white light, just a fragment for a moment or so, between my fingertips now holding the penny. I dropped it, it too seemed to glow for a moment, and then the light faded. I picked it up again, and though warm it was no longer hot. Quite naturally I put it into my pocket, and then hurried home to tell mom about the strange thing that had happened to me.
I had no idea at the time of course, just how strange it would turn out to be.
**
I had run home with my penny. Darting into the house, into the kitchen where mom stood making cookies. “Mom! Mom! Look at what I found!” I had said excitedly, showing her the penny. She laughed.
“You’re rich!” She laughed again.
“No mom, you don’t understand. It’s not just a penny, I think it’s a magic penny or something, I saw it glowing!”
I suppose to humor me, she now accepted it, looking at it a bit more closely. “A magic penny huh? Don’t suppose it grants wishes or anything? Like maybe giving us a million, perhaps even two million more of these things?” She chuckled once again, though looking at it. Of course I knew she was making light of it, not taking it seriously at all, and deflating my excitement.
And then she said, “Hmmm, date says 1961. That was the year I was born.”
Only, she didn’t really say it. I mean no words came out of her mouth. She was just standing there looking at it, holding onto it, yet I swear I had heard her actually say it clear as day. She handed it back, and then said. “That was the year I was born, when the penny was made, 1961.”
“I know, I heard you the first time,” I responded now, reexamining it again, looking at the date, confirming what I’d now heard her say twice.
“First time?” She asked, looking at me oddly, but then let it go, turning back towards her cookies again. “Damn…I forgot to get more flour at the store,” she said. “I need at least another cup to finish these. I wonder if Sophia has some flour I could borrow?”
“Want me to run over to Mrs. Coopers and ask to borrow a cup for you?” I asked. It was something I was always doing for mom, and something Mrs. Coopers seemed to always be doing with us too. Borrowing things back and forth from one another.
Mom turned, a bewildered look on her face. “How’d you know I was thinking that?” She asked.
“Thinking what?”
“About borrowing some flour from Sophia.”
“I heard you asking about it,” I said, looking just as confused as she was.
“But I didn’t say anything.”
“Sure you did. I heard you.”
It was an odd conversation. But it was soon forgotten as I shortly afterwards headed off in pursuit of a cup of flour for mom. Me thinking she was messing with me, and mom…well, who knows what she was thinking at the time.
**