On the morning of the second Tuesday in July, as Lars Talc was passing along the Avenue Ack on his way to the scientifico-medical club, a mighty thunderstorm was blasting the heavens, booming in gong-sounds. The lightning was very slender and nimble, and as if playing very near. Flashes lacing two clouds above or a cloud and the earth started upon the eyes in live veins of rincing or riddling liquid white, inched and jagged as if it were the shivering of a bright riband string which had once been kept bound round a blade and danced back into its pleating. Several strong thrills of light followed each flash but a grey smother of Finnish darkness blotted the eyes if they had seen the fork, and dull furry thickened scapes of it were left in them.

At fourteen minutes past nine, high above Talc, a cloud charged with positive electricity unleashed a bolt of lightning towards the negatively-charged earth upon which he trod. The lightning flew from side to side, forking through the thinnest air, and sought, near the ground, a splendid conductor, which it found in a wee sliver of tungsten, or wolfram, embedded by Bewg in the bony core of the talismanic horn which Talc carried in the breast pocket of his dashing blazer. From there, the lightning bolt zipped across Talc’s chest, through one of his metal buttons, down to the buckle of his belt, shot through his right leg, ankle, and foot, and crashed into the waiting earth.

Moments later, Talc, too, toppled to the ground. His eyes were bulging, his brain was a fuzzing jelly, his limbs were at once numbed yet quivering, twitching, spastic. Burned striae on his flesh sizzled hotly. His gaze fixed upon the Finnish heavens, he thought of musketry, tickets, bunny rabbits, a well, fjords, ig, Minnie, ping pong, Bewg, the horn, Marseilles, his songbook, Chodd, angels, adjutants, penk, a motorboat, dappled things, dim things, destruction, defiance, dolour, dust, and death.

He expired at fourteen and a half minutes past nine in the morning, on the second Tuesday in July, struck by lightning on the Avenue Ack, on his way to a scientifico-medical club he had joined by dint of intrigue.