June 28, 2026

Heat Lightning - A Paranormal Erotic Thriller (Episode 4 of 4 )- "Black Start"

Heat Lightning - A Paranormal Erotic Thriller (Episode 4 of 4 )- "Black Start"

The heat breaks every record, four counties on one failing wire, and somewhere a person like the woman Wren used to be is signing off on shedding the weakest zones. August is dying slow, taking the regional overload alone, and he asks her to let him be the one who pays. She refuses — because she finally sees that his fifteen years of martyrdom are her own disappearing act in a mirror: she hides by spreading the blame thin, he hides by swallowing all of it. So the deal isn't his sacrifice. It's that neither of them gets to vanish. In a four-county blackout they close the loop deliberately, and when he tries to spend himself empty she holds both ends and makes him take it back — the circuit running both ways, the overload grounded safe into the earth. The county holds. Nobody pays but them, and they chose it. The loop doesn't open again; they're fused, for good. It isn't cured. Every summer they'll do this again. But she stays in the room now — and so does he.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!


We now have Merch! FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com


Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is info@caloroga.com

WEBVTT

1
00:00:03.160 --> 00:00:16.440
Caloroga Shark Media. Hello and welcome to Romance Weekly. This

2
00:00:16.519 --> 00:00:22.800
is Heat Lightning, a paranormal erotic thriller, Episode four. Black Start.

3
00:00:36.399 --> 00:00:39.200
There's a procedure called a black start. You use it

4
00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:42.079
when a grid hasn't just failed, but died, total collapse,

5
00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:47.520
no power anywhere. And here's the cruel part. You can't

6
00:00:47.520 --> 00:00:51.640
restart a grid with electricity because there isn't any there's

7
00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:55.759
nothing to plug into. You have to bootstrap the whole

8
00:00:55.799 --> 00:00:58.719
thing back to life from the dark from one small,

9
00:00:58.759 --> 00:01:02.159
reluctant source, coaxing it up piece by piece until the

10
00:01:02.240 --> 00:01:05.719
lights hold. They teach it to you as a worst

11
00:01:05.799 --> 00:01:08.920
case the thing you pray you never have to do.

12
00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:14.079
I'm two towns over in a hotel with a grid

13
00:01:14.120 --> 00:01:17.239
built like a bank vault. When the regional alert comes

14
00:01:17.239 --> 00:01:20.519
through and I learn I'm going to have to do

15
00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:24.760
it from inside my own body, the heat doesn't break.

16
00:01:25.200 --> 00:01:29.079
It climbs. By the fourth day at the chain hotel,

17
00:01:29.120 --> 00:01:32.040
it's the worst on record, not for the town, for

18
00:01:32.120 --> 00:01:36.599
the entire interconnect, four counties strung on the same overtaxed wire.

19
00:01:37.280 --> 00:01:39.959
And I know what comes next because I'm the one

20
00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:43.920
they used to send to recommend it. When a regional

21
00:01:43.959 --> 00:01:47.920
load goes critical, you shed it. You drop the weakest zones,

22
00:01:49.439 --> 00:01:56.519
old infrastructure, low political cost, acceptable harm. Somewhere right now,

23
00:01:56.760 --> 00:01:58.799
a person like the person I used to be, is

24
00:01:58.879 --> 00:02:01.719
running the numbers, and the numbers are saying the same

25
00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:04.680
thing they said two summers ago. And the column is

26
00:02:04.719 --> 00:02:07.760
wide enough to hide a hundred signatures in and I'm

27
00:02:07.799 --> 00:02:13.879
making it worse. I can feel it. Distance was supposed

28
00:02:13.879 --> 00:02:16.560
to be safety, but a fault doesn't heal because you

29
00:02:16.639 --> 00:02:20.520
move away from people. It just leaks slower into robust

30
00:02:20.520 --> 00:02:24.439
grids that can take it. A steady bleed I told

31
00:02:24.479 --> 00:02:27.960
myself was penance, except the whole region is one grid.

32
00:02:28.039 --> 00:02:32.960
Now under this heat, there's no robust anymore. There's just

33
00:02:33.039 --> 00:02:37.599
the wire, and the wire is failing. And somewhere in

34
00:02:37.639 --> 00:02:39.599
the masth of why is a woman in a cold

35
00:02:39.599 --> 00:02:43.759
hotel room pouring herself quietly into the ground. I am

36
00:02:43.800 --> 00:02:50.520
again the acceptable harm. I refuse to look at August texts.

37
00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:55.719
The dead zone delay means everything lands late, stacked hours old.

38
00:02:55.840 --> 00:03:00.919
The drain's getting worse, even with you gone local anymore.

39
00:03:01.560 --> 00:03:05.159
And then I can feel it from here. I've never

40
00:03:05.199 --> 00:03:08.599
felt it from here. And then the one that gets

41
00:03:08.599 --> 00:03:11.520
me out of the chair. Come home before they shed

42
00:03:11.520 --> 00:03:14.680
the zones. I think we can take it. I think

43
00:03:14.680 --> 00:03:19.039
that's what we're for, what we're for, like we're equipment,

44
00:03:19.639 --> 00:03:24.759
like we were built. I check out at midnight and

45
00:03:24.840 --> 00:03:28.759
I drive into the heat. He's waiting in the dirt track,

46
00:03:29.080 --> 00:03:32.879
and he looks wrong, gray drawn, like a man who's

47
00:03:32.879 --> 00:03:36.199
been holding a door shut against a flood for days.

48
00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:39.840
The dome light dies as I get close, but this

49
00:03:39.960 --> 00:03:42.800
time the dark doesn't stop at the car. The whole

50
00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:46.840
acre's gone dim, the stars smeared out, the air so

51
00:03:47.039 --> 00:03:52.120
charged my fillings ache. You came back, he says, and

52
00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:55.039
his voice has no triumph in it. He's too tired

53
00:03:55.080 --> 00:03:59.639
for triumph. You're failing, I say, engineer to the last.

54
00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:05.319
You've been taking the regional excess alone for days. You're

55
00:04:05.319 --> 00:04:09.080
not rated for a region August, no rod is. You'll

56
00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:12.080
burn out the faultle go to ground through the first

57
00:04:12.199 --> 00:04:15.800
soft thing it finds, and the zones drop. Anyway, you'll

58
00:04:15.800 --> 00:04:19.759
have spent yourself for nothing. Then give me a better idea.

59
00:04:20.439 --> 00:04:23.680
He steps close. The charge between us lifts the hair

60
00:04:23.759 --> 00:04:27.000
on my arms, because the only thing I've got is

61
00:04:27.040 --> 00:04:30.360
the one you keep running from alone. I'm a rod

62
00:04:30.399 --> 00:04:33.920
and you're a leak, and we both lose slow together.

63
00:04:35.639 --> 00:04:38.839
He takes my hand and the loop closes, and I

64
00:04:38.879 --> 00:04:42.839
feel it, the circuit, completing the current that has nowhere

65
00:04:42.879 --> 00:04:48.319
to go, finding somewhere together. We're not a leak and

66
00:04:48.360 --> 00:04:53.360
a rod. We're a circuit. You pour, I ground, and

67
00:04:53.439 --> 00:04:56.079
instead of bleeding into the nearest soft thing, we aim

68
00:04:56.120 --> 00:05:01.360
it through me. On purpose. We can take the whole

69
00:05:01.399 --> 00:05:05.319
regional load. If we close the loop and hold it.

70
00:05:05.319 --> 00:05:11.279
It'll kill you, maybe no flinch. But it's mine to spend.

71
00:05:11.839 --> 00:05:14.360
That's the part you keep stealing from me, Wren. You

72
00:05:14.480 --> 00:05:19.279
keep deciding who pays without asking them. His thumb drags

73
00:05:19.319 --> 00:05:24.120
across my knuckles. Two summers ago, you decided alone. You're

74
00:05:24.160 --> 00:05:27.600
doing it again right now, standing there, choosing to leave

75
00:05:27.680 --> 00:05:32.639
so I don't get hurt. Stop deciding for everyone. Ask me,

76
00:05:34.439 --> 00:05:38.639
and I almost do. It would be so easy. He's

77
00:05:38.680 --> 00:05:41.560
holding the door open. Let me be the one who pays,

78
00:05:42.040 --> 00:05:44.879
and God, I want to walk through it, want to

79
00:05:44.920 --> 00:05:48.439
let him carry it so I don't have to. But

80
00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:51.680
I've spent a whole night reading his eleven words eleven times,

81
00:05:52.279 --> 00:05:54.920
and I finally see the shape of him, and it's

82
00:05:54.959 --> 00:05:59.160
the shape of me in a mirror. No, I say

83
00:06:00.240 --> 00:06:05.040
to yourself it's mine to spend. You've been saying it

84
00:06:05.079 --> 00:06:08.040
since the first night. It only costs me, like it's

85
00:06:08.079 --> 00:06:12.519
a virtue. You cut your own lines. You stranded yourself

86
00:06:12.519 --> 00:06:15.720
on a dead acre fifteen years, making yourself the one

87
00:06:15.720 --> 00:06:22.160
who pays. My voice cracks. That's not nobility, August, that's hiding.

88
00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:27.000
It's my exact sin. Pointed the other way. I disappear

89
00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.519
by spreading the blame so thin nobody can find me

90
00:06:29.560 --> 00:06:33.319
in it. You disappear by swallowing all of it until

91
00:06:33.319 --> 00:06:36.040
you're not a person anymore, just a rod that takes

92
00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:39.920
the hit with the same coward. I won't be in

93
00:06:39.959 --> 00:06:45.240
the room. You won't be anything but the room. I

94
00:06:45.319 --> 00:06:48.079
grip his hand hard enough to feel the hum bite.

95
00:06:48.600 --> 00:06:51.319
If I let you spend yourself for me tonight, you

96
00:06:51.319 --> 00:06:53.439
get to keep hiding and I get to keep running,

97
00:06:53.879 --> 00:06:57.519
and we both call it love. I'm not doing that.

98
00:06:58.040 --> 00:07:00.519
If we close this loop, you don't get to die

99
00:07:00.560 --> 00:07:03.680
in it. You have to let yourself be saved, not

100
00:07:03.800 --> 00:07:08.360
just spent. That's the deal. We both stay. Nobody gets

101
00:07:08.399 --> 00:07:14.040
to disappear. He stares at me. Something breaks open in

102
00:07:14.079 --> 00:07:18.160
his face, the relief of a man who's been waiting

103
00:07:18.199 --> 00:07:22.000
fifteen years for someone to refuse his sacrifice instead of

104
00:07:22.040 --> 00:07:27.600
accepting it. I don't know how to do that, he admits, wrecked,

105
00:07:28.279 --> 00:07:31.439
be saved. I only know how to take it. Then

106
00:07:31.480 --> 00:07:36.000
we learn it together, I say in the room tonight,

107
00:07:37.720 --> 00:07:40.360
the regional alert on my dead phone lights once. The

108
00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:44.040
zones are dropping somewhere out there. The careful choice is

109
00:07:44.040 --> 00:07:47.959
being signed, and I make the other one. I close

110
00:07:48.000 --> 00:08:05.839
the loop. The blackout that comes isn't local. I feel

111
00:08:05.839 --> 00:08:08.240
it roll out from us in every direction at once,

112
00:08:08.879 --> 00:08:14.439
four counties going dark together, thup thup, thup, past the horizon,

113
00:08:15.079 --> 00:08:17.240
and for the first time in my life, there is

114
00:08:17.279 --> 00:08:21.040
no light anywhere on the earth, and there is only him,

115
00:08:21.160 --> 00:08:26.079
and the dark is total and warm and hours this one.

116
00:08:26.079 --> 00:08:28.959
I won't narrate all the way down. There's no light

117
00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:31.879
to narrate by, and the words I have would cheapen

118
00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:34.080
what the dark gave us. But I'll tell you the

119
00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:37.159
shape of it, because the shape is the whole point.

120
00:08:37.960 --> 00:08:42.159
I pour deliberately, for the first time, not leaking blind,

121
00:08:42.440 --> 00:08:46.639
not draining into the nearest soft thing, but aiming hands

122
00:08:46.679 --> 00:08:50.480
flat on his bare chest, mouth on his the whole

123
00:08:50.600 --> 00:08:54.120
two years of stopped up current, finding the one ground

124
00:08:54.159 --> 00:08:57.879
built to take it. It goes through me into him,

125
00:08:57.919 --> 00:09:01.480
like a line gone to earth, and he takes it,

126
00:09:01.559 --> 00:09:04.399
takes it his hands, dragging me astride him in the

127
00:09:04.480 --> 00:09:08.720
dry grass, and the charge rights itself across every place

128
00:09:08.759 --> 00:09:11.919
we touch, until I can't tell the current from the wanting,

129
00:09:12.480 --> 00:09:16.679
because they were never two things. The acre lights up

130
00:09:16.720 --> 00:09:19.879
around us, blue corona, crawling the dead wire up the

131
00:09:19.919 --> 00:09:23.159
capped pole, the whole impossible glow of a circuit that

132
00:09:23.200 --> 00:09:26.200
should not exist, and it lights his face below me

133
00:09:26.600 --> 00:09:31.000
so I can finally see him, see what it costs him,

134
00:09:31.279 --> 00:09:34.240
his jaw clenched, taking the region through his body so

135
00:09:34.320 --> 00:09:37.639
the zones don't have to pay. And then I feel

136
00:09:37.679 --> 00:09:42.120
him start to go, the ground overheating the rod at

137
00:09:42.159 --> 00:09:46.840
its rating and pasted it, his grip slackening, his breath

138
00:09:46.879 --> 00:09:50.919
going wrong, and every careful instinct I own screams the

139
00:09:50.960 --> 00:09:55.360
old scream, pull back, break the loop, save him, leave,

140
00:09:56.840 --> 00:09:59.799
the exact reflex that signed eleven people into a column

141
00:09:59.799 --> 00:10:03.799
to summers Ago, dressed up as mercy, and underneath it

142
00:10:04.399 --> 00:10:06.759
his voice doing its own version of the same thing.

143
00:10:07.720 --> 00:10:12.159
It's mine. Let me take it, Let go him, reaching

144
00:10:12.600 --> 00:10:16.480
even now for the disappearing act, to spend himself all

145
00:10:16.480 --> 00:10:18.360
the way out so he never has to learn the

146
00:10:18.399 --> 00:10:23.159
harder thing. No, I say, and I don't pull back,

147
00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:26.559
and I don't let him pour himself empty either. I

148
00:10:26.639 --> 00:10:29.840
hold the loop between us, both ends, the way you

149
00:10:29.879 --> 00:10:32.559
hold a note. You don't get to die out of this.

150
00:10:33.159 --> 00:10:36.559
You stay, I stay. We carry it together or not

151
00:10:36.679 --> 00:10:40.000
at all. I press my forehead to his in the

152
00:10:40.039 --> 00:10:43.799
blue light, take it and give it back, don't ground out,

153
00:10:44.399 --> 00:10:47.720
loop with me, stay in the room, and he does.

154
00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:51.240
I feel the instant he stops trying to be the

155
00:10:51.240 --> 00:10:54.159
only one who pays. I feel him take what I

156
00:10:54.240 --> 00:10:58.240
pour and return it. The circuit finally running both directions,

157
00:10:58.879 --> 00:11:02.200
no source and no saine, just two people refusing to

158
00:11:02.279 --> 00:11:07.519
vanish the last dark thing in me. Tears loose, the grief,

159
00:11:08.039 --> 00:11:12.600
the guilt, the dead flat numbness I called professionalism, And

160
00:11:12.720 --> 00:11:15.279
instead of dumping it into him, I let it run

161
00:11:15.320 --> 00:11:19.919
the loop round and round, sharing the load, and at

162
00:11:19.919 --> 00:11:22.600
the height of it, the moment I come apart with

163
00:11:22.720 --> 00:11:27.919
him and he with me, the whole thing discharges, not

164
00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:33.799
as light, leaking out as light grounded down deep into

165
00:11:33.840 --> 00:11:38.480
the actual earth, four counties of overload, pouring through one

166
00:11:38.559 --> 00:11:41.120
closed loop and into the soil where it can do

167
00:11:41.240 --> 00:11:44.759
no harm, and the corona flares so bright. The dead

168
00:11:44.799 --> 00:11:48.120
acre is daylight for one suspended second, and I see

169
00:11:48.159 --> 00:11:53.159
his face alive, alive, wrecked and laughing and weeping and alive.

170
00:11:54.759 --> 00:11:58.720
Then the dark again, the two of us, tangled and shaking,

171
00:11:59.080 --> 00:12:01.360
breathing like we reren and the whole way back from

172
00:12:01.399 --> 00:12:07.559
the edge of the world far off. One street light

173
00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:11.480
stutters on, then a block, then a county. A black

174
00:12:11.519 --> 00:12:14.720
start running in reverse, the grid climbing back up from nothing,

175
00:12:16.279 --> 00:12:20.799
the lights crawling home across four counties, every zone, even

176
00:12:20.840 --> 00:12:25.759
the weak ones, even the ones I'd have shed. Nobody

177
00:12:25.799 --> 00:12:30.360
got shed, nobody paid except us, and we chose it

178
00:12:31.039 --> 00:12:35.960
together in the room. Here's the part I didn't expect.

179
00:12:36.320 --> 00:12:40.159
The loop doesn't open. When I finally peel myself off him,

180
00:12:40.559 --> 00:12:43.799
gray dawn coming up over the dead acre. I reach

181
00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:46.600
for the field meter, out of pure habit, and it

182
00:12:46.639 --> 00:12:49.960
reads us, both of us as one source, now fused.

183
00:12:51.679 --> 00:12:54.120
The current that used to leak out of me runs

184
00:12:54.120 --> 00:12:57.519
in a closed circle between his body and mine, grounded

185
00:12:57.559 --> 00:12:59.840
through each other, with nowhere to go but back a.

186
00:13:02.080 --> 00:13:05.000
We did the math wrong every time because we kept

187
00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:07.919
thinking there were two of us. There's one circuit now

188
00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:10.720
there has been since I closed the loop and neither

189
00:13:10.759 --> 00:13:15.120
of us disappeared. I can't be far from you anymore,

190
00:13:15.600 --> 00:13:19.159
I say, testing it, walking ten feet down the track

191
00:13:19.200 --> 00:13:22.799
and feeling the charge climb wrong, the leak, starting to

192
00:13:22.840 --> 00:13:26.879
find the soft world again. I come back and it eases.

193
00:13:27.720 --> 00:13:30.679
And you can't spend yourself empty without taking me with you.

194
00:13:31.360 --> 00:13:35.600
We're stuck holding both ends. Is that a prison or

195
00:13:35.639 --> 00:13:40.799
a marriage both? I say neither depends on the day,

196
00:13:41.120 --> 00:13:44.480
because here's the honest thing, the thing the dark taught me,

197
00:13:44.919 --> 00:13:47.759
and I'll tell you straight, since you've come this far

198
00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:52.440
in it with me, this isn't cured. We're not fixed.

199
00:13:52.799 --> 00:13:57.120
The heat will come back every summer. It'll climb every summer.

200
00:13:57.159 --> 00:14:00.679
The region will go critical, and every summer we'll have

201
00:14:00.759 --> 00:14:04.279
to do this again. Close the loop, pour everything in,

202
00:14:04.879 --> 00:14:08.399
ground it through our own bodies, and the whole time

203
00:14:08.480 --> 00:14:10.840
I'll have to keep him from spending himself all the

204
00:14:10.879 --> 00:14:13.360
way out, and he'll have to keep me from running,

205
00:14:14.480 --> 00:14:17.759
both of us refusing to disappear by our two opposite roots.

206
00:14:18.360 --> 00:14:22.879
It's not a happy ending. It's a practice, a discipline,

207
00:14:23.440 --> 00:14:26.720
a thing we choose again every time the temperature rises,

208
00:14:27.480 --> 00:14:29.759
knowing it might be the time it doesn't hold. But

209
00:14:29.840 --> 00:14:32.840
I'll be in the room and he won't be. Only

210
00:14:32.879 --> 00:14:36.679
the room. That's the whole of what we've got, and

211
00:14:36.759 --> 00:14:40.960
it turns out it's everything. For two years I disappeared

212
00:14:40.960 --> 00:14:44.559
from every place that cost me. For fifteen he made

213
00:14:44.639 --> 00:14:48.679
himself nothing but the cost. Now there's one loop neither

214
00:14:48.720 --> 00:14:51.320
of us can vanish out of. Wired to a man,

215
00:14:51.399 --> 00:14:53.759
I can't be far from with a job that might

216
00:14:53.840 --> 00:14:57.720
kill us both some August yet to come. I've never

217
00:14:57.720 --> 00:15:01.759
felt anything so much in my life. The heat broke

218
00:15:01.840 --> 00:15:06.000
that night, by the way, real rain, finally, the kind

219
00:15:06.039 --> 00:15:08.879
that came down in sheets over four counties and steamed

220
00:15:08.879 --> 00:15:11.600
off the asphalt and made the cicadas shut up. At last,

221
00:15:12.799 --> 00:15:16.039
we stood in it, soaked through, in the dead track,

222
00:15:16.519 --> 00:15:19.279
the dawn grid humming sixty clean hurts all the way

223
00:15:19.320 --> 00:15:23.519
to the horizon. He kissed me, and a porch light

224
00:15:24.039 --> 00:15:27.519
a quarter mile off flared a little too bright, and

225
00:15:27.559 --> 00:15:30.399
we both laughed, because we're going to be learning the

226
00:15:30.440 --> 00:15:34.320
limits of this for the rest of our lives. The

227
00:15:34.360 --> 00:15:37.600
growing season, the dangerous one is just beginning. I can

228
00:15:37.639 --> 00:15:42.200
feel it coming. I'm not running, and neither for once

229
00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:47.600
is he. Thank you for listening to heat Lightning. May

230
00:15:47.679 --> 00:15:49.600
you find the nerve to stay in the room when

231
00:15:49.639 --> 00:15:52.320
it costs you, and the harder nerve to let someone

232
00:15:52.360 --> 00:15:53.080
stay there with you