A Noun

Chapter three: Flood

Flood
noun
1. an overflowing of a large amount of water beyond its normal confines, especially over what is normally dry land.

You wouldn't believe the amount of rainfall we had that first week of April. It never stopped pummeling the roads, the poor grass that was now mud and the trees.

It was heavy, strong bullets of rain. They couldn't have been louder on the roof of my family's home. It was hard to sleep some nights because of it. Not that it mattered too much about sleep for me, I was always reading.

But my brother kept having friends come and sleepover. They always couldn't sleep because of the rain and would play video games very loud next to my room.

I had enough of it. I was trying to enjoy Dick Francis's Novel The Danger, but the heavy bass of gunfire and raised voices from the three boys across the hall. My parents luckily were heavy sleepers and slept on the ground floor.

I took my book and blanket downstairs, holding the English chestnut-stained railing as the soft cream carpet under my bare feet muffled the creeks of the floorboards underneath.

The dark walnut floorboards of the downstairs floor were all quiet except the few that made creaks and groans at my weight. I walked in only the faint glow of the overhead light on the stove in the kitchen. 

I padded my way to the basement door, just across from the kitchen island in the open concept floor plan, near the living space.

I opened the white wooden painted door as I still heard the rain falling outside. It sounded as if it was slowing finally.

I had to take six steps down to the basement before I could reach the light switch. It was an odd feature of the house, but it was fine with me since the light in the kitchen was serving me with enough to just barely see.

As I stepped onto the sixth step, reaching the light switch placed on the wall to my right, I felt water.

The freezing water was soaking my feet, and the bottoms of my sweatpants I had worn to bed.

I flipped the light on to hopefully display the way I was feeling water while heading to the one place that would be peace and quiet from my brother and his friends.

I groaned in frustration. The basement flooded.

———

I was the chosen one to wade through the knee-high water in the basement, collecting the valuables and just plain crap we stored down there.

My dad got the generator running, pumping water out of the basement while my mom sorted through what was brought up, and deciding its fate. Whether it went to the trash, or back to the basement once the water was gone.

My brother had his two friends with himself pulling the boxes and Christmas decorations up the stairs that I would hand them.

Hayden yelled from the soggy stairs: "Any more shit down there?"

I searched around for any last boxes or crap that we had stored away, thinking we would use someday. I heard the boys go upstairs at the request of my dad, telling them that they needed to help sort out some of the garbage.

But I saw a black hard-shell box in the corner of the basement at the very back of one of the black plastic shelves we had. It looked as if someone had left it there for quite some time, and like it was hidden away.

I became very curious about this last item.

I wadded over, my sweatpants still soaked and the water splashing up at me a little, but I had been wet from this flood for a couple of hours prior. No point in changing just yet.