Short Story Narrative

The Flood

On June 7, 2008 my baby sister and I woke to the batting of pouring rain hitting our windows. I was surprised to see my dad awake watching television since we were supposed to be baby sat that day. "Dad, why are you home?" I questioned him as I walked into the room. Turns out our baby sitters had some other plan that day so dad had to take off work. My face suddenly lit up, because that meant I got to spend the day home with my dad! We decided to spend the day at home watching television and movies, since it was so nasty outside.

I decided to join in and watch the news with my dad, since that's what he was already watching. I noticed that there was a red flashing triangle on the TV saying that we are under a flood warning, but when I asked my dad about it he said we would be okay since we live on a little hill. Obviously I just looked past it and focused on all the water puddles I would get to splash in after it stopped raining, since that's what six year old me loved to do apparently.

While watching the news I kept seeing this red flashing triangle popping up during every channel we changed the TV to. Me, being the paranoid child I am, decided to ask my dad about it again. " Merrick, it's okay, it's just rain, " is what he replied. I decided to go play with my dogs instead of watching the tv so I could get the little triangle out of my head. I went over and played around with Bentley and Bruno, my dogs, for a bit then went back to watching TV, because I was already bored with petting the dogs.

While watching TV, my dad told me to get my things together so we could go get my mom some coffee from Starbucks, since she was working at the hospital. So I grabbed my favorite stuffed animal snake and helped my dad get my baby sister's stuff together. I loved how trying to help my dad pack a baby bag resulted in me falling on the ground, because the bag was too heavy for me to carry. After we finished getting the baby bag packed, we put Bentley and Bruno in their crates inside the house so that they couldn't chew anything up while we were gone. I remember having to put all my toys up or else my dad wouldn't let me get any fancy drink from Starbucks. So after all that was done we made our way outside, and that's when the unimaginable stuck us.

The swooshing of water rushing down the road burned our eyes. We can never unsee the terror flowing down our neighborhood. The amount of water was unimaginable. "Merrick, it's okay, it's just rain," played through my mind as we saw all the destruction happening. " Dad? " I hesitated as the water slowly rose up our driveway we were waiting in. I never knew nature could be so violent. My dad, carrying my baby sister, ran back inside with me following behind him and grabbed the baby bag and his phone. I ran into my room, wrapped my stuffed animal snake, that was as long as me, around my neck, and also snatched my stuffed dog, Pudding, up. We walked back outside and started trenching through the thing that used to be a road, but was only water now.

The water flowed so fast and got so high to the point where I couldn't walk, but had to swim my way to the hill full of people. My dad, baby sister, and I finally made it to the hill after what seemed like a lifetime. After a while, a couple people in lifeboats paddled over to us asking, if we wanted them to try to retrieve anything that was in our house. Immediately I started hyperventilating, what about Bentley and Bruno? We watched the orange lifeboats paddle away to different directions, going from family to family asking if they left any precious belonging they needed to be retrieved. After what seemed like an eternity, we finally spotted the guy that we asked to get our dogs. He rowed up and at that point my mind went blank. The dogs weren't in there. Then, suddenly I heard my biggest nightmare upon us, " I'm sorry, but we couldn't get them out in time. " I completely lost it after those words spilled out of his mouth. Is this even reality? Is this real life? I just couldn't believe all of this. Why did this happen? What did we do to deserve this? No one had the answers and it just killed me emotionally.

All of this madness piled up on top of everything was the worst. Words can't even explain how devastating this event was for everyone affected. It left all of us speechless and dry of tears. I didn't even know what life looked like for us after that point. How were we going to look past this? So many questions and no answers.

Even though this unfortunate event happened and affected our lives, we found a way to get through it all. With a lot of help and support from friends and family we got our lives back on track, even better than before. We moved in with my grandparents and stayed with them for a couple of months. Then after fixing up a house that had been passed down through generation to generation on my dad's side of the family, we finally moved into a new house. I think that after the flood happened we all learned a very important lesson. To always cherish life even when something bad happens. You can't let that one bad thing define you and your life and don't let it taunt you. Even if it's the worst case scenario, always know that life's toughest situations help make you, you. That if something makes you upset, that it happened for a reason and will only make your life better in the long run.