The Storm

The Storm was coming. The air seemed to be getting tenser these past couple of days, like it was a baseball player getting ready to hit an eighty miles per hour fastball. Except this fastball would stop right on top of us exactly like it did every five years when it came ‘round.

You could tell everyone else felt it to. Cans of beans, fruit, peanut butter, and vegetables flew off the shelves in Bill’s General Store at the edge of Main St. And every night there were feasts of meat and eggs and fresh produce all over town.

Even Maisy, the delivery girl from the city stopped coming by to drop off packages at the center of town.

It was going to hit tomorrow. Call it what you want, magic, intuition, but something deep in my gut told me it was going to be tomorrow.

I wasn’t the only one with that feeling. The next morning a sign was posted on the billboard in the center of town asking residents to go into their storm cellars. I didn’t see the sign, but Tom Jenkins, Bill’s teenage son went by every house screaming at the top of lungs.

So in we went, to the storm cellar. Mom in her Sunday best with her books and knitting needles, Dad in his work clothes with the pots and pans and food. Lizzie with her baggy jacket for some sports team long worn off the front and me in my pajamas with my ragged old cap and books about some far away land.

I went in first. The storm cellar was exactly as I remembered it. A dank prison devoid of all light except for one lone oil lamp in the corner and boxes littering the small space. The room couldn’t have been more than a ten by ten square. It was a tight fit now that Lizzie and I were older. Dad closed the doors as he went in and padlocked the handles.

Silence filled the air.

And for a moment it was perfect. And then the storm began. Like clockwork. It was going to be a long one this time. It was every so often. We could predict about when the Storm would hit, but never how long.

I heard wind beat against the house and the storm cellar’s doors started to get wet from rain hitting it. I only noticed because I was standing on the ladder to the door and my hand was pressed to the wood.

I had always loved the Storm. Something about it had always seemed so magical. Just the idea of a storm that passes through one town every five years that doesn’t touch anything but the town would be absurd anywhere but here. But here it’s not absurd; it’s just a fact of life. The sky is blue, grass is green, and the Storm comes every five years.

I went back down and sat on the second-to-bottom rung of the ladder. Mom was knitting, Lizzie was reading one of Mom’s books and Dad was getting a can of peaches open for dinner.

I thought about what it must be like outside. The mighty oaks that lined Main St. would fall to the wind, soldiers lost in a battle to Mother Nature. They would be back though, in five years it would be like they never left.

The windows would all be boarded up now, with anything from wood to cardboard to old, unwanted blankets; people would do anything to save their glass windows. We had wood on our windows. They would probably hold. I hope. Last time the windows didn’t hold Mom sighed in disappointment. That sigh was even worse than being scolded.

~~~~~~

The Storm lasted three days this time. A little longer than I had originally anticipated, but I had been close. For three days we ate nothing but canned peaches and plums. Dad had finished a whole month’s worth of old crosswords that he had never found the time to do. Mom had made a new quilt for Lizzie’s bed. Lizzie had read all of Mom’s books twice and I had only read my book once, I thought on the second rung of the ladder for most of the storm.

Outside it was so bright, almost blinding. And it was so quiet, there were no birds or bugs chirping, no gentle sigh of a breeze passing through tree branches, nothing but dead silence.

I walked up to the house. It looked perfect on the outside, like nothing had touched it, but I knew better. Nothing left the storm completely unscathed. The yard was a mess, the careful herb garden Mom had kept completely wilted, the playground Dad had built me and Lizzie was woodchips.

Inside was even worse. The parlor was a barely salvageable. The couch was all over the floor and the side table in splinters. The kitchen wasn’t that much better; the appliances were all fine but our table and chairs were ruined and the plates and cutlery was decorating the floor in little shards.

My room was left untouched except for some words carved into my writing desk. I didn’t know what they said, they were in some odd language, but I got chills in my bones looking at them. They were always there after the Storm. I never told anyone about them. I didn’t want word to get ‘round in town that I had a screw loose. I just grabbed a bat I had in my closet and started breaking down the desk. Everyone would assume it had been broken in the Storm.

I didn’t want anyone to know about the words until I knew what they meant.

~~~~~

Later that week, after most of the mess had been cleaned up, I went to Main St. and looked on the billboard in front of Bill’s for any obituaries from the Storm. Two dead, Old Man Smith and the Pinley’s eldest son Robert. Robert wasn’t even an adult at two years shy of eighteen. Old Man Smith was well past his time and died at a ripe old age of ninety-two. Both didn’t get into a storm cellar in time.

Otherwise everything was pretty normal for post-Storm. People were picking trash up off the streets and young kids running wild, releasing pent-up energy from sitting in a storm cellar for three straight days.

 Just another five years ‘till the next storm.

Thank you for reading my short story, The Storm. Please vote if you liked it and comment any suggestions. Feel free to comment any edits, not revisions. 

Song on the side is "Home" by Gabrielle Aplin. The song starts about a minute into the video. Love that song.

-M