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  Anything Goes

  An Anthology by Authors from the Anything Goes Author Group

  ~o~

  Copyright 2013 by Anything Goes Authors Group

  All stories are copyright of their respective creators, and are reproduced here with permission.

  The End… Or Is It?

  By Lindy Spencer

 

  The price of gas just keeps going up. I was irritated by the thought. Looking down at my fuel gauge I calculated how long the less-than half a tank I currently had would last. Not until payday, that’s for sure. $20.00 will probably get me through the weekend and past the price hikes... if we stay home and out of the holiday traffic. Not like I’d made any plans anyway.

  It was Monday, May 20, 2013 and the average price of gas was edging up toward $4.00 per gallon. With Memorial Day weekend coming up the price was sure to continue to climb for at least a few more days. It happens every time a holiday rolls around. I only wish I’d thought about it last week and filled the tank then; gas was .66 cheaper per gallon seven days ago.

  I kept one eye on the red stoplight as I ran my hands through my hair and pulled it up into a pony tail. I pulled down the sun visor and looked at myself in the mirror to make sure my lion’s mane was at least relatively tamed; it was hard to get all these natural curls into one hair tie. They were all corralled, more or less, for the moment anyway. My eyes looked tired; hell, I’m surprised there aren’t bags under them with as little as I’m sleeping lately. I pulled the skin back on the sides of my eyes, gently, like I’d seen my mother do so many times when I was younger. When did I get these wrinkles? I’m pretty sure they weren’t here yesterday.

  The windshield wipers kept up a rhythmic staccato beat – swish thump, swish thump, swish thump – as they chased each other rapidly back and forth, trying to keep up with the increasing rainfall. I hope these things hold out until the rain quits. Just one more thing that needs to be replaced on payday… damn wiper blades. The light turned green. I kept enough distance between me and the car cruising along in front of me so that the spray thrown up off of the wet road by their tires wasn’t adding to the poor visibility I already had going; between the spotty wipers and the wind-whipped rain I don’t need any more distractions. As if on cue, lightning seared across the distant sky; out of a habit born in childhood I counted the seconds between lighting and the rumble of thunder… one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand, si—boom! The portion of the storm that produced that bolt of lightning is five miles away.

  With a sigh of resignation I put on my turn signal and pulled into the Zippy Mart parking lot. A white SUV was the only other vehicle currently parked at a gas pump. I was happy to see an open space underneath the overhang where I could get gas without getting soaked. The rain, which had started shortly after I’d left work, had steadily gained intensity and didn’t look like it would let up anytime soon. The wind bursts spit the rain under the overhang, but wasn’t strong enough yet to fling it all the way to the middle, directly in front of the gas pump. There was about a two-foot wide stretch of concrete that wasn’t wet. This was not an unusual sight; it was springtime in Oklahoma after all.

  I turned off the key and dug through my purse for my credit card while I waited for the engine to complete its sputtering noise routine in protest. I needed to get a mechanic to figure out what the problem was; yet one more thing I couldn’t afford right now. When the engine quit with a sigh of its own, I climbed out and inserted the card into the reader on the pump. The readout on the screen promptly requested that I take my card inside to the cashier.

  Freakin’ figures. I don’t even have my umbrella. I reached back into my car for my purse; they would probably want to see my drivers’ license before they ran my card through in there. Mentally congratulating myself on thinking ahead, I snagged the newspaper from the passenger seat and held it on top of my head while I made a mad dash for the door. Within about two steps of reaching the door, the wind whipped up and snatched the newspaper from my hand, pelting my face with rain. I hadn’t read that yet! I made it to the covered sidewalk in front of the store and looked back, wiping the rain off of my face with my hands and drying my glasses with the hem of my shirt. Probably wouldn’t have been able to read it, anyway, after using it as a hat in this weather. The paper disassembled in the air; a ballet of sorts. Separating out and flying different directions, it made me think of the trip to Texas the year I took the kids to see the hundreds of bats fly out from their cave at sunset. That was a fun trip for all of us, I thought wistfully.

  I opened the door and went through, pulling it shut behind me. That wind was really picking up. Taking my place in line, I waited behind a woman with a toddler on her hip. I wiggled my fingers at the boy peeking at me over her shoulder. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and smiled at me around it, wiggling the rest of his fingers in response. He lowered his head to her shoulder, apparently shy. I looked around absently. The sky continued to darken and for the first time I noticed that the clouds were looking particularly ominous. As if on cue, thunder rumbled deep, low and loud. It seemed to come from all sides at once. Fast moving storm, I thought.

  The cashier finished the transaction. The woman hiked her child up into the air and wrestled him into a football carry position. His infectious giggle made me smile. She asked him if he was ready to go, and he clapped his hands and kicked his little feet in response. She carried him that way out of the store and ran toward their car, calling out the run as if it were a football play. “Mom gets the Bryan and makes a beeline for the door, dodging left, stepping right, jumping clear over the puddle…” The wind closed the door with a forceful slam, cutting off her recitation and his belly laugh. Enamored, I watched her cross the parking lot at a serpentine run, dodging imaginary opponents, entertaining her son the whole way. She got to her SUV and lifted him in the air, doing what could only be interpreted as a touchdown victory dance. The lights flickered, breaking me out of my trance.

  I was still smiling as I stepped up to the counter. Before I could say anything the cashier, who couldn’t have been older than high school age, apologized for the inconvenience. “I know it’s a rough day for the pumps to act up, I’m sorry you had to come inside.”

  “Not a problem. I’m glad I did, I might not have seen her play with her son like that.” I motioned over my shoulder, toward the parking lot. “That was fun to watch, took me back to when mine were little. Have the gas pumps been giving that message to everyone?”

  He blinked at me like I was from a different world. The generation gap loomed large between us. Apparently he didn’t have any memories like that one from his own childhood. “Since the rain started, yes. How much gas did you need?”

  As I opened my mouth to answer, the tornado sirens went off. We both looked out the window immediately, as Oklahomans do, and saw nothing except more rain. The woman at the SUV looked at the sky, startled by the sirens, and quickly hung up her gas nozzle before jumping behind the wheel.

  Apparently not one to take a chance, the clerk reached over and clicked the remote control, turning the television to a news station and un-muting the volume. “Take cover immediately, tornado on the ground, I repeat, tornado on the ground!” The excited voice of the storm chaser filled the store. “If you’re in the Moore area, you need to be in your storm shelter or safe room NOW!” called out the weather man. “The tornado is on the ground on Fourth Street, about half a mile from Tuxahawney Road, heading east. Oh! It just took out the strip mall! Oh, my God, look at that. Oh, my God… Get underground immediately, right now, RIGHT NOW, its gaining intensity!”

  We looked at each other, both of our mouths hanging open. The Zippy Mart was on the corner of Tuxahawne
y Road and Fourth Street! “This way, hurry!” He yelled over his shoulder as he turned toward the back of the store and the door to the cooler, not waiting to see if I was going to follow. Apparently what to do in this situation had been part of his training because he didn’t waste time.

  I ran to keep up. The floor trembled and the power went off with a loud pop - the light fixtures and the television exploding, raining shards of glass down all over the store. I ducked and dodged, covering my head with my arms.

  Thunder and what looked like lightning but could have been street lights exploding filled the air around me, crushing in from all sides, reflecting off of the overhead mirrors originally used by the cashier to watch what the customers were doing at any location in the store to cut down on theft. The inside of the store was completely black except for the erratic bursts of light from outside and the sound of the rain was drowned out by the unmistakable and increasingly loud sound of an oncoming train. The tornado was almost on us! The air pressure changed; I felt like I was being crushed. Breathing became a chore and the last few steps before reaching the cooler and the outstretched hand of the teen-aged cashier were like running through mud. The ground shook and rolled, coming apart underneath my feet.

  I gripped his hand and he pulled me off my feet and into the cooler, slamming the door behind us to the shrieking sound of ripping sheet metal. The roof of the Zippy Mart creaked and groaned under the pressure and strain before being torn loose with a fingernails-on-the-chalkboard shriek. I cringed as I heard it go. The walls of the cooler shuddered and shifted, twisting, ripping. We shoved some boxes out of the way and crammed ourselves underneath the bottom shelf, away from the cans and bottles that were toppling and falling from the creaking and tilting shelves. I prayed the tornado would lift; our shelter wouldn’t be able to take much more. We held onto each other and the shelf above us. I was crying. Someone was screaming; I don’t know how I could hear it except… it was me.

  The ceiling of the cooler suddenly and completely let go without much fanfare; I watched it disappearing into the sky like the house in The Wizard of Oz. I don’t know what made me think of that. This whole situation was surreal, and it was so much worse than any movie. Unidentifiable debris poured in, swirling and whirling, slamming down all around us before being picked back up and thrown somewhere else. The walls of the cooler collapsed in, held off of us by the only shelf left, the one we’d crawled under. I don’t know how long it was there, couldn’t have been more than a second or two, before it was ripped from the last of its moorings and lifted out of sight faster than I’d ever seen anything move. The cashier was torn away with it, his hand that had been holding onto mine gone before I knew he was moving, the shelf above me twirling like some macabre dance before screaming back down and lodging itself in the concrete floor inches from my head.

  With no walls left between me and the outside, I guess I was outside now too, I watched my car flip end over end and bounce several times before being sucked up and out of my line of sight. I didn’t see the SUV that the lady and her son had gotten into; I sincerely hoped they’d seen the tornado coming and she’d been able to drive them safely out of the area. Lying as flat as I could, I pressed my body hard onto the concrete, trying to become one with it, and prayed that the tornado wouldn’t pick me to throw around like a rag doll like it had the clerk. Pieces of metal, shards of glass and fragmented wooden beams danced and dipped, shuddered and disappeared only to reappear and rain down from the sky. I couldn’t watch it anymore; I squeezed my eyes shut and burrowed my face into the crook of my arm, and I prayed over and over that it would end soon. I knew I was still screaming but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I had no control over anything, including myself.

  As quickly as the tornado came, it left. The ensuing stillness was palpable; though there wasn’t any wind at all, the air was pressing in on me as I stood surveying the damage. Why can’t I hear the sirens? Surely they’re still going off, I wondered idly. Maybe I’m temporarily deaf. That would totally make sense. There wasn’t anything standing between me and the rain – no roof, no walls, nothing. In fact, there wasn’t anything between where I stood and the tornado. I could see it clearly and I watched it as it moved away, swaying like a drunken sailor, creating a path of destruction, and leaving devastation behind in its wake.

  Where my car used to be was a twisted hulk of metal; the overhang under which I had parked only minutes ago was now wrapped around and through an old red pickup truck that hadn’t been there when we’d run for the cooler. I was pretty sure it didn’t drive itself in, either, as it was upside down and crushed to half its normal height. It was still raining. Why can’t I feel the rain? My car was nowhere to be seen. I hope it didn’t hit anyone or hurt anybody during its short career as a plane. Paper, leaves, and other lightweight debris floated calmly down, see-sawing their way back to earth. The entire scene was surreal; so much destruction in such little time. I’d never seen anything like this before in my life and hoped to never see anything remotely similar again. I watched the tornado continue its trek and thought about the people it had yet to encounter.

  A man in a worn pair of jeans, an old t-shirt and well-worn work boots stepped out of his front door across the street. The tornado had missed his house by about four feet; his neighbor’s home was a memory, along with every home behind theirs. He scanned the area and started running toward the store, or where the store used to be, where I stood. I could see his mouth moving but I couldn’t hear a word. He ran past me without slowing down and dropped to the ground, hastily pulling boards off of a pile and flinging them to a relatively clear space next to him.

  It was then that I saw what he was digging for; there was an arm protruding from underneath the edge of the pile. I tried to move toward him, to help. My ears don’t work, I can’t feel the rain, and now I can’t walk either? Jesus. What else could go wrong?

  Another man, dressed in what looked to have been an expensive suit and tie before his wreck, climbed out of the sunroof of a car that had obviously been expensive at one point; it was half smashed in now, partially wrapped around a telephone pole. Lucky for him it was the passenger side that had taken the hit. Except for the blue plastic slide from a child’s swing set that was currently lodged in the rear door, the driver’s side of the car looked fine, if you didn’t notice the deployed airbags visible through the windows. Suit man hopped down off of his car unsteadily and loped toward worker man and the wreckage. Suit man, worker man, and the wreckage. Sounds like the name of a heavy metal or punk rock band. He didn’t seem to notice the trickle of blood tracing a path of its own down the side of his face; he was intent on getting to worker man and helping pull the bricks and debris off of the person underneath.

  The rain slowed to a little more than a drizzle as the clouds began to disperse. The sky grew lighter as the storm passed; from here it looked like the clouds were rubberneckers following the tornado, jockeying for position and watching to see what other horrors it was going to deliver. Wow, my thoughts sure turned macabre. I guess being attacked by a tornado will do that to you. Who knew?

  As suit man continued to unearth the top portion of the woman’s body, worker man held his fingers to the wrist for several seconds and then tried to find a pulse in her neck. His eyes were suddenly sad as he shook his head once at suit man. Worker man reached into the purse near her body and pulled out her wallet, opening it and laying it on the ground near her head. They moved on, continuing to clear detritus, moving it to the side, searching for survivors. I could have told them the only other person in the store besides me was the cashier and he was lying over there in front of what used to be a pickup truck, but even from here I could tell he was dead.

  Wait. There were only two of us in the store. If he’s over there, and I’m right here, then who is she? Where did she come from, and when did she get here? Was she tossed in with the debris by the tornado? I didn’t see anything like that, never saw another person. Was it while I had
my head buried in my arm? All of a sudden I felt lightheaded. I sat down on the ground, dropping my head between my knees. Well no wonder, with what I’ve just been through. Why aren’t they asking me if I’m ok? It’s almost like they can’t see me.

  The lack of hearing, of feeling, of control over my body, it all fell into place with one last click and realization struck as quick as lightning. They can’t see me. I jerked my head back up, not wanting to know what I now knew to be true, fighting it every step of the way. That’s not another lady, that’s me. It can’t be! I’m not there, I’m here. I’m NOT dead!! Am I? I’m not… I’m not… I’m not…

  In the blink of an eye, without feeling as if I’d moved at all, I was next to the men, looking down at the unmoving lady. She was me alright. As sure as I was squatting here she had my hair in my pony tail holder and that was my shirt and my watch, and those were my eyeglasses broken in half and twisted around what appeared to be a door handle. Without a door it was hard to tell for sure if that’s what it used to be. Somehow my purse strap had stayed on my shoulder – something that never seemed to happen when I wanted it to, and I found it very funny considering a tornado had blown a building on top of me and there was the strap finally staying where I put it – and my wallet was laying next to my hand, open to my drivers’ license. No doubt that was me.

  I can’t be dead, I’m not ready. Carrie’s coming home for the weekend after her last class tonight, Bill should be home from Iraq any time and I promised to bake him a cake, Mom can’t drive herself to her doctors’ appointments, I need to live long enough to pay off my damn house and meet my grandchildren and they’re not even conceived yet. I have so much to do; I don’t have time for this. I realized I was trying to pep talk myself out of this situation as I’d done for so many others. Somehow I don’t think it’s gonna work this time.

  What am I supposed to do now? I tilted my head back and howled my frustration as loud as I could, with everything I had, until I was empty. Neither of the men turned to look, they continued moving bricks and wood and large clumps of grass, looking for people who weren’t in that mess. It wouldn’t do any good for me to tell them. They can’t hear me. Nobody can hear me anymore.

  Wait… if I’m dead, and I’m here, then I was right, there IS life after death. If I’m in my death after life, what the hell am I supposed to do now?

  END

  Voice of Reason

  By J. B. Cameron