Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Sir Charles of the Storm

The clouds in the sky were darker than the underbelly of the lady bug crawling along the outside of my window. The only spot of color in my otherwise grayscale view, the small insect seemed completely at peace in the midst of the oncoming disaster. Without fear, or maybe without knowledge, of the impending storm, the bug skittered contentedly across the glass panes until it reached a small leaf, upon which it crawled on and then flew away. As I watched it disappear, I realized that that may have been the last color I would ever see, for the blackness rolling in with the wind certainly looked like the apolocalypse to me. No life would possibly be able to survive the terror contained in those clouds, nothing would be able to breathe after the pressure that they would unload onto us. I let out a small puff of air that clouded my vision for a moment, but I didn't move to clear it. I thought that maybe not seeing this would be better than seeing every detail.
They talk about the moment of calm before the storm in songs and in poems, all around they discuss the eerie silence that arrives before the cusp of disaster. I didn't know until that very moment, standing in my living room, with the front door open wide, what on earth they were talking about. But as soon as it happened, the world felt as though a vaccuum had roamed through and pulled out all of the possibility of breathing, leaving a sense of no life, and no death. Everything for a moment was calm, the wind ceased it's movement, the birds did not tweet, nor, did it seem, that any cars were driving on the roads. A minute of time in which the world bowed it's head to the storm, giving it full reign in which to terrorize and destroy all that was in it's path. Courteously, the storm bowed back, and then the calm was gone.
A single crash of thunder with a simultaneous strike of lightning brought on the onslaught of water, and wind. I struggled quickly to slam my wooden front door against the walls of power fighting against me, sure that I would rather witness this monstrous weather from the inside of my safe, though rickety, home. It sounded as if armies were pounding with their knives and bombs against my windows, swords drawn and ready, though in reality, the rain had simply unleashed it's fury on us mere mortals. Poor dog walkers and mailmen, heads bent against the disaster, were running as fast as they could without colliding into any buildings or falling flat over, in an attempt to escape.
I saw, at that moment, through the hail now pounding on my walls, and the crashes of lightning illuminating the otherwise darkness, a small creature, limping through the wet air, clearly with nowhere to go. I have no idea what prompted me to throw open my door and run outside like a madwoman, but the next thing I knew, I was soaked to the bone with an animal, shivering wildly, in my arms. This creature, which I now realized was a dog, much to my gratitude, for I had rather feared at the last moment that I would be picking up a skunk or a raccoon, was whining and obviously in pain. Tenderly, I placed the dog on my leather sofa, wrapped it in a towel, and examined it's wounds. Collarless, this dog was bleeding profusely from it's hind leg, though the amount of blood is hard to tell, for the amount of water made it seem as though niagra falls of blood was gushing out, when, in reality, it could have been a mere scrape. Obviously young, this dog had the trusting eyes of someone who wanted to love you, but the hesitancy of someone who had been hurt before. I ran into my kitchen, still stocked with the old dog food of my recently passed best friend, Clyde, and retrieved a milk bone. Peace offering in hand, suddenly the dog took much more kindly to me and allowed my advances.
We, the dog and I, stayed in my living room, listening to the roaring fire in my fireplace, watching the skies open up onto the outside world, immune to the cold and safe from the danger, for two days, in which time we mutually decided his name was to be Charles, and we were to be best friends. Together Charles and I live to this day, enjoying the sunshine and frolicking in the wind, but never forgetting that it was a storm unlike any other that brought us together.

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