It was sunny an hour ago.
Queensland skies can be so fickle.
“Why are you cloudy? Today of all days,” I mutter.
I’ll just have to make the most of it.
I’m sure it will still be wonderful.
Sadly, it turns out to be anything but.
the sixteenth chapter
MARK
Clothes soaked. Hair sticking to my skin.
I almost slip on the stairs, leaving a trail of droplets in my wake.
But it’s the noise that frightens me most.
Especially in an old wooden building like this.
The howl of the wind shakes the rafters, windows rattling in their frames.
The walls curve inward, roof holding on by a thread.
That bus ride back to the city was awful.
I had to catch two of them because the whole train network has been suspended.
“Must be a nasty one brewing if they've shut down the tracks,” a passenger says.
“Heard about it on the news,” another person replied.
“Look at that monster. Definitely a super cell. It’s forming right above the city.”
I deeply regret turning around to see it.
Imagine the worst possible image for a storm phobic to have seared into their mind.
A towering, spinning citadel of atmospheric fury hovers above the downtown area.
Skyscrapers cower like feeble twigs beneath its gloom.
To me it looks like an evil crown of bruised purple and charcoal gray.
A villainous symphony of the elements.
More terrifying than any storm cloud I’ve ever witnessed.
And I live right underneath it.
But I have nowhere else to go.
And I can’t get off this bus in the middle of a traffic jam.
My stomach twists into knots.
