I had this dream one night and a few days later it came back to me. It is actually based on two separate incidents from my own life, combined with the resulting news coverage of each. I wrote it down and now submit it, for whatever it may be worth. I've been writing for many years, but only for my own self-gratification. Submitting my output for peer review is all very new to me. I welcome any and all constructive criticism that will help me become a better writer. I know I've still got a lot of 'rough edges' that could use more than a little spit-and-polish.
Although they haven't had any direct input into this particular piece of work, other established writers have helped me more than than they may know. This piece is self-edited, so all mistakes and other faus pas herein are my own sole responsibility and cannot be attributed to anyone else. Now for the story.
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Have you ever had a two-story house fall on you? Well don't, because you won't like it. I know first-hand how it feels...it's very heavy. And as to the other incident? Well, don't try it at home. It will not turn out as well. I was very lucky that day.
I had recently turned twenty and was still living at home. My dad and I just had a big squabble over the fact that it was six--thirty Friday evening, I was getting ready to go out on my first date with the hottest cheerleader in school, who was now no longer 'jail bait'; and dad demanded that the lawn had to be mowed that night. Tomorrow morning at nine o'clock would simply be too late. It must be done tonight. Hell, at that time tomorrow, he'd be on the fourth or fifth hole on the golf course. What difference would it have made?
So, we argued, I refused his ultimatum, and I moved out right then; yep, packed everything that was mine and left home forever. So, I missed my date anyway.
I'd been doing a lot of work for a guy out in the country who had a stable where he boarded other peoples' horses. I cleaned the stalls; repaired the tack; fed, watered, bathed, and curried the horses. I also exercised and rode them (bareback and with tack) and worked with their owners and the vet.
My boss had told me that I could sleep in the tack room if I wanted. Now I wanted, and that was where I was going when the tornado hit.
They don't call where I live "Tornado Alley" for no good reason. That sucker tore a twenty-mile path through our little burg, wrecking houses, businesses, and utilities all along its route.
I was on a cross-county interstate connector when I came upon the storm path. The first thing I saw was a car in the intersection ahead. I wasn't going to be able to get through. There were a half-dozen high-voltage electrical lines down all around the car -- live lines, very live.
These weren't the normal street lines; they were the two-inch super lines and they were sparking, whipping and jumping around, and blasting holes in the car each time they touched it. The scene was surreal and then I saw what I'd missed. In the blink of a lightning strike, I saw a woman and two kids in the car. Holy J...us! There was no way to get them out! Sixty thousand volts is nothing anybody wants to be anywhere near. That stuff can jump ten or more feet to a ground; and that's me, standing, feet on the ground, in a driving rain.
I jumped out of my car and ran over to the edge of the road, looking for any way that I could get to them and get them out safely -- kids for gawd's sake! They were just little kids.
With no way to get near the car, I grabbed the nearest line about thirty feet from it's dangerous end and pulled it away as far as I could, over into a large grassy area. Then I returned and grabbed another and another, until nothing was near the car.
After getting no response to my yelling through the closed windows, I looked for a way in. Three of the door handles had been blown off by the electrical discharges, but one backseat handle opened. I unbelted the two kids and carried them to the front porch of the nearest house where I was met by an elderly couple who took my charges inside to relative safety.
I returned to the car and got the driver's door open from the inside. Mom was unconscious but alive. I got her unbelted and carried her back to the same house. The old fellow let me carry her in and lay her on the couch. After talking with the old couple, I went back out to my car and continued on my way, having never seen or heard a police car or fire engine. No flashing lights, no street lights or stoplights, just wind and rain.
About eight or nine miles down the road, I came across another place the tornado had ripped through, decimating an entire neighborhood. There was only one house standing and it looked like it was going to fall if anyone sneezed. Shaking my head, I was about to drive around the wreckage of peoples' lives when I saw someone waving from an upstairs window in that last house standing. There must have been forty or fifty people standing out on the sidewalk and nobody was doing anything. Nobody was even on their cell phone. What the hell?!
I jumped my car over the curb and pulled up into the yard. One look back over my shoulder at the gobsmacked people on the sidewalk told me more than I wanted to know. The storm had blown the front door off so I just walked in and found the staircase to the second floor laying in pieces...no way up, and no way down.
But, there was a 2x8 stringer with some of the stairs still attached. I kicked the remaining steps off the long board, laid it up against the second floor landing so I had an eight-inch wide walk board and went up it to the second level where I found an older man, his wife and one child I guessed would have been about eight years old and maybe a grandchild. The parents were freaking, but the kid was as cool as ice.
I told him to get his grandmother and follow me. I grabbed his grandpa and led everybody back down the board to the first floor. We no sooner got down to the first level when the whole front of the house collapsed, closing the front exit I'd come through.
I pushed everybody to the back of the house, only to find the back door jammed. After cleaning the glass out of a broken window, I put the kid out first and passed the woman out to him. I put man out next, and that's the last thing that I remember about that day...and apparently most of the next month.
When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that the walls were a pleasant light green. The second thing that couldn't be ignored was those damn beeping sounds assaulting my ears. A few seconds later, the room was full of people in white uniforms, poking and prodding and checking nearly every part of my body. I don't mind saying, I was damned uncomfortable.
I could see tubes and wires stuck everywhere on me and in me, running to and from pumps and those darn beeping monitors. I tried to move. Oooh, that smarted. Whatever hit me must have been a whole lot bigger than I was. I decided I was just fine where I was at.
Somebody was trying to talk to me but they finally just faded away. It was much more peaceful again. I needed that. I knew I was hurting; I just didn't know how badly, and snoozing was a good way of not worrying about it for the time being.
The next thing I recall was waking up with a god-awful hunger. My stomach was telling me that my throat must have been cut. I still didn't feel much like moving but at least I didn't feel like sleeping anymore just then. So I waited. About an hour later, a nurse came in and I tried to ask about getting some food but all that came out of me was a croak.
The nurse looked over and saw my eyes were open. The next thing I knew, she was out the door like she'd been shot out of a cannon. Less than thirty seconds later, some guy in a white coat was inspecting me as if I was a new-born or something, and she was giving me water from some kind of 'sippy cup'.
I managed to ask the guy in the white coat for something to eat and he told the nurse to arrange for me to get some broth. I didn't ask for broth; I asked for food. Well, she brought me the wannabe soup and I shoved it to the floor and asked again for some food. She disappeared for awhile and then some guy came in carrying a tray full of what I wanted.
There was a monster cheeseburger, fried potatoes, mac-and-cheese, a couple of slices of pizza, and a half-dozen other things that will warm any man's heart -- alright, all but the jello. Now I was going to get better and get the heck out of here.
I was told it would be another three weeks or so before they would cut me loose. In the meantime, there seemed to be a crowd of people with press badges hanging around outside my door. The nurse would let in one or two each day if I felt up to it. I knew that had to be a problem for her, so I picked a couple of pretty decent guys and a girl out of the mob to talk to, one each from the major newspaper, radio, and TV station; and told the nurse to get rid of the rest of them.
At first, all the questions were about the situation in the house, so I told them everything I remembered. They filled me in on what had happened afterward. What they told me was that the whole danged house collapsed on top of me as I was bailing out of that window. Apparently, everyone there had seen me getting squashed like a bug under a boot heel.
According to the witnesses they'd interviewed, the people who'd been standing around like zombies jumped into the game when the house fell on me. It seems that the entire population of the neighborhood had lifted the whole roof off of me, enough that somebody could drag me out from under it.
They said that two of the people started CPR on me and kept it up until the EMTs got there and told them I was just too busted up to live. The two insisted on continuing as I was transported to the hospital where the ER doc jumped-started my heart again. I'd been officially dead for nearly twenty minutes.
After hearing that, I suddenly felt pretty dang good for a dead guy. I asked if they knew how to contact those two people who had refused to let me die. I was told they would try.
The next day, my media contacts showed back up and escorted a bearded hippie-type guy and a slender young woman into my room and introduced them as my benefactors.
If I was to say that I wasn't choked up and that tears of gratitude weren't streaming down my face, I'd be the world's biggest liar. If it hadn't been for their refusal to give up on me, I would be breathing dirt right now. All I could do was to hold out my hands, wires and tubes and all, inviting them to my side. The girl was the first to speak. She got out about half of a word before she broke down sobbing.
The man next to her picked it up. "Sir, it is a great pleasure to be here shaking your hand. There are a lot of heroes in this world today, but even they agree that you stand tallest. I've read all about what happened at the house, but until yesterday I didn't know about the car."
The car? Oh, the car. "The woman and the kids, are they okay?" I asked him.
"Oh, yes sir. In fact, they are outside the door hoping you'd allow them to come in."
"Allow them? Hell, I DEMAND it!"
