Story is marked as mature

Lenn struggled against currents of howling wind and driving rain so strong they felt like the spirits of speeding buses. Keeping the cat protected was almost too much for him. He tucked the arm cradling the cat further back like an American football playe…

“Goddamned cat, you're like a living jump scare.” Lenn muttered.

The cat meowed plaintively, tail up in the air. Matted fur clung flatly to its body outlining a starved frame.

“Yeah, I don't like this weather much either.”

Cautiously, the cat padded fo…

He thumbed the keys upward so that they sprouted beyond his knuckles like metal spikes. Should he retread his steps back into the driving rain and try a different cross street or move through the alley that might house something in it? Straining his sense…

The wind gusted this way and that, sweeping the rain away before slamming it back at Lenn in huge wet slaps. His poncho scudded away from his numb fingers and nearly strangled him until he forced it back under control.

He walked uphill toward the commerc…

His shoes and pants were soaked. Cold, they stuck to clung to him like a heavy second skin. As he turned the corner, he stepped down into water that swallowed his shoe up past his ankle before he touched the sidewalk. Somehow it felt colder than his feel …

Someone screamed. Lenn paused for a moment. It was difficult to tell with the whine of the siren and the constant roar of the rain but he thought that whoever had screamed was only a block or two away. The urge to go see what was going on, and to help if …

Threading through the streets, past storefronts that still had power, Lenn kept one hand on his wallet and used the other to hold his poncho's hood closed. The rain had been hammering the city for five unrelenting days and it wasn't scheduled to let up fo…