It's been raining for two days straight. No matter what I do I can't see how to stop what I started. Honestly, it's hard to see anything through the wall of water beyond my window. The house across the street was little more than a looming blur and the st…

There are experiences and ideas that we have as children that are vivid and real. Some stick with us for a while before we shed them like dead skin cells. Others live within us dormant; lurking. In my neighborhood, every kid's parents warned us not to go …

Casey stood there in all white, like a neon blade gleaming against the darkness of the oncoming storm. Her hair and skirt whipped about her in the great gusts of winds that battered the city with invisible fists, but she didn't move.

The thick mass of cl…

Rain fell hard, threatening to drown the city but never quite committing to finishing the job. Tonight there was no wind and people felt safe using their umbrellas. All of them moving slow under black domes gave the streets the air of a funeral procession…

Story is marked as mature

Daryl scrubbed at his skin wishing it were lighter. White would be good but no amount of bleach would make it look natural. Lighter skin could him safe passage in and out of Louisiana as long as no one looked too closely, which they would. Paranoia fueled…

“Come on, man. Just move. I'm not leaving the cat out here in the storm.” Lenn said. “There's no food, it's wet, and it has nowhere else to go.”

Ruger hunched down. “I told you, I'm not letting you bring your damned cat inside.”

Lenn didn't move any clo…

“My names Lennart Larsson. I'm looking for the occupant of 163 C.”

“Goddamnit, Lenny.” A disgusted voice said.

Lenn's gut twisted. The voice belonged to Liv's brother, Ruger. What was he doing here? He didn't even live in Japan. Still, he rallied gamely…

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…

When the storm abated, we emerged to tie things down and try to get a fire going to dry some clothes. I carried chunks of wax in paper egg cartons for fire starter and we found plenty of downed sassafras, which burns when wet. Mom and her covers were stil…

The journey was tough on the elders. His mom had the worst time. She needed to stop and rest often. By the time we reached the base of the mountain the summer evenings had begun to cool. It would turn to fall soon.

We had made camp and were settling in. …