At the fireside

The ClubHouse: The Game II - Mysterious Puzzler: Discussions/Challenges: At the fireside

Ocean_Islands

Friday, February 02, 2001 - 10:20 pm Click here to edit this post

Pull up a chair, or a pillow; and lay by the fire.

I'm going to tell you a story.

This story will be told in four parts, beginning this evening.

Here is the schedule for the other parts of the story:

Part II: Saturday am
Part III: Saturday pm
Part IV: Sunday

The Storm
by Ocean Islands
copyright O. Islands 2001


John burst through the door of the house and slammed it behind him. He felt disgusted, tired and disgusted with everything.

Things had been going wrong for a good while now. He had lost his job six months before; his wife, no longer satisfied with him nor their life in the beautiful, though small, house he had built for them on the vast grasslands, had left him. That was four weeks ago, and she had taken their 3-year-old daughter with her.

He had only enough money left to buy groceries, which would last for a while, perhaps. He had taken care to take all the cash out of the bank two days before; that way, in case any checks were to be presented, he would at least have money for food. And any day now he knew a foreclosure notice would be coming in the mail.

But on top of all these things, within himself he felt a malaise deeper than he had ever felt before.

It gnawed at him and as the days had progressed since Julie had left, it had become wider and wider until now, this instant, as he had come bursting through the door to try to shut out the world, it opened beneath him as a profound and yawning chasm that threatened to engulf him and everything he had ever thought or believed. It didn't seem he had anyone to turn to.

They had left all his friends behind when they moved from Ohio to Nebraska, and even though he knew he could call them, it seemed too desperate and grasping to do so.

His parents and brothers and sisters were far away and unreachable, and he was sure they wouldn't understand.

Now the house shut the world out, but the place itself was now foreign to him, as if he were visiting. The life that he had before was nowhere to be seen.
. . . . .

Azriel

Friday, February 02, 2001 - 10:23 pm Click here to edit this post

okay I'm hooked and waiting for part 2. It looks like the start of a great story, Ocean. :)

Ocean_Islands

Saturday, February 03, 2001 - 09:47 am Click here to edit this post

The Storm, Part 2

. . . . .

John threw down the newspaper he carried and slumped into one of the arm chairs that sat before the empty fireplace.

Maybe he could light a fire and fix himself something to eat; but even that, he was sure, would not be enough to break him out of what appeared to be a deep depression, and he didn't have the energy to make himself something, and he wasn't hungry.

He sat in the half-light of the room for a moment without moving when he heard rain begin to hit the roof.

It made light patting sounds, something he had always enjoyed until now, for when it had come before the sound always made him feel secure and safe, lying in bed with Julie, the warmth of her body comforting him and making him feel alive and loved.

But there was no one now.

Julie had promised to write him soon; it seemed that she only needed some time off, or at least she had indicated such, and perhaps she might come back to him after a time alone -- perhaps she needed only a separation, or time to get her head together and try to find out what had gone wrong between them.

But she had not written yet, and so he didn't know what to think.

He stood up and went to the window. Across the flat grasslands which stretched far away, the light came down in bright patches, filtering through the cloud cover marked with large, menacingly grey areas.

The pattering on the roof continued and became a bit more insistent.

He didn't know what he was going to do when the foreclosure notice came. They wouldn't come to the door and throw him out on his ear, at least not right at once. But the effect was the same. He didn't know where he was going to live.

He tried to calm himself down. Breathe in deeply and slowly, he said to himself.

He went outside to try to get some air.

The wind was indeed picking up and blew dry in his face; for the moment the rain had stopped and he surveyed his yard. There were two trees there, a small maple tree and a large oak tree.

The maple tree stood supported by three ropes that yoked it to the ground.

The wind swayed the small thing back and forth and demonstrated the purpose of the ropes that had been suggested by the gardener from the nursery in town.

"The wind on the prairie is liable to break a young sapling," the man had said. After the gardener had been hired to rope the tree, everyone had felt secure about its future.

On the other side of the front yard was a large old cottonwood, a drought resistant tree with a large trunk six or seven feet around.

Every year during the early summer the tree would blossom and cotton would come drifting down upon the house like snow and it would land on the grass in small drifted clumps.

In the slightest breeze the cottonwood would emit the slightest smattering of applause, as if an audience were far off but approved of the scene they surveyed.

And then in the autumn, the leaves dropped early, and oftentimes all in one day. It wouldn't mater what the temperature was, but when the cottonwood began to drop its leaves, it was autumn.

Then the leaves would blow around the yard for months, crumpled and brown, making scraping sounds as they blew against the front door and sidewalk.

But now in August, the cotton had long since been matted into the ground by many rainstorms and the leaves were not ready to fall. The air was hot and muggy.

As John stood in the yard he wondered why the humidity was not blown away by the wind. He looked up again to the sky and the clouds looked darker than ever.

Usually as the sun was setting the weather would calm itself as if to rest for the coming day, but this evening it was getting ready for something horrible -- and like the feeling of malaise that was growing inside of him, the end result, he was sure, was going to be horrible.

With this thought the wind suddenly gust hard and the open door behind him slammed shut.

In the distance he saw clouds even heavier and darker than before and colored a sickly green. The wind snapped his shirt around his chest and caught it, billowing it out of his trousers and the tails flapped behind him like a kite.

He stepped back towards the house with a feeling of doom. He had lived long enough on the prairie to know what a green sky meant.

A tornado must be coming.
. . . . .

Azriel

Saturday, February 03, 2001 - 12:29 pm Click here to edit this post

You are so descriptive in your writing, OI. I can picture everything so clearly.

Juju2bigdog

Saturday, February 03, 2001 - 02:51 pm Click here to edit this post

Good story, Ocean. I hope this is leading to where John comes to his senses, realizes the signs of clinical depression, makes that easy call to the folks who get him some professional help so that he can get a job, or even two jobs if that is what it takes, and conquers the coke habit, which is why Julie left him in the first place, shrieking into the wind that all the money is going up John's nose as she slammed the door.

Azriel

Saturday, February 03, 2001 - 02:55 pm Click here to edit this post

Shhhhhhhh Juju, I'm listening to the story!

Ocean_Islands

Saturday, February 03, 2001 - 04:09 pm Click here to edit this post

The Storm, part 3

. . . . .
He had suspected tornadoes many times but one had never come; he had always warned Julie of them -- he had grown up on the prairie and had seen the damage they could do.

When he was fifteen a tornado had ravaged the next town over, killing twenty people who, resting peacefully in their homes, had been swept up into the windstorm and dashed across a cornfield.

A nearby church and convent had been in the direct path of the tornado and one of the sisters had been killed and the church buildings flattened. The cathedral itself, built of reinforced concrete, resisted the wind but was left merely an empty shell, stripped of its icons, candles, incense, and prayer benches.

As a child, he had often warned people of danger. When the windstorms came, even when they were not dangerous, he would warn his parents and brothers and sisters, urging them to go downstairs to the basement.

On one memorable occasion, during a particularly frightening thunderstorm, he had started screaming at his parents who at the time were holding a cocktail party in candlelight, since the electricity had gone off. "A tornado is coming, everyone must run to the basement," he said to them.

He felt he had seen the tornado coming on the horizon as he watched from the front door; he had been checking every five minutes and he saw above the tree line an enormous gray mass rising above the earth like a hideous beast about to pounce on the family.

When the guests and his parents looked at him as if he were crazy, he had run into the basement himself. Then the gray beast lashed its torrent of rain and wind on the house, and after it had passed he climbed up the stairs again, where the party was going on as if nothing had happened, candlelight twinkling, glasses and forks clinking against plates, and the gentle patter of conversation continuing uninterrupted.

Later he learned that the next door neighbor, a kind man, had been huddled in the corner of his basement with his son, sobbing uncontrollably as the storm split into three pieces the hundred year old cherry tree on their front lawn.

Now as he heard the wind begin to scream against the house, he was sure a tornado was approaching. There was one shingle on the roof that buzzed when a cross wind hit it and now it began buzzing without stopping. He had heard it before and it had always filled him with dread.

But this time he was an adult, and he was ready.
. . . . .

Azriel

Saturday, February 03, 2001 - 04:17 pm Click here to edit this post

OoooOooo get in the storm cellar quick, John!

Azriel

Sunday, February 04, 2001 - 08:55 am Click here to edit this post

Uh oh! OI, come back! You didn't post the last part of the story. ~whine~ What happened to John?

Guruchaz

Sunday, February 04, 2001 - 09:13 am Click here to edit this post

Oh no. That's why I didn't start reading it until it was all complete.

Did you do this on purpose, OI? lol!

Azriel

Sunday, February 04, 2001 - 11:01 pm Click here to edit this post

~sigh~ You are a big poothead, OI.

Azriel

Tuesday, February 06, 2001 - 09:30 am Click here to edit this post

I hate to see anything unfinished, so I am taking a break from writing my revolutionary book about the sex industry to finish this short story.

But this time he was an adult, and he was ready.
. . . . .
John grabbed a flashlight and ran to the basement. He bolted the secure basement door behind him and decended the creaking steps into the darkness. At the bottom of the steps, he paused and shone his flashlight around the basement. The light danced across shelves filled with emergency supplies, food and water. He was never ready for any other storm in his life, but for this one he was well prepared.

John sat down on a cot against the wall and listened to the ominous sounds outside his refuge. He could hear a distant rumbling that slowly grew louder. He reached over and turned on his battery operated radio, hoping to drown out the approaching sounds. He turned the dial trying to find a station that would come in clearly. He paused as a faint melody pierced his heart.

It was Julie's song. The song that was playing that first night he saw her up on that stage, sensually gyrating and grinding to the slow sexual beat. John backhanded the radio knocking it across the room where it crashed into the wall. He knew that was where Julie was now. She could never adjust to their life together. The excitement and monetary gain of the old life was always on her mind. He could not overcome it no matter how hard he tried. He was a boring, useless excuse for a man.

He should have been more understanding and realized that there was more to Julie than just the label 'exotic dancer' She was a beautiful, intelligent, insightful woman. He should have tried to talk to her about deep issues that concerned her like world peace and the environment. He never even tried to read her favorite book,'The Webster's Dictionary'. It was all his fault that the marriage failed. He never got past her image as a stripper and never saw her for the deep, caring human being she was.

There was a bazaar silence in the house and John realized that the storm had passed and left him unscathed. He emerged from the basement and headed to his car. He went straight to Julie and begged her for her forgiveness and convinced her that no matter what she chose as a profession he would always be behind her because he loved her for her inner beauty. She gave him another chance because she was a loving, forgiving person.

The End