By Denise Longrie
Earl and I sat on the porch swing, listening to the hiss of rain against the leaves of the trees along the street. The great oak in the front yard swayed, dancing in the wind. I shivered, pulled my hood over my head, and took another sip of spiked hot chocolate, clutching the mug in oversized mittens.
In the distance, thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed. I’d noted the smell of a coming electrical storm arising from the earth all day.
“Wanna go in?” Earl asked. He grinned as if to say, “Chicken!” The wind blew his dark curls across his face. He had to feel that.
“Nah. Do you?” My hands trembled but I’d be damned if I were going to let him see that.
Cars drove by, raising walls of water that washed over the sidewalks.
A bolt of lightning lit up the sky.
“Christamighty,” said Earl.
Thunder crashed, rattling the windows behind us. “Holy shit,” I said.
“We can go in.”
What? And listen to you call me a coward forever? “Not yet.”
A Ford F-150 shot down the street, drenching Mrs. Baker while she walked her German shepherd. The poor dog howled and leaped straight into the air. Mrs. Baker swore.
“Earl.” I pointed to the hair standing up on my arm.
“Shit,” he said.
I stood and called to Mrs. Baker, “Come get out of the rain.”
She didn’t wait for a second invitation but ran up the steps and onto the porch, the dog at her heels.
As soon as Earl shut the door behind us, the dog shook himself, spraying water over the walls—and us.
“Pompey, stop that,” Mrs Baker said.
I opened my mouth with an offer to get towels, but the loudest crack in the world rang out. The dog tore off, yelping down the hallway and dragging his leash. Mrs. Baker called after him. I looked out the front window. Half the oak tree that had once stood in our yard now lay in the street. The other half stood smoking in the rain.
* * *
Denise Longrie’s work has appeared in Danse Macabre, Liquid Imagination, and Wisconsin Review. She has self-published a nonfiction guide to pre-1900 speculative fiction. Currently, she is working by the flickering light of a Jacob’s ladder on a sequel treating twentieth-century pulp science fiction. In a previous life, she worked as a pharmacy technician.