By M.R. Lehman Wiens

I watch and the wind grabs the breath from her mouth and tosses it into the surf. 

The children are close to the water, digging, delving deep into the sand. Their backs are turning red, but I can’t bring myself to make them pause for another coat of sunscreen. I remember being sunburned at the beach, remember it being a part of summer. They’ll be fine, I think to myself. They’re making memories. 

Rachel sighs again, and I know that she disagrees with me, know that she’s thinking of elevated cancer risks and the kids whining through the evening in straitjackets of hot, irritated skin. I don’t have to look at her, but I know.

I think of the look she’ll give me as I’m rubbing aloe on their backs, and I frown.

“That good, huh?”

Rachel is nodding towards my book. 

“It’s nothing. Just a random thought.”

The book is open, but I haven’t been reading. The sun is too bright, and the wind and the noise of seagulls and waves are washing the words from my mind before they can take root. 

“What?” Rachel pushes.

“It would take too long to explain. It’s not worth it.”

“Well, try,” she says, her tone shifting, drawing up something sour from our shared reservoir of spite. I glance over at her; she is lying on her towel, unmoving, still as a corpse. Sunglasses cover her eyes as she basks in the sun. Staring at her, I imagine her oiled skin darkening to bright copper, almost bright orange, before it dulls. A patina starts at her chest and spreads like wine across a table cloth. The verdigre grows, covers her body. She will remain on this beach, rusting away, alone, forever.

I try to make something up, a memory of a dream I had or didn’t have last night, one where I grew wings but couldn’t fly and felt like a failure.

“Really, Jon?”

I want to take the bait. I want to snap at her that it’s just a dream, and she asked, so why does she care? I want to tell her to have some imagination, to remember that I’m not one of her children. I want to lay next to her beach towel and ask her why we can’t talk anymore. 

But I don’t. 

I set my book down and close my eyes. She gets up, her footsteps a thick staccato in the sand, and the sounds of our children’s protests fill the air as she approaches them with the sunblock. I lay still with my book, alone, turning copper and bronze in the sun. 

                                                                  *    *    *

M.R. Lehman Wiens is a Pushcart-nominated writer and stay-at-home dad living in Kansas. His work has previously appeared, or is upcoming, in Consequence, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Metaworker, The First Line, and others. He can be found on Threads as @lehmanwienswrites.

 

Creative Non-fiction By Marla Lepore

Summer camp, Mississippi. Muggy torpor. Once again, my parents have checked the permission box on my application in case I want to take horseback riding. I do not want to take horseback riding. Once again, I am at the stables, weighted down in twentieth-century blue jeans, the kind without any spandex or stretch, plopped atop a horse, a horse that smells like manure and earth and horse. This is the kind of heat that squashes your will to live, but not the buzzing things that zizz around my ears and feast on my arms and ankles. We scratch and claw at those bites until they bleed, until the ooze-and-crust forecasts a ticket to the infirmary and a shot of icebox air. A cold so yearned-for you can almost forget the aroma of antiseptics and calamine, hospital. 

There is no such reprieve out here. The sun pounds from above, the humidity pulses up from below, and my horse, Rousseau, stands stolid, gathering flies. I am matched with Rosseau because he is an introvert, a dawdler who tends to clop along behind the pack. But on this stifling afternoon, some instinct ignites and we are off, Rousseau yanking me down the trail in a blur of trees. Turbulence throttles my chest as I clench the reins, a whoosh of hot wind and the manic drumbeat of hooves playing backup to the sound of my screaming. 

I didn’t sign up for this.

The path beneath us is divoted and knotted, but Rousseau is undeterred. A rush of lush greens and shimmering wood blows past me and over me, everywhere, an abstract acrylic painting better than anything I’ve ever made in arts and crafts. With each footfall and grounding, the dirt kicks up around us in applause, the trees wave us on, and I can hear a chorus of spirits amid the thickets and gusts, they’re unleashing me. This seems to go on and on forever and be over in an instant when Rousseau and I catch the pinpoints of other riders in the clearing ahead, clumped and plodding under the blazing heat. 

I am still humming, still vibrating, late that afternoon as I find my place in line among my cabin mates at the canteen, where counselors are peddling Freeze Pops in the shade of the breezeway. A jolt of thunder crackles on the horizon. Around here, an idea of rain is always hovering around. Today, the fat drops will finally break through. A cloud drags its curtain across the sun.

*  *  *

Marla Lepore is a writer based in Nashville, TN. Her essays have appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, Points in Case, Sky Island Review, MIDLVLMAG, and elsewhere. She writes the Muck Rack Daily newsletter, a digest of journalism and media news, and has also contributed to WNYC’s On the Media newsletter. She received a BA in English-Language, Writing, and Rhetoric from Tulane University and completed the Pocket MFA in creative nonfiction. She has also participated in the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and Colgate Writers’ Conference.

By Annabel Moir Smith

I say she left me – really I should say that we left each other, but what does it matter, it was a hundred years ago. And whose sympathy is there left for me to earn? Certainly not yours.

It was really that I thought she was the best person I had ever known. And she was, for a time. She was brilliant and witty and lit by something that I wanted for myself. When we became bitter and vindictive towards each other I realized that I would never come to learn about the fiery tongues of cruelty and inscrutable need that burned inside her, not nearly as well as I had been forced to learn my own. It couldn’t have lasted much longer after that – the memory is unclear now, I apologize – but in my mind it feels like an eternity and I have to wonder why we kept it going for so long. I have always been so ashamed of my loneliness. In this instance I thought it would kill me. 

I lived in a small house by the lake. Do you know it? It dried up some time ago. It must have happened gradually, but I do not remember clearly the drying-up, only that one day I stepped outside my house to find that there was a dusty crater where it had once been so alive. 

Yes, that’s right, it would not have been a lake in your lifetime. Of course that is true, but it frightens me. I remember it so vividly. For the first several decades that I lived there it felt like a world of its own, as much of a world as I needed. The surface of the lake was the only mirror that I had, and I used to go out often and examine my appearance in the water. For years I kept expecting to grow old. I welcomed aging. In fact, I was impatient to outgrow my youth and settle into the evenness of old age, but I was never blessed with that. I am saddled with an abundance of things that I wish I understood. 

In the summers people used to come down to the lake and go swimming or canoeing, or sit on the banks and watch the frogs and fish among the reeds. Kids, mostly, but I would see couples sometimes, or older people that seemed as solitary as I was. Whenever anyone would go to the lake I would shut myself in my house and lock the door, but I would open all the windows and listen to their voices, their laughter, their quiet conversations. It made me happy. 

I do regret, at times, never going out to greet them. For many years I was so terrified that I would see her there, even though I desired it so strongly. It pained me to think that she was out living her life while I had quietly removed myself from mine. I had become so intrinsically tied to my solitude. I was embarrassed by how much it saddened me, frightened of how much I enjoyed it. 

I became petrified by the idea of seeing anyone. I felt as if making eye contact with another person would send me crumbling into dust. Even now, I am finding it difficult to meet your gaze. I have never been skilled at connecting with other people, even before I moved into the house by the lake a hundred years ago. I know that we have only just met but I have to admit I am afraid of losing you. I worry that the interest you express in what I have to say is only politeness and I will drive you away with some incommunicable quality of my personality. 

Something strange and wonderful happened this morning. I woke up and I felt old. My joints had begun to ache, and I felt a fatigue, a physical fatigue so distinct from the fog that I have felt myself in for such a long time. It was a joyful feeling. I felt a sense of readiness, that the time had finally come to face the world again. I know that life is meant to be a series of highs and lows, and there is no real satisfaction to be found, but it is my own fault that the high moments have been so fleeting and the lows so prolonged. You can only sustain yourself on the minutiae of those happinesses for so long. 

I left the lakeside for the first time in a hundred years today. I walked among the abandoned buildings, to the old park all filled in with concrete, the eerily quiet harbor. I was sad to see the state of my old town, but not terribly surprised. Even in my lonely life I have witnessed the slow destruction of things. The only real shock was the cemetery. I went to see if I could find her grave, and the entire plot had been razed down, was now a parking lot with scarcely any cars. That was what I was doing when you found me. I wanted to know, at least, that she was resting somewhere, since her death has been a vague sort of certainty for quite some time. I hope that it was peaceful and her life was fulfilling. I hope that she has been tortured with regret over losing me all this time. I wonder if she thought of me as she was dying, if it made her miserable, or sustained her for just a little bit longer. 

                                                        *   *   *

Annabel Moir Smith is a student and writer from Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Her fiction has appeared in Sky Island Journal, Bending Genres, Bright Flash Literary Review, Literally Stories, Eunoia Review, and others. She can be found on Instagram and Twitter at @annabelm_smith. She currently studies English at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

By Foster Trecost

An empty café, that’s what he hoped to find, but he’d settle for mostly empty if it was quiet because that’s what he really wanted, a quiet café, and it seemed he’d found one, at least that’s how it looked from the street, but a steady hum coming from a fluorescent light crashed his ears like car horns and before the door could close, he backed out to look for another.

His search nearly ended when he came to a second offering but decided against going in. He just knew, you know, and shifted a few blocks over only to pass again on something equally unsuitable. It had a troublesome vibe, nothing he could name, but something. Unsure where to go, he circled back to the first, asked for a coffee, and carried it to a tiny table. 

The hum continued hum and kept his thoughts cornered in the present, a line he didn’t mind since recent regrets were fewer than those from his youth. Then something changed, not the hum but the way it settled over him, clearing a path to memories he’d forgotten or maybe just stopped thinking about, which is kind of the same thing but not really. He landed in the moment he pinched wings off insects to watch them scurry in circles, unsure where to go. He couldn’t comprehend why the hum would summon such a cruel memory, unaware it wasn’t random, but hints of similarity began to seep in. He left the café, left an untouched cup sitting on the tiny table, and reemerged in the early morning lack of light. A brief pause let the likeness fully form and when it did, he again scurred in circles, unsure where to go. And wondered who pinched off his wings but even more than that, he wondered why anyone would do such a thing.  

                                                                    *   *   *

Foster Trecost writes stories that are mostly made up. They tend to follow his attention span: sometimes short, sometimes very short. Recent work appears in Club Plum, Flash Boulevard, and Roi Fainéant. He lives near New Orleans with his wife and dog.

A Memoir by Sheila Wilensky

Deep in December the teacher and her husband ventured to Twillingate, Newfoundland. A remote island where tall Rocky cliffs jutted this way and that, high above the frigid North Atlantic. Where one thousand humans lived out quiet lives. Where “culture” played out at the Pig & Whistle bar, hidden in the woods, far from family life and the one island elementary school.

The teacher and her husband had headed North, taking three days to get from their Maine island home to their winter vacation venue. 

“I love all islands,” she announced to no one in particular. 

As destiny would have it, Newfoundland — which joined Canada in 1949 and the twentieth century much later — perched on the bottom of her favorite island list.

“It looks like we’re landing on the moon,” the teacher grumbled as they disembarked from the ferry following their wild night crossing the Cabot Strait from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. 

Knocked off the couch repeatedly by the rocking and rolling ship, she hit the floor multiple times, which interrupted her dreams. She was not happy. 

Could this ship possibly sink? Might she freeze to death on this godforsaken island?

“This place is all rock,” she told her husband as they watched snow gusts bursting across their truck’s windshield. “This isn’t my kind of place.”

Her husband loved the people, with their traditional fishing life. They would stay with old friends he hadn’t seen in years.

It was no surprise that the Pig & Whistle existed mostly for the pleasure of men downing a pint or two. Or three. If they needed to pee the surrounding woods served as their bathroom.

As soon as they arrived at his friends’ home, the wife showed off their newly installed modern bathroom.

“What a pretty vase of (fake) lilacs!” sitting on the toilet top, the teacher exclaimed 

What could she say, how strange it was that the new plumbing wasn’t hooked up yet?

She really had to pee. 

The three others, nestled by the warmth of the woodstove chatting and laughing, may not have heard the teacher stand and say, “I’m going to the outhouse.”

The house door slammed shut behind her. The wind outside yelped in her ears like a pack of wolves. 

With her brown-spotted rabbit fur hat atop her head, she gingerly opened the outhouse door, which also slammed shut behind her. 

One outhouse hole awaited her. As quickly as possible the teacher unzipped her heavy purple down parka, dropping it on the old wooden outhouse floor. The teacher rushed to unfasten her snow pants. Pulled down her long silk underwear Christmas gift her husband gave her from L.L. Bean. 

Getting ready for the trip of a lifetime?

Finally, being able to relieve herself felt glorious. Layer by layer, she hiked her clothing back up again. Turning to leave she tried the outhouse door. The rusty lock wouldn’t budge. 

Oh no! This wasn’t supposed to happen! Hell, we’re on vacation.

The teacher was in trouble. Stress tingled at the top of her head. Fear hit her like a hammer.

Recalling that the heater inside the house sounded like a car engine, she imagined her husband and his friends sharing funny fishing stories. Downing one more beer. 

How long would it take for her to turn into an ice sculpture? Why had she agreed to come to this horrendous place? Would anyone miss her?

She had never been so cold. Her rabbit hat and the wool scarf wrapped around her neck wouldn’t save her. Icy pellets were whipping through a hole in the ceiling. 

 I’m a goner, she figured. Convinced that no one would hear her, she yelled louder and louder, Help, help!

Boom. Boom. Boom. The teacher heard her heart pounding. Would this be her end?

This wasn’t a silly Newfoundland joke about who caught the bigger fish. No. I’m sure no one will walk by to hear me in the middle of nowhere.

The doomed teacher foresaw the Bar Harbor Times headline back home. “Maine teacher freezes to death in Newfoundland outhouse.” And she couldn’t help but laugh.

At least she no longer had to pee. 

*   *   *

Sheila Wilensky weaves a lifetime of book-loving experience as the former owner of OZ Children’s Bookstore in Southwest Harbor, Maine (1982-1997), and as a writer/editor/journalist and high school/college social science teacher. Escaping winter in Tucson from 2002 to 2021, Sheila served as associate editor of the Arizona Jewish Post for a decade, where she won a First Place for Excellence in Feature Writing Simon Rockower Award from the American Jewish Press Association. She currently lives in Minneapolis near her magnificent two grandchildren. Sheila is a freelance writer/editor who occasionally blogs at Tucsonwritereditor.com.

By Jeff Kennedy

The only sound in the house is gentle snoring, drifting from the back bedroom where Shirley dozes fitfully in the heat. Martin moves silently through each room, tending to her plants.

He moves the spider plant to the other side of his desk. Shirley knows the spider plant shouldn’t be in direct sunlight, but she loves having it in the window. Martin snaps dead flowers and leaves from the African violet and waters the Christmas cactus. He doesn’t touch the philodendron. Martin doesn’t care for the philodendron.

Shirley rolls over and whispers, “Martin… the philodendron. Please don’t forget the philodendron.”

She hears a sigh.

A green plastic watering can rises from the side table, glides across the room, and stops over the philodendron, tipping to splash water into the pot, and then returns to its usual place.

A breeze stirs Shirley’s hair as she drifts back to sleep.

*   *   *

Jeff Kennedy is a lifelong author and playwright. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

By Brad Barkley

She asks for a cigarette during a fire alarm. You want to be clever by noting the irony, but your brain is too panicked and occupied with its own alarms—her face, her hair, the way she looks at you. She tucks her hands inside her coat sleeves. She seems smart, but shy about it. You don’t know her. You give her one, light it, say clumsy things. Trucks roll up, lights flashing. People meander while you sit on the concrete steps, their voices a mixture of sound floating up into the autumn air. Safe now, a firefighter finally announces, only a drill. All dressed up for nothing, she says. You smile. You wish you’d thought of it. 

Later, you’ll think about this moment, just a diversion, a pause in the work day, a fire in the break room that never started but could have. The microwave maybe, a spoon left in a cup of noodles, or a glint of foil that overheats and then sparks, ignites, and soon a whole building is burned away, and the next one too, an entire block left smoldering in ruins. But that never happened. The only spark falls from her cigarette dropped on the sidewalk.  Just a drill this time. A shrug, more clumsy words. You look at each other. She thanks you for the cigarette, tells you she needs to quit.

A singularity started the universe, but not every moment expands. Not every spark ignites. This one will, but in ways you can’t know as you sit on those concrete steps, as you smoke and talk and shuffle back inside the building. You watch her until the elevator doors close. Time grows—over cigarettes and quitting, over years, over letters and silence. Over coffee and games of Boggle. Over fights and advice. Over affairs of the heart and a steak dinner, just one. You marry the wrong person, and then she does too. She’s somewhere in Florida, emailing photos. Your hair is graying some, as is hers. You imagine a kiss that never happened but might have. Or should have, you will tell yourself, more clumsy words, more silent alarms. 

Universes expand as they will, and there is no rewind button. All this thought of universes makes you laugh at yourself. This is not cosmology. Shiny things, tiny sparks. The loop of time. It’s just a girl, just moments, just a cigarette. 

Just concrete steps and a fire drill.

Just a lifetime, just two hearts, just distance.

Just love. 

                                                                *    *    *

Brad Barkley is the author of the novels Money, Love and Alison’s Automotive Repair Manual, two collections of short stories, and three YA novels with Penguin. His fiction has appeared in Southern Review, the Oxford American, Glimmer Train, and 30+ others. He’s won numerous awards, including a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His new novel, The Reel Life of Zara Kegg is forthcoming from Regal House. 

 

By Joseph Kenyon 

Maybe you haven’t felt enough pain? 

Maybe. But this hike is Aberdeen’s idea. She chose the hill and the trail. Not a mapped-out, sneakers-without-socks path where the roots have been dug up or tamped down. This path starts at a narrow wedge of an entrance and immediately slants between two thorny shrubs that prevent me from seeing where it goes. When I pull the car to the side of the road and ask why here? she doesn’t even bother to give me a look. She just swings her disdain at me with her pack as she exits the car. But she doesn’t close the door until after she makes her withering statement, the one she promptly blunts with a question mark. 

Maybe you haven’t felt enough pain? 

She is a mountain, this niece of mine. She’s solid and bountiful and giving and unpredictable. When she rages, she uproots routines and buries people. She changes landscapes. She’s been an explosive force ever since the nurse wiped what was left of the womb from her newborn skin. Now, two years into her teendom, she creates avalanches with more frequency. Her father — my brother — puts it like this: she’s such a soul-filling, delightful pain in the ass. 

Maybe you haven’t felt enough pain. 

That’s the way you say it, Aberdeen (who is crashing her way between the barbed shrubs guarding the trail). A question mark is curvy and gapped. It doesn’t have the fisted closure of a period. It leaves everyone too much room to maneuver, too much room to squirm out from under. Like me. With my feet squarely on the road. Here they go. Coming for you. 

The bush on the right tears my hand on the way in. At first, I don’t think the cut’s too bad, having only a momentary awareness of the skin ripping. I’ve worked with knives and sharp tools all my life without cutting myself any deeper than what a Band-Aid could repair. But when my hand begins to burn and go numb, I look. Blood runs from the gash like Grade-A syrup, pouring around the vein that protrudes from the skin much more prominently than it used to. The burning/numbing activates a voice in my brain, the one I call Mr. Sure-Brains, who tells me this isn’t the kind of pain Aberdeen meant. 

Hand out-thrust, elevated, and wrapped in a bandanna, I walk the trail which could only have been charted by a drunken snake. I keep on because Aberdeen can be rough but she’s not reckless. Destructive but not malicious. A pain in the ass, but she fills my soul. I go quietly because I’m sure she’s listening, and she’s not on the trail. 

I spot her about thirty yards to the left through hardwoods and thick undergrowth. A standard-sized teen girl wouldn’t be seen, but Aberdeen’s Sasquatch body, ungainly even when inert, stands out. I move closer and stop, squatting down so she won’t spot me if she turns. She’s staring at a totem pole, an authentic one by the looks of the thing, facing a carved but kindred face whose eyes speak of being and not being, of confidence and mystery, intensity and indifference. 

Aberdeen tries to curate all that with her pose. She’s not succeeding. Look at her. The emotions flow around that pole like heat waves rising off the summer pavement, revealing Aberdeen to that ancient pole in a way she can’t reveal herself to anyone else, except through inexplicable rising anger and violent tantrums. Here, her emotions say, is where she feels open. Where she feels safe. Where she trusts. 

Where she brought her aunt, Mr. Sure-Brains pipes up. 

In response, my internal chessboard tilts, sending the pieces of what I know about my niece scattering and tumbling. Maybe you haven’t felt enough pain? Seen in the light of Mr. Sure-Brains’ comment, that question mark sounds like a challenge. A subtle one, very non-Aberdeen-like. Given my standard appearance, which is not that of a Sasquatch-shaped girl, and given that I’m the one hiding behind a clump of sassafras saplings, maybe she was simultaneously asking and answering her own question correctly. I fear I’m not up to the task of staunching the gash Aberdeen is revealing to me. After all, in the best of times, Aberdeen deflects adult advice as if she does it for a living. What can I possibly say to her now? 

Maybe it doesn’t matter. 

I unwrap my wounded hand. More blood is dry than oozing, already beginning the process of scabbing over to cover the injury. It’s injury that’s loud. The things that cover over, the coagulative burying, do their work quietly. Permanently. 

What I say better not matter because the act of standing and stepping through the underbrush empties my brain. I shimmy toward Aberdeen until I’m one pace behind and to her right, her shoulder level with my chin. I lean in and whisper the first thing that comes into my head. 

That turns out to be a quote from Agnes Martin. Ever hopeful — and because I, too, have been a pain in the ass of this family for a lot longer than Aberdeen — I hear my voice land hard on the period at the end of the sentence. 

I wait for the pain. Hers or mine or both. 

                                                              *   *   *

Joseph Kenyon is the author of one novel, All the Living and the Dead, as well as short stories and poetry. When not writing, he teaches the craft at the Community College of Philadelphia and spends time observing the way words and light shift moment to moment, in and around us.

By Cynthia Pitman

The boy went missing. Only three years old and lost in the Appalachian Mountains. His mother told the rangers she only looked away for a minute, just a minute, to take a photo of the view from the trail in the right light for her painting. When she looked up, he was gone. She called for him. And called. And became more and more frantic. The search teams came out – rangers, police, hikers, strangers, dogs, helicopters –, and they all scoured the hills. She was instructed to stay at the spot where he disappeared. The sounds overwhelmed her: the shouting of his name by the searchers, the flapping of the helicopters, the barking of the dogs. When night set in, spotlights shone down from the helicopters onto the dark, vast forest below. On the third day they found a single red sneaker, unlaced. This find gave them hope, but nothing came of it. By day five the mother could no longer stand it; she picked up her canvas and began to paint. For days more the helicopters swept over endless miles of peaks and valleys. At night, their spotlights beamed down and disappeared into the dark. They searched the mountains until the steep ground finally drove them back. After eight days the search slowly tapered off. By ten days, they were all gone – all except his mother. She pitched a tent and stayed, returning only for fresh canvases.
 

The boy is a legend now. The young hikers coming up the hill don’t know if the story is true or not, but anyone serious about hiking the trail respects the superstitions of the Appalachian Mountains. When they encounter the boy’s mother, she is intent on her painting. Her hair is gray and pulled back behind her ears as her brush sweeps over the canvas. No one speaks. The hikers  just leave her tokens for good luck – food, water, flashlight batteries, blankets – , hoping these gestures will protect them from being swallowed by the hills themselves. She pays them no mind. Then the hikers make their way up the trail, and the old woman continues, painting meticulous landscapes of the scene before her, including every stick, every branch, every fallen leaf, every piece of bark on every tree, only to discard each finished painting and begin again. What no one knows is that she always hopes the next brushstroke will reveal her boy’s face.

*   *   *

Cynthia Pitman has been published in Vita Brevis anthologies Pain and Renewal, Brought to Sight & Swept Away, Nothing Divine Dies, What is All This Sweet Work?, in journals Amethyst Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Third Wednesday (One Sentence Poem finalist), Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art (Pushcart Prize fiction nominee), Red Fez (Story of the Week) and others, including three books of poetry: The White Room, Blood Orange, and Breathe.

By Leonie Gregory

Along the northeast coast of Australia, cyclones weave their frequent, mysterious paths. Yet, the residents of Palm Paradise, a coastal town that lived up to its charming name, don’t let the rain dampen their spirits. They stick to their routine, stockpiling essentials like beer, tinned food, toilet paper, and pet supplies, while sandbagging their homes and tucking their cars safely away in garages.

This year, the cyclone’s early arrival saw it start as a powerful Category 4, only to weaken to a Category 2 before hitting land further down the coast and then veering southeast. Locals like Kim and Ellie sighed in relief and settled in to relax until the rainy season passes.

Ellie, who had been dealing with a power outage all day, looked out the window as she stirred soup on the gas cooker. Heavy rain blocked her view. As a precaution, she kept her two moggies indoors, and they were hiding upstairs, sleeping off the storm. Even Ripper, the golden retriever who usually loved showing off his glossy coat and playing fetch, was unenthused about staying out today.

The phone chimed: another evacuation alert. These warnings had been popping up for the last 24 hours, but no one in Palm Paradise seemed to care. The cyclone had passed, and neighbours showed no signs of abandoning their homes. The sea was rough, rain lashed down, and the Barron River threatened to overflow; the usual drill. Even if the bridge got flooded and coastal areas were cut off, everyone assumed it would be temporary. After all, wasn’t that always the case?

Ripper’s frantic barking spun Ellie around. Water was bubbling under the front door. Ellie gasped and rushed over, but stopped just before yanking it open. The foamy water seemed ready to burst in. Meanwhile, Ripper had leapt onto the stairs, barking his head off.

Kim dashed in from the garage. Water was everywhere, and it was too late to drive away. Within minutes, water was up to their knees in the kitchen and living room. Kim grabbed the groceries and, leaping over the steps, dragged them upstairs. Ellie scooped the last goldfish from the tank as dirty, cold water reached the kitchen counter. The two-metre fridge toppled, and soon chairs, rugs, and shoes floated around them. Ellie’s phone slipped from her grasp, sinking into the murky water.

From the upper floor, Kim and Ellie gazed through the rain-streaked window as their street vanished beneath the rising water. A formidable, murky torrent had seemingly materialised out of nowhere, expanding its reach with relentless force. Pushing its way toward the ocean and defying the street’s curves, it swept everything in its path. Cars and fridges floated by, submerged boats spun in the current, and debris, fence pieces, logs, planks, and uprooted trees were carried along.

As the water claimed the entire ground floor and crept up the stairs, people and animals retreated to the attic. Kim spoke with neighbours and friends on the phone. The family next door, with their two kids, a mom pushing a stroller, three dogs, two cats, and a rooster with five hens, had also taken shelter in the attic. The entire community in Palm Paradise was in shock.

“Can you believe those weather guys? They totally botched it again!”

“Fair dinkum! My mum’s been here for 80 years, and she’s never seen a flood like this!”

“Where’s all this water even coming from?”

“They must help us! If they can’t get to us by boat, they should send in choppers!”

“The airport’s shut down!”

“I heard the bridge is underwater.”

“We’re all stuffed!”

“We saw snakes in the water! They could swim into our houses!”

“Snakes? Our daughter spotted a croc! Stay away from the water!”

“Oh my God, I saw an ute getting swept away with people and a kid on the roof. They were screaming like mad…”

“I heard that a ute got stuck in some trees, and people had to climb up. But is that tree even gonna hold?”

The phones died, severing their connection to the outside world. As darkness approached, Ellie lit a few candles. The roar of the torrent and the hammering rain created a deafening, suffocating cacophony. Water was everywhere, the sole constant, making it feel as though the air itself was turning to water.

Anyone hardly slept at night. Dawn brought no relief. Kim and Ellie spent the next day listening to the water’s relentless sound, unsure of what else to do. The cats napped, Ripper whined softly, and the goldfish in the pot lingered near the surface, gulping for air. The water climbed higher, swallowing fences, homes, and gardens in its muddy, churning path. Something cracked in their house. Would the walls hold? The roof held strong, and the attic remained almost dry. But swarms of mosquitoes invaded.

At first, Ellie lamented, “The furniture’s gone! Our house is gone! When will someone come to help us?” She felt frustrated, but unable to cry. Kim spoke softly yet firmly, “One day, the rain will end, the rescuers will arrive, and everyone will be okay. Just lie down and take a break.”

Days dragged on. Each as bleak and interminable as the nights. The world outside had transformed into a vast, roaring ocean with low houses completely submerged and only rooftops of taller ones visible above the water. What had become of the people? A haunting question. Kim kept his thoughts to himself, and Ellie didn’t push him for answers.

She felt a deep sadness as Kim’s boredom and despondency grew with each passing day. He suggested diving into the flooded garage to retrieve more beer, but Ellie vehemently protested, refusing to let him risk his life. Kim would often climb onto the rooftop, staring into the watery haze, flashing a torch until its power faded. He’d return, soaked and enraged.

How many days like this have passed? Time lost all meaning, but the rain finally began to ease, the wind no longer breaking trees. Even the wild red-brown torrent weakened, its roar quieting. Survivors crawled onto rooftops, shouting to each other, waving their arms in a mix of relief and desperation.

A log drifted up to Kim and Ellie’s rooftop, and Kim hatched a plan to float it to their neighbour’s empty rooftop to the right. Ellie voiced her concerns, but Kim silently mounted the log and pushed off. Ellie watched in horror as he made it to the neighbour’s rooftop, waved, and then vanished through a roof window. Kim didn’t return.

Ellie screamed and cried until she could barely make a sound. Staring at the water, she tried to summon the courage to jump in and swim, but fear paralysed her. The dark, murky water seemed alien and menacing. Bottomless, endless, and merciless. Soon, however, her fear faded away. Like the rest of the feelings, there were none left. No one was coming to save her; nothing would change.

The rain finally ceased, and the water’s turbulent flow slowed to a peaceful, languid pace, as if it had all the time in the world. One morning, Ellie woke to an unsettling silence. Light crept into the attic, and she peeked out the window. The sun was rising. Suddenly, the house shuddered and tilted, throwing Ellie off balance. Her mind racing, “This is it; the end.”

The house wobbled a bit, then finally broke free from the water and floated up. In a second or two, it began to drift away. Ellie scrambled onto the rooftop and secured herself at the ridge. Their house was on the move! It glided past the treetops and the rooftops poking out of the water, some metal, some with tiles and solar panels and wonky satellite dishes. Breathing was easy again with fresh and salty air. Ellie couldn’t take her eyes off the endless blue sea merging with the blue sky on the horizon. She saw nothing more breathtakingly perfect.

Ripper’s yapping broke the spell. Ellie looked around to see more houses drifting away, leaving the submerged town of Palm Paradise behind. The houses rocked gently on the waves, which lapped peacefully against their walls. Sunlight sparkled off the glass in their windows, creating a dazzling display. “A flotilla!” Ellie couldn’t hold back a smile. Life carried on, taking on a new meaning.

*   *  *

Leonie Gregory lives in Australia by the Coral Sea and has a passion for photography and writing about her experiences, as well as subjects she wants to explore further.