Devastating Storms

Rough Draft. A short story concept that I eventually want to add in as a stand alone for a mentality overlay in a novel.

It's pouring rain, and it's coming down hard. My hair already soaked to the point that every rain drop that hit me, simply rolled down and dropped to the over grown 'puddles' of the flooded street, that I walked down. My bangs clung to my face, covering my eyes. Almost as if trying to shield me from seeing the disasters all around me. Unfortunatly, I already knew that they existed.

I continued my journey down the dark flooded street, as I pulled my already soaked hood over my head. It offered a slight relief from the loud whispers of the wind at my back, and even less to the ones at my sides.

I began to feel the resistance in my legs, as I continued to push forward, through the steadily rising waters. Each step forward becoming harder and harder to take. A lightning show filled the skies about me, being the only beautiful sight on this devistating journey. Being the only thing that remained to give me any kind of hope of escape. Beautiful false hope. That's what the lightning really is. Lighting my path just to disappear and leave me stumbling through the dark again. The thunder that followed echoed like a mocking laugh. Laughing at me for reaching for that sliver of hope, that the brief flashes of light gave me. Mocking me as it ripped the hope right back out of my grasp.

My steps forward became more and more difficult. Almost impossible. The final destination of the journey already long forgotten. Now, I just wandered slowly forward. Feet taking turns with each step, without a thought to where they were leading me. Every sound now blocked out by the roaring thunder that was alot more frequent then the lightning itself, now. The night so loud that I couldn't even hear my own thoughts.

I debated multiple times whether or not to just stop and sit down where ever my feet landed, and allowing the rising waters to consume me. Allow it to just wach me away with the growing current. Yet, somehow, my legs just kept moving. Kept pushing forward, so hard, for so long, my legs would not allow themselves to fall to a stand still.

Eventually, I found myself completly consumed by darkness. It were as if the lightning gave up trying to stay in tune with the thunder. It had become so dark that I could not even see my own hands raised only inches away from my own face. So dark that I didn't see the wall of the dead end ally that I'd wandered down, until I walked right into it.

I turned around to face my already traveled path, and was forced to see the disasters in their entirety, that lay in my footsteps. The streets so flooded that the water was almost to my waist now. Debre from fallen structures floated in the water around me, and there were fires so strong that they roared with life even through the pouring rain, and wind. Large chunks and piles of stone gathered while I had been turned away, and now blocked my path back out. Panic hit me as I finally realized that I had walked right into a trap as I'd been simply trying to shield myself and escape the storm.
My chest tightened and my heart raced. My stomache dropped and my mind was going in a thousand directions at once. No matter how determined my body was as it had pushed itself forward to get here, and no matter hwo fast everything else around me was moving, my feet, for the first time during this journey, seemed to be planted where I stood.

I looked around myself, trying to find an escape, or even a small hope of one. I forced my legs to work and I rushed forward to the wall in front of me, bringing my hands up to search it for any kind of opening or anything that I could possibly use to my advantage. Touch was almost as useless as my sight, since my hands had long ago become numb and were begining to shake violently, in protest to the cold.

After searching around blindly, with numb hands, and finding nothing, I took a step back and let my arms fall to my sides, in defeat. I turned in order to lean with my back against the wall and face what I couldn't escape. As i let my head fall back as well, I could hear the low rumbles of the approaching waves, crashing into the few buildings that still stood, and it was heading right for me.

I let my entire body relax with defeat and let my head tilt off to the right at the exact moment that lightning flashed through the distant sky. That light, momentarily reflecting off of any surface that it could, including something above my head. About eight feet above me, clearly out of my reach, was a ladder attached to a fire escape.

Everything around me stilled. Even the wind died down. It grew darker and the low rumble of the approaching wave had become a deafening roar. It wasn't far off now. A couple more minutes and it would be crashing down on top of me.

All numbness pushed aside, and the shaking ignored, I jumped, reaching for where the metal of the ladder had gleamed just moments before, hoping that it wasn't just an image that my mind had created in order to cruely give me one last glimmer of false hope. Panic built up more and I could feel it in the back of my throat, as my fingertips hit nothing besides more cold air. Then, my feet hit the pavement again. My head pounded with the panic that flooded through me, as I tried again. And again... and again...

This wasn't going to work. I had to figure something else out... Quick.

The water was still rapidly rising, and now I was floating in the water. Feet unable to touch the ground with out the water submerging my head. I went back to the wall again, this time using both hands and feet to search for anything along the wall to help push me further up. Just a little bit higher...

The water was becoming more violent, as it continued to rise, I searched the wall more frantically than before. Suddenly, my feet caught a brick pertruding from the wall. I braced a foot on it, lifting myself to almost the perfect hight that I needed to be...

And I jumped.

But, again, my hands grasped nothing but air.
"This is it." That was the only thought running through my mind, as the waves came crashing in and down on me, completely consuming my entire being. My body violently twisted through the water, desperatly reaching out for anything to save me. Anything that I could use to pull myself through the surface again. But I couldn't hold my breath for much longer, and my strength was gone. My body giving out on me. I had no fight left.

No hope left.

I didn't so much allow my body to go limp. It was more.. I simply stopped fighting to fight, and allowed the waves to toss my limp body around, smacking me into the wall a few times. I could now taste blood in my mouth. A friendly gift from the wall as I'd hit it one too many times. I felt as my body got thrown into the wall once more but this time was different. This time, I didn't get pulled back away. There was a new kind of pressure pressing into my arm that hadn't been there before. I painful kind of pressure. I closed my eyes tight in defeat and wondered what it was like to die. Would I feel anything?

That's when realization hit me. My arm wasn't stuck on just anything. The water had risen high enough that even the bottom of the ladder I'd so desperately tried to reach before, was even submerged in it as well. Ontop of that, my arm had somehow managed to wrap itself around one of the bars.

I forced my other arm up to grab the bar and pulled myself upright. Slowly, I reached for the nect one. The the next. It was a slow process, and my strength was already pretty much non-existent, making myself unsure of how much further I could push myself.

Right as I could feel my lungs about to give out, my head finally broke through the surface of the water again. I gasped for more of the fresh air that suddenly flooded my lungs. Not allowing myself to get comfortable with the feeling of relief, I continued to pull myself up the ladder, so that I wouldn't be consumed by the water again. I reached up for the next bar and carefully pulled myself out of the water. My own weight almost too heavy for me to lift. The laws of gravity were definitely not on my side.

Within minutes, I felt as if I'd been fighting for an eternity, against my own fate, yet I finally found myself standing on the flat surface of the floor landing. I couldn't allow myself to stop for too long, or I would be in danger of being overwhelmed by the waters, again.

I crawled across the landing, then up the stairs. Repeating the process at each flight landing that I came to. This seemed like another never ending journey. My body screamed at me. Telling me to slow down. To just stop and rest. My mind screaming back that neither of those ideas provided any protection or safety.

After what seemed like hours, there was no where left to go. No more steps to climb, or landings to crawl across. I say up on my knees, searching for what to do next. In front of me, the ledge to the roof that I needed to climb over still. Just beyond that the night sky broke as the sun rose. I finally realized that the rain had long since stopped and the water bellow had stilled. I looked up at the clear skies, and dropped the mental blockage that I'd built, to block out all of the noise and chaos around me. Now, all I could hear were chirping birds and...

Was that... laughter?

A smile found it's way across my face. I was almost there. I was almost to the end of this devastating journey. I pushed myself to my feet and climbed over the roofs edge. Water splashed around me as my feet made contact with solid ground. Ahead of me was a door that I hadn't noticed before. Somehow, I already knew what was hidden behind it.

I'd already made it this far. I wasn't going to slow down or stop now.

My hand reaching for the door before I'd actually reached it. Finally, I slammed the door open with excitement, and I was greeted by a blinding light that seemed to spread across everything that it could reach. I took a step forward and was immediately engulfed in warmth.

Now, somehow, my clothes were dry and my long brown hair was also dry and pulled back into a loose pony tail. I looked around and realized something. Other than my daughter, who sat on the floor smiling up at me, we were completely alone. But that was ok. I made it through without help, so I needed no help to enjoy the benefits of surviving the storm. That feeling lifted a weight from my chest and my eyes opened.
I pushed the blanket off of me, with a smile plastered on my face. I walked through my bedroom door to enjoy what I had worked so hard to reach. Finally, I was about to put that treacherous journey of sorrow and the fear of failure behind me for good.