Twister
The air was dense and daytime TV dragged itself around in circles. I wanted to go to the pool but hated going with Renee. She always taught me how to swim by taking me out to the deep end and swimming away from me as fast as she could.
Renee was grounded for skipping gym class, which sucked for me because it meant I had a babysitter. She kept dialing numbers, twisting the yellow cord around her wrist as the other line rang and rang and rang. I was bored and unambitious. Renee was a teenager, which meant she was mostly bored and unambitious.
“God, I want something to happen,” she said.
She dead legged me. I fell off the couch and started rubbing the numb throb in my thigh.
“Maybe we should pray for something to happen,” I said.
I was still trying to figure out how praying worked. Mom was raised Catholic and randomly took us to church for a few weeks. The entire time I just sat and looked at crucified Jesus and tried not to throw up. Renee sang the hymns super loud and always made funny faces at me to try and make me laugh. I liked the praying parts but was still unsure if I was supposed to ask for things or if that was rude. I assumed God got annoyed by people constantly asking for stuff. It would bother me if people only spoke to me when they needed something. Maybe it was ok if I promised something in return, like vacuuming without being asked.
“Good idea. Go to your room and don’t come out until you’ve finished praying for something to happen.”
I scampered off to my bedroom. The light was perfect for praying. I knelt by my bed; the metal headrest pressed cool against my arm. I tried emptying out my head, but bird noises and fan noises and lawn mower noises kept buzzing through the blankness. I squeezed my eyelids shut until my forehead hurt. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to happen, or anything I wanted to happen that seemed reasonable. Then a drip of a thought splashed across my mind. It wasn’t something I exactly wanted, but once the thought took root it gripped itself firmly in place and eventually, I just gave up. “Please God, bring a storm.”
After a sufficient moment of contemplation and slight disappointment, I left my room. Renee was locked in the bathroom with the telephone. I tiptoed close to the door to listen.
“I miss you so much, baby. I can’t, I’m watching Dumbfuck. I feel like I’m going to die if I don’t see you,” said Renee.
The voice on the other end sounded like a girl’s.
There was a silence, then Renee whispered, “Hold on.” She yelled, “You better not be listening outside the door.”
I didn’t think, just moved.
The bathroom door slammed shut and I heard Renee’s footsteps coming.
I blasted through the screen door and jumped the steps. I cut into the yard, turning hard to get into the back when my feet slipped in the grass. I rolled twice, popped to my feet and saw a mass of black curls flash in my vision as they speared me in the stomach. I hit the ground again. My breath caught in my throat as Renee pinned me to the ground.
“What did you hear?”
I tried to breath.
“Tell me, you little sneak! What’d you hear?”
“Nothing,” I squeezed out.
She put her knees on my shoulders and sat on my chest. I felt like nothing. Even when I threw myself against her.
“What did you hear,” she asked more quietly.
“Nothing. I promise. I was just looking for you.”
She snorted a wet loogie into the back of her throat.
“What did you hear?”
“Please. Please. Seriously. Please. I didn’t hear. Please.”
She hung her head over my face as I thrashed away. A yellow blob hung on the edge of her mouth.
“Please. I promise. I promise.”
She siphoned out a little more spit and the thick blob started to lower from a tail, like spider’s webbing.
“Please. Stop. I promise,” I screamed.
The blob descended steadily, inching closer and closer to my face. I strained my neck, but there was nowhere to go. My legs flailed wildly. It wobbled an inch away from my nose and I disappeared for a moment. I heard my voice begging. I was aware of Renee’s weight on my chest, but I felt separate from it all.
With a vacuum suck, Renee returned the loogie to her mouth and spit it across the yard. I breathed hard.
“I didn’t hear anything. I promise.” My voice was high-pitched.
“If you tell anyone anything,” she didn’t finish, just snorted all the remaining gunk in her sinuses to the back of her throat again.
“I won’t. I promise.”
A blaring siren ripped through the sky. It rose and fell like an unanswered scream. Renee rolled into the grass, and we sat and looked at the sky. Nothing moved. Nothing spoke. The air was so thick you could chew it. It felt like something invisible was trying to be born into the world.
“It smells like a tornado,” said Renee.
“Holy shit! That’s what I prayed for!”
Renee looked impressed.
“I didn’t think it would really happen.”
“I hope Mom and Dad are OK,” she said.
My stomach dropped.
“We should probably check the news,” she said.
I went in and turned on the TV while Renee stood on the porch watching the sky.
“We’re under a tornado and severe weather watch,” I yelled.
“Is a watch or warning worse?” yelled Renee.
“I don’t know. Warning sounds more serious.”
“Maybe watch is worse,” she yelled. “Like, watch out, it’s coming. And warning is more like it might come.”
“That sounds dumb.”
She didn’t come and hit me because the sky was starting to get interesting. The weatherman just stood there in his grey suit pointing at the same swirling patterns. His voice drudged along, making the storm seem boring.
I went out on the porch with Renee.
“What if the tornado hits the news station,” I asked. “Who do we listen to then?”
“We just change the channel,” she said. “Look.”
The sky’s blue was being erased in front of us, quickly smudging to black. People were shutting windows. Nothing moved on the street. A chill slipped beneath the clogged heat.
The phone broke the trance. It took three rings before we realized it was real and not a hallucination. Renee ran in and grabbed it. I stood on the porch until I couldn’t stand the tension and went to find her.
“Mom said we have to take a flashlight and go to the basement.”
“Is she ok? Is she with dad?”
“They’re both stuck at work.”
We ran through the house shutting windows. I felt the storm bearing down on us. Rain splattered loudly against the windowpanes. The trees creaked in distress. It felt like gravity was pressing on our house, like we were becoming the center of a black hole. I worried the house couldn’t take it. I ran down the cellar stairs. The basement was unfinished and ROUGH. Like 40,000 daddy longlegs rough. Like horror movie rough. Like we couldn’t even store stuff down there because it was so nasty and wet.
“Hurry up,” I yelled.
The basement felt like its own universe, disconnected from upstairs.
“Bring some snacks. And the radio,” I yelled.
A thunderbolt shook the house, and suddenly the storm was underground with me. I knew Renee was watching the sky.
“I’ll tell mom you didn’t come into the basement,” I yelled.
The house shuddered.
Finally, Renee came down, lugging a radio and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.
“I’m starving.”
I ripped into the chips while Renee plugged in the radio. Hearing the echo of the storm and imagining the surface was worse than actually seeing it. The basement was damp and shadowy, most of it existing outside the reach of the single light bulb. Renee found the news on the radio which helped. Something about the facts from the weatherman made me feel more balanced, even if I didn’t know what barometric pressure meant, even if I couldn’t imagine the power of 70-mph gusts. I saw a small black bug struggling in a spider web and wondered if it would feel more relaxed if it knew what the dew point was.
The weatherman reported that a spotter saw a funnel cloud west of town and I felt proud that we made the news.
“Is Mom, OK?” I asked Renee.
“Yeah, she’s fine. We just have to wait it out.”
Glass broke above us. Renee started inching up the stairs.
“No. Please. We should stay down here.”
She looked annoyed but came back down.
I counted the times I touched the bench, then scratched at a sliver of wood until it flaked off. A dribble of blood appeared under my fingernail. I sucked the dot of blood with one hand and wiped the yellow cheese dust stuck to my other hand on Renee’s shirt. She punched me in the arm. The spot throbbed hard.
“I prayed for this,” I said over the wind shaking the house. “It’s my fault.” I heard every third word on the radio. Speeds…damage…stay…find…expected…down….
“Don’t be stupid,” said Renee. “This happens every summer.”
The bug in the spider web struggled futilely.
“I just hope Lloyd doesn’t get annoyed that we’re down here.”
“What?” I felt my feet in my shoes and the wooden bench against my legs. “Who’s Lloyd?” I asked.
“You know, Lloyd. The guy who lives down here.”
I felt the darkness over my shoulder.
“He escaped from prison last winter and hid out in the basement. I bring him food sometimes.”
“You’re lying,” I whispered.
Renee shrugged.
I moved to the upturned milk crate next to her and stared into the corners of the basement. I couldn’t hear anything but my breath in my ears.
“Did Dad know him?” I asked.
“Dad was in jail for a night, not prison. Prison is for crimes which keep you locked up for a long time.”
“What did he do?” I asked, regretting the words before they even crawled out of my mouth.
“I don’t remember exactly,” said Renee. “I think he killed someone or something.”
“Was it a bad person?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.”
I felt the tiny processes of my body working. The saliva being manufactured in my mouth. The chips being processed in my gut. My forearms tightening as I gripped the bench. The shadows were limitless as I stared into them, searching for any sign of life.
“Who was on the phone,” I asked, my eyes not leaving the shadows.
“Nobody.”
“Was it Callie?”
“You know Lloyd really likes me. He’d do whatever I asked him to.”
The shadows started to shimmer. I blinked hard and tried refocusing.
“I wouldn’t tell mom,” I said.
“I know. But it’s really important you don’t get angry and accidently tell someone when you’re mad.”
“OK. Sorry.”
“Plus, who’s going to feed Lloyd if I get in trouble?”
I became lost in the shadows again.
“Let’s go see the damage,” said Renee.
I snapped into the present. The radio was lifting the advisory for our county. The phone was ringing upstairs. I had been so focused on the shadows I hadn’t even noticed the storm blowing past.
A branch had crashed through my bedroom window. The fracture in the wood exposed bright white flesh. Glass sparkled across the floor, the light reflected off it in diamond sparks. Outside, the world was beginning to walk again. A few birds tested their lungs. Insects chirped. People inspected the damage with bewilderment.
A long swatch of corn had been flattened in the field near our house. The stalks bent like broken toothpicks.
“Shit,” is all Renee said.
I started gathering sticks into a pile. There were enough to build a fort, but the trees seemed full and intact.
“Mom’s safe,” said Renee. My chest opened like a field of startled sparrows.
We basked in the newness, feeling the sunshine on our skin and breeze on our faces. The green leaves of the trees popped against the blue sky. Renee lifted the largest fallen branch over her head and flung it toward the burn pile. I grabbed at a tangle of limbs and tried lifting. I couldn’t get it off the ground for more than a second and instead dragged it toward the pile.
“Be careful,” said Renee. “All kinds of junk could have blown into the yard. Don’t touch any of it.”
Michael Harper is a MFA candidate at the University of Idaho. Previously he taught kindergarten. His most recent work has appeared in Hobart, Fugue, Variant Lit, Identity Theory, The Los Angeles Review, and others.
