Call of the Storm: A Short Story

by JP Pina

Photo by Ash Hayes on Unsplash

Tulsa, Oklahoma…

There are some things you can’t fight, acts of God. You hear the sirens wailing and see the cattle panicking; you run or lock yourself up. It’s an instinct meant to keep you alive. But for some reason, it’s turned off in me. If I could, I’d never run from a storm, I’d only ever run toward one. If only I wasn’t “the weird kid”…

“So, can anyone tell me why Tornado Alley gets so many tornadoes?” asked the teacher, a graphic of twister incidents on the board. I shot up my hand so fast it almost felt like a strain on my muscles. The teacher turned to look at me with a frustrated glare. “<Sigh>, yes, Owen?” she asked, seemingly annoyed. “Cold air moving south from Canada mixes with the warm air of the Gulf of Mexico. Mix that with the fact that open spaces are hotspots for severe thunderstorms and it makes Oklahoma something like a ‘breeding ground’,” I said excitedly. “But even though we see the hook forming on trackers what we can’t see is all the other invisible fact-…”-“Thank you, Owen, but I was just looking for one answer,” hissed the teacher, interrupting me. Naturally, I felt ashamed. The other kids’ reactions certainly didn’t help.

They looked at me with glares and smirks and let out whispers and snickers. “He’s crazy,” someone said. “Bro, he just can’t quit yapping about storms,” snickered someone else. I felt afraid like some dread coiled around my heart like a python. “Dammit. Keep it down, Owen,” I muttered to myself, lowering my head in shame. All these other kids were talking about big sports and politics, and that just made no sense. If only they could see where my obsession came from.

At face value, tornadoes are storm systems, created by a mixture of cool and warm air rotating violently until it finally makes contact with the ground. And when they form, everything runs. Cattle panic, birds flee, and even the vegetation waves as if bowing in fear of a tyrant. Unfortunately, tornadoes ravage thousands of homes, tearing apart lives and killing dozens. But if they could be properly studied in the same way as astronomy and biology, then maybe thousands of lives could be saved. And yet, it felt like there was more to them than just that.

There was something about twisters that just had me by the throat. They were so immense yet somehow small enough to be observed as if these storm systems straddled the line of Lovecraftian bestiality. They were also powerful and destructive, throwing things hundreds of feet into the air like a rampaging animal. To me, tornadoes were the guardians of nature used to keep the most rustic and open lands safe from forces who wished to watch them rot. When all the world did was take from me one day, Mother Nature would console me with the roaring hum of a distant twister accompanied by the angelic and horrifying melody of sirens that announced its arrival.

Even my first tornado felt like I was watching a truly momentous event. It was small and didn’t hit anything, but man was it beautiful. The sky was an almost rustic gold and the clouds on the horizon were almost pitch black. When my mom came into the room and told me that was a tornado and that it was “dangerous”, I knew I should’ve been scared. But I wasn’t, which admittedly still freaks my parents out. I was mesmerized. The twister didn’t flash with lightning or tear apart a building with long tentacles. It just roamed about lonely yet minding its own business in all its awesomeness. Weirdly, I saw myself in that twister.

Snapping back to reality, I looked out the window, watching a deep gray, almost ash-like sky. The wind blew ferociously and the leaves on the trees were quickly plucked off. Birds, mostly warblers and thrashers, chirped and squawked as they fluttered off. And there was a strange feeling in the air as if something apocalyptic was making landfall. The atmosphere was electric, the mood was dark and heavy, and the silent tension quickly escalated. Until–…

Suddenly, the sirens started to scream their howl-like songs, sounding almost like the legendary trumpets from the Bible. The whole class shot up out of their seats while the teacher started barking commands, telling us all to get out in an orderly fashion. Meanwhile, I just stared out the window as a massive rope delicately touched down a few miles away, the sky around it swirling and howling. “Owen! We need to go now!” shouted the teacher. But I just stared at the twister as a small dust cloud formed around its tip. Mother Nature’s guardian had just arrived.