The weather lady said to stay indoors. She added find a safe place away from windows and for all that is good and holy, do not stay in mobile homes. Those were certainly going to be carried off in the wind when the storms hit, and they were going to hit. A radar map appeared on the television. It was a future look, some four or so hours from then. The entire state was covered in green, the color for rain. There were orange patches here and there that indicated minor storms. It’s the red expanse off to the left of the state that held the weather lady’s attention.
The map remained in the background, but the weather lady—Sandra Trapp—appeared on the screen wearing a blue dress and what looked like a white pearl necklace. Though she appeared put together, there was a quiver in her voice, one that said she was scared of what was coming and you should be, too. It was definitely a way to get across the gravity of the situation, if it was indeed grave. Or maybe it was just an act, a way to boost the ratings which, as far as anyone knew, could have been sagging because another local weather woman might be prettier or sexier or wear more revealing clothes. Or maybe she was just better at her job.
Art doubted any of those things were true, but who was he to say?
“This storm is massive,” Trapp said. In her hand was the clicker she used to change the image on the green screen behind her. Her thumb pressed a button and the red blob on the left side of the map—the western portion of the state—began to move. It crossed into South Carolina, not as one storm, but a series of them, all with tiny hooks here and there, indicating possible tornado activity. “The entire state is under an emergency order to stay inside …”
Art clicked the off button on the remote. He had seen plenty over the last few days—enough to worry him, but not to the point of anxiety. No, anxiety was Lacey’s thing and she had managed to work herself into a tizzy the last couple of days. She even went to her brother—the pothead in her family, the one always shunned because of it—and asked for a couple of joints to calm her nerves. Isaac was willing enough to give them to her, and seemingly without judgment. She had already smoked half of one and seemed calmer on the outside. Art had no clue what was going on inside her head, so the effects of the joint looked to be doing what she intended. She offered him a puff. He declined. He knew of her anxiety and how it could sometimes make her completely irrational, so even if he didn’t approve of her use of marijuana, he said nothing. Still, he thought she knew how he felt about it.
The joint wasn’t the real problem, he thought. They had grown distant over the last few months, neither of them really talking about their days, their wants or anything really. They had slipped into a pattern of get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed and do it all over again the next day. Occasionally, there was sex, but nothing like before where they both got into it, where they both wanted it. He fully believed those days were over. The weekends weren’t much better. One of them was usually gone during the days and on the occasions they went somewhere together, there was little real conversation, nothing with substance.
There had been arguments—far more than before—mostly over silly stuff like putting the toilet paper on the wrong way, or not washing dishes when they were done eating or him snoring too loudly. Yeah, that one was a real kicker. She snored, too, believe it or not.
No, it wasn’t the joint that was the problem. It was them—him and her, though he felt like it was all him.
Now, as the storm loomed just hours away, a touch of fear gripped his chest.
We’re prepared, he thought. All the windows are boarded up. Sandbags are in front of both doorways, inside and out. They had food, thanks to Lacey’s anxiety. She went to the store and dealt with the crazies, and even had been one herself. She gathered the toilet paper and milk and jugs of water and Art didn’t know how many canned and boxed goods. They were set on those things. She bought extra batteries for flashlights, and, yes, she bought extra flashlights. Those flashlights were in every room, new batteries in each one, and all of them tested to Lacey’s satisfaction.
Art went to the window and opened the curtain to see if the clouds were gray, only to see a piece of plywood beyond the glass. He took a deep breath, went through the house and to the back door. It only took him a minute to remove the six heavy bags—at least thirty pounds apiece—and set them aside. He opened the door, stepped over the bags on the other side of the threshold and onto the porch.
Dirty gray clouds moved fast across the sky. Those didn’t bring rain, but the wind, which had been a breeze of five or six miles per hour that morning, was now gusting around twenty or so. It was enough to make leaves rustle and fall from limbs and his hair whip around his face. His shirt ruffled and his skin grew cold. By evening, those same winds were supposed to be between sixty and ninety miles per hour. Mobile homes didn’t stand a chance against that. Many cars probably wouldn’t either. He wondered how many trees would uproot in the middle of the night. If those winds reached a hundred or higher, he feared for houses like his. Though seemingly solid and sturdy, who knew what winds like that would do to it?
“Art, what are you doing outside?” Lacey asked. She sounded irritated.
“I just wanted to see what it’s like out here, you know, before the storms arrive.”
Lacey let out a deep sigh and shook her head. Her blue eyes were clear of any anxiousness, as was her face, which under normal circumstances would have a pinched worry on it. Her hands didn’t shake and she didn’t twist her fingers together like she often did when she was nervous. She left the door and walked away instead of fussing for him to come inside.
Art’s shoulders slumped and he went back inside but didn’t put the sandbags back in place. He would do that later, before the storm got too bad. For now, he wanted to be able to peek out occasionally, even if just for fascination’s sake.
Fascination was exactly what it was. He was like a young boy seeing the neighbor girl in a bikini for the first time. Though he knew what a girl was, seeing one so … so … almost naked was exhilarating and kept drawing him back to view some more. Though the impending storms weren’t pretty in the least, they held the same intrigue for him.
When the winds picked up, he looked out the door. The clouds had gone from gray to black with a slight green tint to them. When the rain began, he peeked out the door again. It wasn’t quite going sideways but he thought it might soon enough. The wind had picked up considerably by then and tree limbs had already begun to snap and litter the back lawn. The last time he poked his head out the door was when the sound of something heavier than rain began tapping on the roof. Hail the size of dimes were mixed in with the rain. When he closed the backdoor that time, he locked it and put the sandbags back in place.
Art took a breath. It seemed to shake his chest just like his hands did right then.
The lights flickered a few times and half an hour after the hail began to rain down, they went out altogether. Art had been sitting at the kitchen table, his phone in front of him, the weather app up. The storms had crossed into the state two hours earlier and were now knocking on the door of their small town, a town full of mobile homes and smaller houses, a town with mostly hard working people living there and very few well to do families.
“Art?” Lacey called. Her voice shook. He frowned, not because it was her and they were on shaky ground at best, but because if her voice held that quiver, even after smoking half a joint, she was more than scared. She was terrified.
“In the kitchen,” he said.
Before she entered the room, a beam of light appeared from the hallway. It was followed by Lacey. She wore shorts and a T-shirt, her normal sleep attire, though it was only a little after eight.
“The storm’s almost here,” she said. Her voice was calm now. Maybe the quiver had been in his head. Her eyes were clear, where normally there might be tears in them.
“I don’t think it’s almost here. I think it’s already here. Or, at least, the beginnings of it, anyway.”
She nodded. It was the first time she showed any real signs of worry since the last time she took a hit off one of Isaac’s joints.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
She frowned. This told him all he needed to know. Marijuana or no marijuana, Lacey was scared. It may help keep her calm, but it didn’t alleviate the fear she felt. “This storm is supposed to be one of the worst ones in the history of South Carolina. It’s already caused a lot of damage in other states—did you see what it did in Alabama?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
Alabama. Any other time, he would have thought, it’s just Alabama. They were known for getting some bad tornadoes. They might even be used to the weather, he thought. But the storms that ripped through the state left hundreds dead, thousands homeless and entire towns flattened as if stepped on by a giant foot. If the tornadoes weren’t bad enough, the flash floods that came with it created raging rivers out of neighborhoods.
“Georgia isn’t fairing much better.”
“I know, Babe.” When was the last time he called her Babe? He couldn’t tell you if he were pressed to.
“Do you think we’re going to be okay?” Now there was real concern in her voice.
Art stood. He was tired and wired at the same time. He wanted to sleep but thought that would never happen, not with the possibilities the storms could bring. He put his arms around Lacey; she did the same with him and placed her head on his chest. It felt good. It felt natural. It felt … honest. Art said the only thing he knew to say: the truth. “I don’t know, Lacey. I hope we’ll be okay, but … I honestly don’t know. We’ve done everything we could to prepare but … I just don’t know.”
“That’s not very comforting.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to ride it out in here?”
If he were completely honest, he would have told her that was the plan, especially with the way things had been between them lately. He didn’t say that. “I don’t know. I might go into the living room for a while and hope the signal on my phone doesn’t go out.”
“Or you could come to bed with me and hold me as the world ends.”
This caught his attention. She wanted him around, maybe even needed him around. Maybe their marriage wasn’t as bad as he thought it had become. As the world ends? She fully believes this is it. She’s a lot more scared than I thought.
“I can come to bed, but I don’t think I’m going to sleep much.”
She pulled away from him. Even in the darkness of the room with her flashlight pointing down at her feet, he could see calmness on her face, in her eyes, even as her words told a different story. “I have something that could help with that.”
Any other time, Art would think she meant sex, but this time … this time she meant one of her brother’s joints.
“I’ve never smoked one of those things.”
“It’s okay. I’ll help you through it.”
He considered it. He hated the idea of smoking anything—his dad died from lung cancer, and he had seen far too many movies where pot heads had fried brains. It’s not something he found appealing. Still, the very real prospect they could die tonight lingered and if Lacey’s cool demeanor was a result of a couple of puffs on a joint, then what did he really have to lose? On top of that, she wanted him with her … as the world ends. He would be her comfort. In return, she would be his.
Art nodded. After years of not giving into peer pressure, beginning in high school, to drink or smoke weed or pop pills or anything of the sort, he said yes to the one person that mattered most to him. Like Isaac, Lacey didn’t appear to judge him. She smiled, squeezed him tight one more time, then took his hand.
Lacey led him down the hall holding his hand, the flashlight in her other hand cutting a swath in the eerily dark house. His flashlight went on and centered on her back. Normally, he loved the way she looked in those shorts, and even more so when she walked in front of him. A smile always creased his face and his eyes always seemed to focus on the going away portion of her backside. He believed he wasn’t the only one who admired it. This time, he didn’t look down at her bottom. He focused on her blonde hair, the ponytail she kept it in, as it swung from side to side.
They entered the room that was both storage and office. Their lights showed the desk opposite the door, the chair tucked beneath it. Light reflected back to him from the computer monitor sitting atop the desk. There was a couch to the left. He didn’t need light to know it was dark green and had a small blanket hanging over the back. There were two beige filing cabinets near the desk, both bought at a yard sale for twenty bucks apiece. A throw rug covered the floor in front of the couch, an old coffee table on top of it. An ashtray sat near the center of it, one half smoked blunt perched on its lip, the other one—nonsmoked—beside it. A lighter sat beside the ashtray. It was nothing more than a yellow Bic Lacey bought while she was at the store with all the other crazies.
They went to the couch. Lacey sat first, then motioned for Art to do the same thing. “Sit down. It’s a lot more relaxing that way.”
Art sat. Between them was about three feet of space. Lacey didn’t pick up the partially smoked blunt. She picked up the other one. She put it to her lips, picked up the lighter and flicked the wheel a couple of times until a flame—a much larger one than Art expected—fired up. She put the flame to the tip of the blunt. As smoke began to rise off of it, she inhaled. A light red cherry appeared at the tip. Lacey tipped her head back, her breath clearly being held. After maybe ten seconds, she released the smoke into the air in one long, billowing stream. She inhaled, then exhaled several times.
“Okay, Art. Your turn.”
She held the joint out to him. He looked at it for several seconds as if it were something dangerous, deadly even. He supposed in some cases, marijuana could be dangerous if someone spiked it with fentanyl or some other drug. But Lacey didn’t keel over dead or even act as if something were wrong. He took the joint and looked at it. A light tendril of smoke rose in the air from its tip.
“Put it to your lips, kind of purse them together, then inhale.”
“How long do I inhale?”
Lacey shrugged. “Since you’ve never done this, maybe three seconds? Then hold the smoke in your chest. Count to ten and release it.”
“Ten?”
Outside, a gust of wind slammed into the house. They both looked at the ceiling. Thunder, which had been nonexistent for the most part, began to boom around them. He imagined streaks of white or yellow lightning zig zagging to the ground just before the thunder rumbled. Art’s heart picked up, his stomach knotted. Nerves were beginning to settle in as the storm grew worse.
Lacey held the joint out to him. Though it was lit, very little smoke plumed from the tip. Art took it. It felt a little rougher than a cigarette, another thing he had never smoked before, but had held plenty of times at parties or for his mother when she needed an extra hand and didn’t want one hanging from her lips. There had even been a few occasions where someone from the church came by the house when she was smoking. Instead of putting it out, she gave it to Art and told him, “Don’t you take one puff of this.” Then she would go to the door, talk to whoever was there, then return to a cigarette that had burned down a little since she handed it to him.
“You didn’t smoke any of this, did you?” she always asked, her eyes squinted in as much of a question as what she spoke.
“No, Momma,” was always his answer and it was always the truth.
Right then, he held the joint with two fingers and a thumb as if it were a delicate flower and squeezing it would ruin it.
“Put it to your lips.”
Art did as she said, letting the joint touch his lips, but not actually putting his lips around it.
“A little further, Art.”
Now his lips wrapped around it. Before she could say inhale, he took a drag—one far too long for someone who had never smoked anything before. The smoke filled his chest, burning it and his throat. He didn’t have a chance to hold it in. He began to cough. Smoke blew from his mouth and nose. He grabbed a bottle of water from the coffee table and took a few swallows. He coughed again. Some water sprayed from his mouth. Lacey stood and patted him on the back. When he stopped coughing, her hand still rubbed his back.
Tears were in his eyes when he looked up at her. “How does anyone smoke? That was horrible.”
“You get used to it. Eventually, that … that initial shock to the system goes away.”
Though that told him more about how many times she had smoked, he said nothing about it, instead, asking something else. “Do I need to take another drag?”
“Probably—you coughed all that one out.”
Art took a deep breath and shook his head. “I don’t know, Lacey. That was pretty horrible.”
“Just take a smaller puff—two seconds, tops.”
“It tasted like butt.”
“You know what butt tastes like?”
“No. It tasted how I think butt would taste like.”
Outside the wind slapped against the side of the house. Rain beat down on the roof. It sounded like gunfire. Though the lone window in the room was boarded up, lightning had to be lighting up the sky—thunder boomed every few seconds now.
They exchanged looks. He didn’t know how his eyes looked, but he could see real fear in hers. Yeah, she could probably see the same in his.
At least I’m not the only one scared.
Art put the joint to his lips, inhaled, counting, one, two, then pulled it away. Though his chest and throat still burned, he didn’t have that sudden, almost violent, urge to cough. He released the smoke, then coughed again.
“Now what?”
“We go to bed.”
“But I don’t feel anything, well other than the burning in my throat and chest.” He rubbed his chest with one hand for emphasis.
“Getting high is not like in the movies, Art. You don’t take one puff and you’re suddenly high and happy and saying, ‘whoa, dude.’ It’s like anything else. It has to get into your bloodstream. Give it a few minutes. By then, we’ll be in bed.”
Lacey took the joint, put it to her lips and took a long drag. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back and held the smoke for nearly ten seconds before releasing it into the air. She took a deep breath and held the joint out to Art. “Take one more.”
Art didn’t argue. What’s it going to matter if they died tonight? Any long term effects he thought he could have would never happen.
But what if we survive?
The mental version of him shrugged his shoulders and put out his hands in an oh well gesture.
Art took the joint, put it to his lips and slowly inhaled for longer than two seconds. His chest burned again, and a harsh tickle formed in his throat. He put one hand to his mouth, trying to clamp it shut and keep from coughing. It didn’t work. Though he didn’t hack up a lung this time, he still coughed, his cheeks puffing out and a small amount of smoke wafted from his nose. He held the rest in as long as he could, only releasing it after more than ten seconds when his head started feeling light.
Lacey’s hand went on one of his arms. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, placed a hand on his chest and licked his lips. “Yeah.” It came out breathy and rough.
He didn’t know how long they sat there, husband and wife, lovers, each one in their own heads, each one needing the other to get through the night, if there was any getting through it. She had asked him to hold her as the world ends. Now, he wanted nothing more than to do that. At least, there would be no more growing apart, no more senseless arguments, no more feeling everything wrong in their marriage was his fault.
“Let’s go to bed,” she said.
“Okay.”
They stood, both of them rounding the coffee table on opposite sides. They left the room, her in front, him behind. Down the hall to the bedroom they went. It was slow going, as if the room wasn’t less than twenty feet away, but more like a mile or two. Eventually, they reached the door and went inside. Art closed it behind him.
Their bedroom was typical, he thought. A queen sized bed near the center of the wall opposite the door. Small end tables sat on either side of the bed with lamps on each one. A clock was on the one near Lacey’s side of the bed. It read four minutes after ten. Art had a moment to wonder how it got so late. A dresser sat to the left of the door, a television sitting atop it. There was another door that led to a half bath, which was referred to Lacey’s Lady’s Room. It held all of her makeup, a mirror, a toilet she only used and a few other odds and ends she put in there. The closet was just beyond the dresser. The room wasn’t entirely neat with some clothes on the floor and a small trashcan beneath the end table on his side overflowing with mostly tissues and candy wrappers. There was no carpet, just the original hardwoods, scuffed over time by shoes and the moving of furniture. The only thing different this time was a light sitting on the dresser that looked like an oil lamp. Art had seen it before. It was nothing more than a battery powered flashlight. Instead of a button to push to turn it on, there was a knob (much like an oil lamp) you turned to brighten or dim the light. He thought that was a nice touch by Lacey.
He didn’t bother changing out of his jeans and shirt. He kicked his shoes off, pulled his socks off and went to turn off the light.
“Leave the light on, Art,” she said. He did so without question, even though they both liked pitch-black darkness when it came time to sleep.
Outside, the storm grew worse. The house shook with each clap of thunder. The rain sounded like a train going over the roof. Though the windows were boarded up, a sliver of light from lightning showed through the crack on the edge of one. He thought he heard hail striking the house.
Lacey crawled into bed and pulled the sheets up on her side. Art followed, sliding in beside her. For the first time in a while, Lacey scooted over to his side of the bed and laid her head on his chest. One arm went around his waist. Art slid his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her tight. He let his fingers tickle her shoulder the way he did when they first got together.
“I love you,” Lacey said.
“I love you, too, Babe.”
They turned and kissed. It was long and raw and in other times may have led to something other than sleep. Then they settled into the bed, her head on his chest, his arm around her shoulder.
Art stared at the ceiling for what felt like much longer than the two minutes it actually was. Lacey’s breathing slowed and he knew she was asleep. He didn’t know if they would wake up in the morning, or even if there would be a morning for the rest of the world. At that moment, he didn’t care. He closed his eyes as the storm grew more intense. At some point, he heard nothing more and began to drift away with the comfort of Lacey in his arms. His last thought before giving in completely to sleep was I’ll hold you as the world ends.
Sleep claimed him and the storm was no more.
Type AJ Negative 