Hurricane Temple

 

If there is one thing in the entire world that I hate more than anything else, it is boredom. I know some of you out there are asking how I could possibly be thinking of boredom in the middle of a hurricane.  It's pretty simple, really.  I can sum it up in two words actually. No Internet. That's right, I had no power for my computer or my router.  This meant I was stuck in my house, in the dark because why would Hurricane Simone hit during daytime hours, and I had no access to emotional clips of random nation's got talent, aww inspiring cats and kittens being adorable, not even any laughable political memes. On the upside, I couldn't access news to find out how poorly the local idiots in government were handling the weather crisis.  To be completely fair, I had a generator in a storage area off my back patio, but I was saving that for later on when the storm had died down or moved on whichever happened first. Just because I was choosing the boring lack of power didn't mean that I couldn't complain about it.  It's my house, so I make the rules.  I can complain about my own bad decisions all I want as long as no one is here to call me out on them.

The one thing I could not correct myself was potentially more problematic. Apparently, the tower for my cell phone provider was somewhere in another state by this point as well because it had no signal of any kind.  I couldn't call for help even if I needed it right then. Landline phones with the lines buried under the land, hence the name, didn't have this trouble, but no, society had to progress. If I kept sitting around in the dark bitching like this, I was going to sound far too much like my parents which always creeped me out. With nothing better to do, I wandered around my house with a flashlight. I opened the back door and saw a tree down in my back yard.

"Well, thank you very much, Simone," I called out to the storm and bowed gracefully. I had been wanting that tree removed from the yard ever since I had moved into the house. I shut the door and went to the front of the house. Yes, I know you aren't supposed to open doors and look at the storm, but without power, bored out of your mind, what else is there to do? The tree from across the street was laying across the road at the corner of my property. It looked like I would have to have that corner of the wall around my house rebuilt after the storm. It had taken out one side of my driveway gate as well. Again, something I had planned to do anyway, as the gate was not automated, and if closed, required me to get out of the car to open it manually. I raised an invisible glass in toast to the storm, but as I did, I thought I saw something else.

I panned around with the light a little more. The eye of the storm was a few miles to the west of me, which meant I wasn't getting the worst of it, but I was getting a lot of wind and rain. I scanned over my new baby in the driveway, my brand-new Ford Transit Connect. I don't think they are actually called minivans anymore, but I remember when the first of its kind was brought onto the car market years ago. This was a minivan, even if it did look and ride much better than those original boxes on wheels, so I called it my vanling. The one regret to this house, and one that I had already scheduled to get changed, although hurricane cleanup might delay it, was that there was only a one car garage. Obviously, my vintage convertible Cadillac was in there, so the van had to stay in the driveway.

Anyway, as I stood there squinting in the poor lighting and the torrential rain and wind, I saw it again. I focused my flashlight a bit more and saw it more clearly. There was a tiny hand clinging to the back bumper of the minivan. A little face just peeked out from behind it as well. A gust of powerful wind and the face and hand disappeared. Without a second thought, I rushed out into the yard. In only a second, I was soaked to the skin, and my silk dressing gown was flapping around me in the wind. I ran to the back of the car just in time to see a small body tumbling across the yard. A slightly larger body was chasing and tumbling after the first one. I dropped the flashlight and gave chase myself. I grabbed onto the cold wet lumps just as my robe was finally ripped from my shoulders to disappear into the stormy night sky. "Try picking on someone my size, Simone," I yelled at the storm.

I fought my way back to my house with my clinging bundles, but just as I got to the front porch, the larger of the two broke free of me and ran back into the storm. A moment later, it returned with my flashlight. "You dropped this," a much too young voice called out to me.

"Yes, I know I did," I replied. "Because you are more important than it is."

"Oh, ok," the soggy tiny human said with a shrug and then tossed the light back out into the yard.

"What did you do that for?" I demanded.

"You said it wasn't important," was the response.

"No, I said you were more…. Never mind, just get in the house," I said, rolling my eyes. Once we were inside the foyer, I told them, "Stay here while I go make some electricity." 

"You lost your cape," the littlest one said with a sniffle. "That's why Edna Mode says superheroes shouldn't wear them."

"It wasn't a cape, little one," I corrected. "It was a dressing robe. People wear them over their pajamas," I added as I did a pirouette, modeling my favorite purple flannel pajamas with the lavender hearts and the cartoon black cat faces. "Now, how about I try to find something for you two to wear, since you are even wetter than I am? What in the world were you doing outside in this? It's a miracle you weren't blown all the way to another state."

"Mommy sent us to you," the oldest one told me.

"Your mother sent you out in a hurricane?" I gasped. I would most definitely be having words with some idiotic female in the near future.

"She told us to crawl along the ditch, so the wind wouldn't be so bad," the little one contributed.

"We couldn't get any of the phones to work and she said she needs help," the older one continued.

"Well, you might have started off with that bit of information," I pointed out. I went out the back door of my house and this time I noticed that the awning over my patio was now gone. So much for no damage to my house, but I could live with this, if this was all I got. I went into the small walled off cubby hole which housed my generator and after three tries, it finally started. I checked that there was enough fuel to last for a couple of days if necessary and then went back inside. I found two munchkins in tears in my foyer. "Here now, it's not that bad, you're safe now," I told them as I knelt down to their level.

"It wasn't your fault, Butter," the tiny one said. "He didn't gived you a chance to ask pee mission."

"It's s'pose to be permission," the older one corrected through his sniffles.

"But you needed to pee, not purr," the little one argued.

"I will assume from this conversation that someone has had an accident in their pants," I said softly as I knelt in front of them.

"You're not going to throw me back outside, are you?" the taller drowned rat sniffled.

"Why would I do that after all the work to get you inside?" I asked, gasping that the child would think such a thing.

"I peed on your floor," the wet lump now identified as Butter answered with another sob. "I didn't mean to. I couldn't hold it no more."

"You're standing right next to a bathroom," I pointed out. "There is even a battery powered night light in there, so you could see even before I turned the electricity back on."

"You told us to not go anywhere," the little wet lump informed me.

"You could have gone to the bathroom," I groaned. "It doesn't matter, though. The three of us are so wet that you can't tell the pee from the rainwater. I'll get it cleaned up once we get you two little waterlogged storm troopers situated."

"Storm troopers?" Butter asked.

"Well, in my book, it takes a real trooper to brave a storm like this," I explained.

"What's a trooper?" the little one asked.

"A very brave soldier," I said with a smile. "Now I don't have any clothes your sizes, but you can't stay in those wet things like half drowned rats, so go in the bathroom, get out of the wet stuff and dry off with the towels in there, while I find you something dry to wear instead."  I turned to go to my room, but stopped and called out, "Ok, so this doesn't happen again, you both have permission, and yes that is the right word no matter what you are asking to do; you both have permission to use the bathroom if you need it.  You can also go into the kitchen and get a drink of water from the refrigerator while I am gone now that the generator is on."

"I think I drinkeded enough water out in the ditch," the little one announced. "It's really ok just to go…" his voice trailed off as he stared at the bathroom door.

"Go," I commanded, and he scampered into the half bath quickly closing the door.

I turned to the older one and said, "I won't have anything to fit you properly, but if you come with me, I'll give you some t shirts for you and the little one, so you can get out of your wet clothes. They will cover everything that needs to be kept private well enough until I can get you something else to wear."

"Thank you, Mr. Super Gay," Butter said quietly as he followed me down the hall to my room.

"What did you just call me?" I asked in shock.

"That's what Mr. Diego said your name was," the boy answered sincerely.

"That is not my name," I corrected him. It wasn't his fault, and he was just a child, I reminded myself repeatedly.

"But Mommy saw you at the grocery store one day and she asked Mr. Diego who you were, and he said you were Super Gay, and then out in the yard, you were wearing your superhero cape, even though everybody knows that superheroes shouldn't wear capes, 'cause you lost it in the vortex just like that guy that Edna Mode told Mr. Incredible about in the movie.  Oh, and then you made electricity come on when the storm took it away and… and… and you saved us."

There it was. The reminder that he really was a child. "I will try to explain as much of that as I can later, little one."

"I'm not little," he defended quickly. "Kissyfur is the little brother. I'm the big brother."

"Yes, you are, and a very good one at that," I assured him. "Now, I know this might be upsetting but I have to ask you; where is your mother and why did she send you out to me in a hurricane?" I asked as we walked along the hallway past the guest rooms.

"A tree fell on the house, and Mommy told us to come here," the boy answered in that calm little kid voice that meant he had no idea how serious the situation really was. "She said Mr. Diego was hurt and she was stuck so we had to come get help from you."

"Why didn't you tell me any of this sooner?" I gasped.

"You didn't ask."

After taking a second to convince myself that it was not an appropriate time to bang my head against a brick wall, we reached the bedroom. "Now, once I leave to go help your mother, you and your brother can take off your wet clothes and just leave them on the floor in the bathroom for the time being. Wear these shirts and stay in this closet until I get back or someone else comes to rescue you. This house was built specifically to withstand a Cat 4, but that closet is the safe room, and it will survive a lot more than that."

"You have four cats? Where are they? Can I pet them?" I turned to find the little one naked as the day he was born standing in the doorway of my room. "You said to leave the wet clothes on the floor in the bathroom," he pointed out before I could comment on his state of undress.

"Yes, well I meant after I left, but fine, here, have a t shirt," I said rolling my eyes. "Just what I need in a storm, a knee-high nudist."  I then saw him looking into the drawer very interestedly.

"You gots a purple shirt," he said, pointing at my favorite lavender tank top that I wear under a darker purple button down left unbuttoned.

"You should take the one he gives you, Kissyfur," the older boy told him.

"But I likes purple. It's pretty."

"My thoughts exactly, my little friend," I smiled and switched out the shirt in my hand for the lavender tank top. On him, it was a floor length ball gown. "You look mahvelous," I announced, imitating Billy Crystal. Blank reactions from the peanut gallery, as I should have expected. I took another look at the little boy in the lavender shirt and gasped as I was mentally thrown back almost thirty years, remembering another little boy wearing one of my shirts. Well, my trip down Memory Lane would have to wait.

"I don't mind a plain white one."  I turned to see the older child now nude as well, but he too was looking at something specific in the drawer. I just stepped out of the way and waved to the drawer.

"Pick the one you want," I conceded. "Now, I hope to be back with your mother very soon. But please, stay in that closet with the door shut until either I or a rescue worker comes for you."

I left the house and found that the storm had gotten stronger while I was inside with the boys. My minivan was rocking in the driveway from the wind. I knew the storm wasn't strong enough to blow the car away, though.  It would take much stronger than a Category 3 hurricane to do that. I got into the van and carefully started making my way to the nearest neighbor's house. Water was up to the pavement on the bay side of the street, but the worst of the storm surge hadn't hit yet. I had no idea how those two boys had made it to my house on foot in this.

I got out of the house in the driveway of the neighboring home and saw that a large tree had taken out most of the house. Never mind traveling through the storm, how had those tiny little boys survived this? The front door was locked, but as a large part of the house was crushed under the tree, I just climbed over and around the branches and debris. This put me in what had been a bedroom if the furniture I could recognize was any indication.

"HELLO!" I screamed. "Can anyone hear me?"

"Help," a voice called back. "I'm near the door to the closet."

"I'm on my way," I assured them. "Are you the mother of Butter and Christopher?"  I took an educated guess at the little one's name, since it was the closest name to Kissyfur that I could think of at the moment.

"Yes, and you're their grandfather," the woman replied.

"WHAT?"

"Could we discuss this later, after I'm out from under the dead body of the incredible bulk?"

"Ok, honey, but you have to stop dropping bombs like that so I can concentrate," I yelled back. "Are you sure he's dead?" I asked as I got closer. I could see a large man in an embarrassing state of undress face down on the floor.

"You tell me. He's got a tree limb through his skull, and he stopped breathing about ten minutes ago," she answered in an irritated tone. I nearly lost my lunch and the last three days of food as well when I got closer and realized that he did indeed have a tree limb going through his head. That's when I saw the movement under him. "Can you help me out from under here, please. I'm not hurt, but this guy is pretty heavy."

"Merciful heavens!" I screeched as I realized the woman really was underneath the man. "I can't shift the tree, but maybe I can move him a bit. Good Lord, too much fried food, Bubba," I grunted as I pushed, pulled, and shoved until she was able to get out from under him. "I thought you said you were uninjured?" I asked her as I looked at her leg. There was no way she would be walking to my car.