Undetected Disaster

I didn’t want to go alone so I called my friend, Olivia, “Olivia, how would you like to go to the river with me for the evening?”

Olivia was overjoyed at the invitation, “Dawn, I’d love to go with you. I’ve been so lonely since Tami moved away to college. I still can’t believe she decided to go to college in London, and she never calls anymore.”

“Yeah I miss her, too,” I agreed making my way to the car.

“Do you have any idea when she is coming back?”

“I think she said something about coming back this fall.”

“Oh I hope she does. We all used to be such good friends before she left,” I said thoughtfully while opening the car door. ”I will be at your house in twenty minutes.”

“Okay, I will see you then,” she enthusiastically replied.”Bye!”

“Bye!”

By the end of our conversation I was already shutting the car door and putting the key in the ignition. “It sure is a nice day,” I thought to myself as I was backing out of my driveway.

As I drove over the bridge that was on the way to her house I realized that there were clouds merging together above me and that the sky was turning a darker shade of blue. “How did the sunny weather take such a drastic turn?” I wondered aloud, slightly bewildered at the sudden change. I was no longer than five minutes away from Olivia’s house when I decided to call her and cancel our little getaway to the river. I took my phone out of my pocket and selected her number in my contacts list. There were several small beeps before she answered.

“Howdy?” her voice answered in a fake southern accent.

“Hi, I was just calling to tell you that we may have to postpone the trip to the river. The weather seems to think that it should wait for a day or two,” I informed her as rain started to heavily drop down from the clouds in the sky causing the automatic windshield wipers to turn on.

“Oh,” she said sounding disappointed,” I was really looking forward to going, but I guess if the conditions aren’t ideal it wouldn’t be much fun anyway.”

“Thanks for being so understanding about this,” I commented back. As I said this I swiftly turned the car into an unknown driveway and headed for home.

“Yeah, well I guess I will let you go so you can get back home safely."

“Alright, I will call you when I get home to set up a date and time for when to make up our little adventure.”

“ Okay. Talk to you later!” she replied with a slightly happier tone knowing that we can go together another time.

“Bye!” I said taking the phone away from my ear and pressing the red button to hang up. I set my phone down in the cup holder so it didn't fall on the floor if the weather got violent. I continued driving as the rain started to get furious, pounding down harder, harder, harder.

As I got closer to home the winds began to pick up, and I noticed that it was making my car drift slightly towards the lane to the left of me. I looked left and right trying to find the cause of it, and when I looked over to the right I saw why. No farther than a mile away the sky looked like it had intermixed with the ground into a funnel like shape, and above it the sky looked as dark as a melanistic panther.

I started to panic as I noted that the right side of my car was hoisted up into the air at what felt like a twenty-five degree angle.

“Please don’t let this be the day I die,” I prayed as I sobbed hysterically while clutching the steering wheel tighter in my grasp as if my life depended on it. I noticed through my unfocused vision, due to the tears dripping down my face, that I was coming upon the bridge that I had driven over earlier, but I also took into consideration that the tornado had as well made its way closer to me.

As I was driving the tornado swept towards me throwing my car into the air, I screamed,” Help!” I suddenly felt a hard impact and water started gushing through the windows like a miniature Niagara Falls. I recovered from the shock, and I realized that I could no longer breathe. I started to drift unconscious when I figured out that I could open my door and swim to air. I opened the door and started swimming upward faster, faster until my parched lungs were filled with air. I was slightly dizzy when something hard hit the back of my head and everything went black.

In a flash I awoke, and I was rising upward. I glanced down and I caught a glance of something I never thought I would see. In the river there were trees and debris floating everywhere, but the thing that really startled me was the fact that there, caught on a tree limb, was my dead body.