Twilight Mess(Ron Koppelberger) Ron Koppelberger
Twilight Mess

The sky was born in the aftermath of tempests and dark thunderheads. Bleeding in slivers of scarlet through the edges of a terrible mountain in puffed shadow. There had been hail the size of golf balls. Vic Law surveyed the twilight mess, the piles of leaves blown up against the three bedroom clapboard ranch. Overturned pines lay scattered about the one acre yard. The tornados had come as a triplet. The first one had followed the rush river taking out boat ramps and wrecking ruin with the marina. At some point it had veered off toward Miffin High taking out the south side of the gymnasium.

The second tornado had pulverized Toms Used Car lot and little else. The vehicles stacked like twisted scraps of sheet metal were a total loss for Tom, Smashed windshields and tiny mountains of fiberglass, tires and torn leather seats.

The third had hit the residential area known as the commons. Lany Harper and Bertha Breen had been planting flowers near the northern side of the tiny two bedroom cottage, summer tide blossoms for the love of nature, Lany had thought. She had been planting a bouquet of marigold shoots when she heard the sirens fire up. She thought, for just a moment, of bombs and mushroom clouds. Wiping the sweat from her brow and glancing at Bertha, she said, “Better get inside Bertha, bad weather coming.” Bertha nodded and stood.

A moment later, a space of ten seconds, they heard the monster, a freight train in wild screaming approach. The house disappeared before their eyes in a commotion of upward beckoning. Lany grabbed the basement window frame with one hand and Bertha with the other. The tornado tugged at them in determined call. Lany found herself at an upward angle, it looked as if a cable were attached to the two women pulling them up and away from the basement window. A moment later their clothes disappeared into the tempest. An absurd thought found Berthas consciousness, she thought for a moment about her nakedness and the possibility that she would be seen by her neighbors, never realizing that the houses around them were airborne and a shattered disarray.

It was over a few seconds later as they fell back to earth, Lany still holding the basement window frame. Lany prayed in thanks for the miracle that had rescued them. The marigold she had planted stood unscathed in perfect conclusion to the senseless winds.

All and all Vic knew one hundred or more had died, according to the radio the early estimate was one hundred and five dead. Vic felt blessed by the twilight mess, a sense of fates tempted and the crazy turn of a bothered breeze avoided by the luck of those who had survived to tell the tale.

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