Friday Flash 3

The Smell of Tornadoes

Raindrops slapped the wooden deck, swollen and bloated like drowned fish. With them came the smell, the smell of the atmosphere and all the charged ions that rumbled with pent-up friction.

The raindrops burst as they struck, flattening into discolouration, and the woman with her hair pulled back with an elastic band watched their stain spread across the oiled wood, the heat causing them to fade back even as she stood there, one hand resting on the screen door. A trickle of sweat ran down the V of her breasts beneath the INXS t-shirt. The air was weighted and thick.

A gust of wind brought a new smell from far off, the smell of the tornado, and she caught the stench of things pulled up, uprooted. Things that were never supposed to see the light of day. A tear tracked the path of her sweat, down her neck and under her t-shirt.

The storm burst, cascading lightening bolts as if they were seed corn as the thunder cracked above the house. The rain came faster, blotting out the trees on the other side of the field with grey haze. She drank in the release of the storm, reaching her arms out to its honesty.

And the woman turned to her husband who was seated at the kitchen table before a map of electronic parts he had taken from the vacuum cleaner, a smear of oil on his prickled chin.

Vince, she said. Vince. And he looked up into her moist eyes and frowned. I have something I need to tell you, she said. And this time you’ll listen.

The bloated raindrops fell, coating the oiled wood with slick reflections, so fast now that the solid heat could not absorb them all.



Photo courtesy of WeatherSavvy.com