Caisey Quinn - Storm Warning

It was too dark in the distance to see where it was coming from, but she knew it was getting closer. With her phone still to her ear, she said something she’d never said to anyone—something she feared she’d never get to say again. “I love you.”

Kyle

FUNERALS are depressing as shit. Seriously. Why people even have them is beyond me. Standing around in uncomfortable clothes while people drone on about how unfortunate it is.

I mean no disrespect to the dead, but a funeral is so ass backwards. Crowd around and watch as they put the person in the ground then go have coffee and cake? Who the hell thought of that?

In my opinion, there should be music, dancing, cake, and we can skip the morbid gravesite stuff. People should be celebrating the fact that they’re still alive and not the ones in the ground. But no. We all stand around, hurting, grieving. Each of us replaying the last time we saw or talked to that person in our heads. Wondering if we’d have done something different, changed one little thing, if our loved one would still be alive.

Like we have that kind of power. I mean, I’m a confident guy, but even my balls aren’t that big. I believe in God. Or I believe in…something. There’s definitely a higher power that controls this type of thing. There has to be. Otherwise there’d be some kind of order to it. Or no one would ever die. Or we’d all just hit the designated age and drop dead. But that’s not how it works. It’s just the luck of the draw.

One minute you’re here and then you’re off to who knows where. Summer is officially over and it’s time to move on to whatever’s next. College for some. Work for others. Both, maybe. Or neither.

But there are those who don’t get a choice, a few who don’t make it out alive. A knife slices through their lives, cutting it short at sunrise. Before they’ve even really lived. A future that once seemed so bright can be extinguished in a single second.

Heads that were bent in sadness, some shielded by hats and sunglasses, glance up as it starts to rain. More storms are coming. If the weatherman is right, they’ll be here before we’ve even recovered from the last one. A few black umbrellas open, and I want to tell them that their efforts are pointless. There’s no way to be prepared for what’s coming.

Dark clouds gather on the horizon and roll toward us. We’re in the worst possible place. They don’t call it Tornado Alley for nothing.

Yet here we stand. Mourning. Grieving. Too distracted by loss to notice that we’re right in the path of destruction.