Interesting Weather We're Having
06 Jan 2019Today’s prompt: “A storm destroys your uncle’s shed and kills his six-year-old son. Describe the color of the sky right before the storm hit.”
You’d always had a pretty good rapport with your cousin. You were his go-to for tickle fights and playing with toy monster trucks during family gatherings. So that’s why your mom sent you.
“Something sketchy’s going on with your uncle. I don’t know what. He’s being really secretive about it. The last couple times I talked to him, he said some real creepy stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, stuff about end times. Sacrifice. ‘The coming darkness’ this, and ‘the things that the gods require’ that. I pushed back on him once, and now he won’t even pick up the phone. But I hear things. And I don’t like it. I got a real bad feeling today. There’s something in the air. Andrew trusts you. Why don’t you go get him and bring him out to our house? I just feel like he’d be safer here.”
Black clouds rolled in as you drove to your uncle’s, looking as solid and tangible in the sky as your own hand on the steering wheel. As you get closer, the storm seems to be closing in around your uncle’s old farmhouse. Green tendrils snake along the edges of the clouds. It’s like no storm you’ve ever seen.
There are about a dozen cars parked out at your uncle’s. There’s no reason for people to be out here this far into the country, unless your uncle’s having a party or something. And your uncle’s not really the party type.
Despite all the cars near the house, it seems eerily quiet. You don’t hear anyone outside, just the howling of the wind. You ring the doorbell, ready with some bullshit about wanting to take Andrew to a science museum, and you would’ve called, but Mom said you hadn’t been answering the phone lately maybe because of some service issues, ha ha. It’s a terrible excuse, and you’re standing on the doorstep trying to think of a better one, but no one comes to the door. You try the bell a couple more times. Nothing.
Maybe they’re in the back yard. You decide to wander around back. “Andrew? Uncle Leon?” you call out as you unlatch the gate. No answer. You wander into the yard. You don’t see anyone. But then the shed catches your eye. It’s the big shed, almost a barn really, where your uncle keeps a lot of his farm equipment. Except for right now, apparently, since a bunch of it is now piled outside along the wall. The shed door’s ajar. You walk closer. That’s when you start to hear the chants.
You peer in through the crack in the door. You see Andrew, tied to one of the load-bearing posts in the middle of the shed. He’s gagged, and you can see he’s been crying. He’s surrounded by nearly two dozen men and women wearing black robes and featureless white masks. They’re standing in a circle around the post, chanting. But one of them, across the circle from you, stares straight at you, stops chanting, and points.
You back away and start to run, but something hits your head from behind. The next few minutes are a blur of stumbling, spilling out on the wet grass, hands seizing you, arms hoisting you backward, scratchy ropes cinching into your torso and arms, a mouthful of cloth, and the muffled sobs coming from Andrew on the other side of the post.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” you hear a voice. It sounds like your Uncle Leon’s. “The gods have seen fit to ask for a second sacrifice.”
The chanting begins again, in a language you don’t recognize. The howl of the storm gets louder and closer. When it tears the roof off the shed, the circle of chanters backs up to the walls. But they raise their arms and keep chanting. And then the lightning hits.