What if Storms Fell Up? A stormy forecast on another Earth

Snow and Swearing...snow and swearing...

Spending hours and hours clearing something (snow) falling from the sky can make you wonder about strange alternate realities where storms make things spring UP from the ground. Let's hop the vibrational boundary to visit such a reality and an Earth much like our own. We join your local nightly news already in progress:

"This just in, town officials have yet again had their bacon saved by farmer Johnson’s psychic potbellied pig, Mr. Furry McTumtums. The sleuthing swine broke the case of Town Hall’s missing clock tower after spending three days in a deep meditative trance communing with several technologically enhanced non-corporeal entities, said farmer Johnson beaming proudly from behind his vegetable stand. We’ll have more for you at 11:00 as details unfold.

And now it’s time for your weather.

The National Weather Service has issued a warning for our viewing area that late winter, early spring storm Janus is expected to bring as much as two feet of plant growth during the overnight. Light sprouting is expected to begin early Monday evening and intensify overnight into early Tuesday morning. Lawn, playground, and golf course travel is strongly discouraged due to the potential of hard to get out stains, so if you have to go out remember to wear old clothes or perhaps shorts. Local hardware stores are seeing the usual shortages of lawn mowers, clippers, gas cans, and beer helmets while grocery stores are reporting runs on milk and bread despite the fact that roads, sidewalks, and power lines will be completely unaffected. The storm has already dumped unruly shrubs, poking branches, and unwanted weeds all along the East Coast. Wind gusts of up to 7 mph have been reported and found to be not really worth mentioning except as a passing side note. Janus, while large, pales in comparison to the Tropism of ’98 where five feet of plant growth in just forty-eight-hours. Some viewers might remember the Scythe Clubs that became fashionable for a time afterwards. Dressing in medieval period clothing, members roved from community to community offering cut the walls of grass in exchange for wine and cheese.

Stay tuned for updates."

Rest Stop - Horror flash fiction

I freely admit my vision was rounded by fatigue and my thinking muddled with the distance I had traveled that night, but there are things under heaven and earth whose form and being can cut to the soul of a man despite, or perhaps because of, his clouded perceptions. I steered my vehicle into the rest stop seeking respite from the road and to flex my aching limbs when my dimmed senses told me mine was the only car present. A not-so-uncommon occurrence, as any practiced traveler of rural New York byways will confess, but for some reason there was an odd discomfort at this discovery. I brought my vehicle to a stop and proceeded to exit. No sooner had I opened my door when the uneasiness suddenly increased. (With hindsight, I now place the strange discomfort in the realm of an ancient danger sense; a forgotten attribute from a time when man was vulnerable to threats beyond those of tooth and claw.) I wish I could blame my not fleeing on a tired mind, but honesty compels me to confess my pride would not allow me to act like a frightened child in a dark hallway. And so, I stepped out. The lights struck me first. They seemed to be casting only half their potential, but the shadows around me were full and sharp. Even the size of the restrooms seemed diminished somehow. It was as if the light was passing through something foreign it was unaccustomed to.

This is stupid, I chided myself. Stop it!

However, when the sound of the passing traffic fell upon my ears for the first time after taking several steps I felt real fear. The noise should have seemed only a few dozen yards away. Instead is sounded miles in the distance. I was instantly seized with a horrid sense of isolation. Not merely of being alone, but of being beyond reach. 

Run! Flee! Flew through my mind as impulses without words. I stepped back toward my vehicle when motion caught my eye. I looked around never halting my retreat, frantic to find the unseen source, but saw nothing. Only when I felt the cool comfort of ordinary metal behind me did I turn. And thus, nearly died. For when I turned I met the gaze of a creature perched upon the roof of my car! Its dark thick-ridged body moved with small ripples from under what I think was skin. The worst of it was not the three legs it squatted upon, nor even the two-clawed pseudopodia that darted and swayed toward my face. 

It was its eyes.

They shone with a dull bluish glow. They were almost square and set far apart as the singular feature of its broad, rounded head. They were fixed. They were intelligent. They saw me. 

I screamed a guttural terror so great it felt my head would not contain it. The creature watched unmoved for an eternal instant before suddenly flowing up into the air without any visible means. As my eyes followed the apparition upwards a second sight sent me reeling. Indeed, it was this subsequent image that filled me as I sped away forever from that cursed spot, for when my thoughts are not staring into those glowing eyes they are fixed upon a night sky with two moons.