The Tempest

Big breath in. Big breath out. It’s coming again. I can sense it. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Surely it’s not another one? So soon after the last?” I think to myself. I feel a sense of rising dread. I try to swallow it back down. Dark, ominous clouds are gathered on the horizon, like an army, ready for battle.

Electricity crackles all around. It’s like a dial that slowly turns up, notch by notch. Like a thermostat sneakily rising so that I don’t notice the incremental increases until I am drenched in my own sweat. Nervously I peer out from under my lashes. Everyone is sitting still in their seats on the bus, most people engrossed in tiny hand-held screens. “How do they sit through this so calmly?” I quietly wonder. “How do these storms not petrify their senses, as they do mine?”

Breath in. Breath out. Shallower now. Greyness. All around me. It’s like looking through grey-tinged lenses, as the world slowly starts to fade from colour to monochrome. I imagine I am in an old-time movie, in an effort to distract myself from the impending spectacle. It doesn’t work. The grey cloud worsens, rolling and roiling closer, moment by moment, until I am ready to explode in fear. “It’s COMING”. I want to scream it out loud and shock these people from their humdrum existence, where they sit, seemingly indifferent to the dark maelstrom approaching.

Thump. Thump. Thump-thump-thump-thump. One beat races to catch the next until I cannot distinguish one heart beat from the one before. Like a pack of racing greyhounds chasing their elusive rabbit. I lift my head to look out the window. Bad move. Lightning crashes all around and I drop quickly beneath the windowsill. Thunder booms like clashing cymbals through my head as I struggle to keep it upright on my shoulders.

The needles of rain pound the window relentlessly, lashing violently against the fragile glass, blurring my vision further. Once again, the heavy rumble of the lumbering thunder booms close by, so loud, so jarring. Flash, boom, flash, boom – I feel myself locked in it’s loop, unable to escape the light and sound assault.

Can’t take a breath. Blindness takes over as the lightning flashes increase in intensity until all I can see is the stark whiteness surrounding me. I feel my body curl into a foetal position and I lie as still as I can until the white recedes. It feels like hours until I can finally lift my head again. I am weary. As though I have gone a great distance, singularly weathering this tempest. I am sure that my face bears the mark of the very thunder that petrifies me. The whiteness has morphed back into the monochrome. Shapes appear around me again.

The thunder now lessening, the rumbles are beginning to sound further away. I feel the weight of the storm begin to pass. Breath in. The fabric seat rustles scratchily beneath me as I lift myself and a risk a glance upward. I see the concerned faces of nearby passengers peering down at my prone body, seemingly motionless on the seat. As the last vestiges of rain and noise drift off out of my earshot, and fade back over the horizon from whence they came, I hear their queries.

“Miss, are you okay?”

“Excuse me, are you feeling well?”

“Are you alright dear?”

Then the bus driver calls out softly, “She’s okay, this happens to her from time to time. Give her a minute and she’ll come right.”

Embarrassed now, I absently note that the monochrome is being gently painted back into its familiar colour spectrum. I sit up and give the gallant few around me a trembly smile, just so they’ll stop looking at me like that. Usually, I see pity in their eyes, occasionally with some understanding of my battle. I look away and out through the dry window panes, to the sunny day beyond the bus.

I’ll try harder next time to escape the storm. At least I know they always pass.