The Great October Storm

This is a story I just wrote about the storm.  It may be partially fictional, though it feels true.

~~~          

         Today is the aftermath of what I will call “The Great October Storm”, where we received over a foot of snow in one evening.  This was not any ordinary snowfall.  It was a sticky sheet of iron that came from the sky to destroy our technological ways.  Trees and power lines litter the once peaceful streets of Amherst and Tonawanda.  Despite the truly amazing amount of damage, the restoration of our moderate autumn temperatures will shortly destroy all evidence of what ripped through our city, leaving only chaos in its wake.

         There really was no way to see this coming.  September was not a particularly nice month, but it was not very cold.  October actually started out fairly nice.  Only one weekend ago we were enjoying sunny 70 degree days.  That is how things go in Buffalo.  Snowstorms and power outages keep us on our toes, they are our natural disasters.  You know something terrible has happened when a handful of old people freeze to death in the suburbs.  So it goes.

         It was only 50 degrees in their house, not exactly the kind of environment that claimed Hitler’s massive armies as they approached Moscow.  However, when you are accustomed to hot baths and TV dinners followed by hours of “Let’s Make a Deal” you are probably less hardy than the trained killing machines fighting on behalf of our old German buddies.

         Who are the casualties of the war between the electric companies and the diabolical lake effect snowfall?  Entrenched in the front lines of my bedroom, living in a five and one half gallon aquarium, five small blue hermit crabs and two larger red ones have had their lives claimed.  Also, six Astrea snails have become a still part of their unseasonably cold surroundings.  These aquatic heroes were accustomed to tropical temperatures and the balmy 58 degree water in my room was apparently not to their satisfaction.  They sat in the white gravel their staring out the glass into my teary eyes.  Their eye tubes twitched and their feelers hung limp.  They were telling me something.

         They were asking me how I could bring them into my home, provide them with food, light and heat, and then without warning, pull their support systems from under them like it was the tablecloth of vitality to their place-setting of life. 

         William Wallace was the name of the hermit crab ringleader.  He told me that all he wanted was the freedom to roam the vast seas.  He told me that the hermit crabs would have preferred a fitting death in the ocean amongst their invertebrate friends.  Instead the brave hermit crabs were to die a slow pathetic death of decreasing temperatures and increasing salinity.  They knew it was my fault, they could see it in my eyes.  I couldn’t save them.  I could only sit their and watch them as they begged me for warmth.  William didn’t beg though, it was not in his nature.  He peered with his eye tubes directly into my soul and sent me the message that I will never forget.

“FREEDOM!”

         The room reverberated with his strength, it had exploded out of him like a bomb.  My body shaken with sadness and grief.  I wept and wept.  My strength was nothing compared to his.  In this difficult time he stood as powerful as ever, and in his presence my infirmity was as apparent as the old and bereaved as they cling apologetically to the past. 

         I looked to him... I spoke to him. 

         I told him that his words had changed me-they had.  I told him that I failed him and his hermit followers.  I told him that I wasn’t going to be able to restore the heat they desperately needed.  William stood stoical atop the rock and with unnerving calm relayed the sad declaration to his withering disciples… Moments later, he fell and lay motionless on his head.  William Wallace had his freedom.