The Storm

The wind swept across the front yard and clattered bits of rock against the large picture window.  A small crack formed in the center of one pane.  The trees beyond the glass swayed violently in the cold wind, the sky was a black maw waiting to scream its defiance on the world below.

         Broghan found that his mind had taken on a reality all it’s own over these last few days.  He hadn’t left his home since the storm began almost five days earlier.  He walked from the small sitting room with the picture window into the kitchen.  Sitting down at the table, he poured a glass of whiskey and settled in to drink himself to sleep.  Sleep didn’t come easy since the storm began.  Broghan looked out the kitchen window and saw the ever-present face staring back into his eyes.  The face was disembodied as it floated from window to window, following Broghan through his home.

“Leave me alone,” he screamed.

“I cannot,” replied the face.

“Why?  I’ve done nothing to you,” Broghan began to sob.  “Just… leave me be.  I don’t want to look at your ghastly features any long…”

         The face flamed red and began shaking wildly.  As the face slowly turned to a bright blue flame the house began to shake.  Broghan held tightly to the chair and tried to catch the bottle as it slid off the table and shattered onto the floor.  Broghan squeezed his eyes shut against the tears and sat, holding the chair and crying.

“I’m sorry,” said the face.  “I meant not to scare you.  I only became angry.  Don’t say that I am ugly.  I am what you make me.”

“What do you mean,” Broghan asked?

“I am only here because you brought me here.”

         Broghan slowly opened his eyes.  The whiskey bottle sat on the table where he had left it, his glass, still half full sat beside it.  The face now hovered above the table looking at him.  Broghan shook his head to try and clear some of the muddled, confusion from his mind.

“How did I bring you here,” he asked?

“When you brought the storm, I came with it.”

“But…I didn’t bring the storm.  The storm brought you.”

“No, my good man.  You are the storm and I am you.  The real you, the you deep inside of your torn mind that you allowed to escape.  I am the you that killed your wife and child when your rage turned to the storm.  I am the you that strangled the life from your infant daughter as she cried for her mother.  I am the you that will stay and now you must go.”

The face blazed red again and started circling the kitchen.  Making ever-tighter loops around Broghan’s head.  Broghan watched for a moment and then lunged for the door.  As he rolled through the door of the kitchen back into the sitting room his hand slid through a sticky, slick puddle.  He turned to see what it was and there were the eyes of his beloved Ariana.  Staring at him accusingly, with no life in them.  He had only a moment to think why she would be accusing him of her demise when it was clearly the storm that had killed her.  Broghan ran down the hall past his daughter’s room and saw little Angela standing in her crib.  Broghan froze and stared at his daughter.  Her face was blue and bloated but the eyes had life in them.  He slowly approached the crib and his young daughter.  He couldn’t believe his eyes.  He knew that Angela had died on the first night of the storm so how was she now standing in this crib.  She was smiling at him and as he reached out to pick her up the smile flashed into a wolfish grin, baring razor sharp teeth.  He wasn’t fast enough to jerk his hand away before getting the skin shredded from the palm.  Broghan cradled the bloody hand and stared at his little girl.  As the blood dripped from her chin and splashed on the rail of the crib her little body crumpled into the crib and lay there motionless.  Broghan turned to run from the room but there in the door was the face.

“Now Broghan, I will claim my rightful spot and you will be lost in the in-between.”  The face began spinning and turned a bright, hot yellow and dove into Broghan’s chest.  Broghan fell to the floor in a crumpled heap.  He opened his eyes and said, “Ahhh, that’s better.”


“What’s the call on this one John,” asked the cop to his partner as they knocked on the door.

“Family called and said they hadn’t heard anything from them in a couple days and wanted us to check it out,” said the second officer.

         The police officers knocked on the door for a few minutes with no answer.  The first cop walked around to the big picture window in front of the house.  As he peered in he lurched back.  A man had put his face right in the window and screamed at the officer.  The man’s face had been painted red, but before the face had appeared the officer had seen a body lying on the floor in a puddle of blood.


“I’m here at the house of Broghan and Ariana Johnson.  The scene behind me is one taken right from the pages of a horror story.  Authorities say Mr. Johnson killed his family and is now in delusional state.  Refusing to do anything except stare into a mirror and talk to his "face".  More info at ten.  I’m Nattie Bine for Channel Seven News.  Back to you Dan.”