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No. 53283
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It was during the summer of a couple years ago when it happened. I was in the basement, browsing the internet with the familiar roaring of the fans indicating that my high-end monster of a PC was on and running. I was posting on a forum I remember nothing about, when, for some reason, the page refused to load. I tried a different one from my favorites, but I was stuck with the loading symbol Firefox showed when it claimed it was working to bring up the web address. After getting an error for that page as well, Windows XP flat out told me the connection was broken, to which I responded with a sigh and shrugged it off. The connection sometimes goes down without warning, so I figured I just had to wait for it to be restored. A minute later, though, the computer powered down with a click as the fans went silent, and the entire house went dark.
No longer masked by the loud humming sound, I could hear the culprit responsible for interrupting my computer time beating against the house like a stream of marbles hitting glass, the scene outside the tiny window above my head tinged a pale greenish yellow and as blurry as frosted glass. Now, I’d been in hailstorms before, but this was unlike anything I’d ever encountered in my lifetime, as the deafening barrage assaulted the flimsy glass as though shot at by a firing squad that had been armed with assault rifles, and my house was to be executed for the unforgivable crime of standing between me and a concussive demise. The savage winds screamed at just a few octaves short of what a dog whistle would probably sound like, which indicated a tornado was out there, too, and hurled the barrage of icy pebbles with more ferocity than anything I’d witnessed myself. Not content with blasting my house with frozen ice, there’s a freakin’ tornado wreaking havoc out there in the middle of summer? Why does Mother Nature hate me so much right now? I mean, I recycle and I don’t litter; what do you want me to do, save the whales?
For the first time in my life, I was terrified. I hunched back in my chair and weighed the decision of whether or not I could risk running to a safer section of the basement that my paranoid mind thought would be safer than one with a tiny, ceiling-high window. And it was at this time that the part of my mind that controlled whatever sounds or imagery were most prominently going through my head showed that it missed the memo that said “THERE’S A GODDAMN TORNADO/HAILSTORM OUTSIDE, PLAY SOMETHING DRAMATIC”. So rather than some fitting music that stressed the urgency of the situation, as you’d see in a movie, I heard a peppy, upbeat song in a foreign language that I didn’t really understand. It’s deeply embarrassing to consider that your final thoughts would be centered around how some cutesy synthesized pop song was playing in your head before you died, despite the chaotic cascade of ice outside. I mean, come on, part-of-my-mind-that-plays-music, couldn’t you play something with a powerful and ominous orchestra instead, like “Ride of the Valkyries” or maybe that song from Phantasia? I actually tried to argue with this part of my mind for a while over this, completely forgetting about the situation at hand. But it stubbornly refused to listen to me, calling out nonsense words like “hau” and “nano desu” to cut me off every time I tried to say something and wouldn’t let me finish a single statement. Eventually I just sighed and let the silly song played on.
For whatever reason, I got up, threw open the flimsy wooden door that separated the small room from the rest of the basement, and began my search for a “safer” shelter as the girl sang louder, mocking my defeat. I could just make out some shapes through the darkness, one of which was an open umbrella, with lots of holes and tears in it, sitting on the floor, with what appeared to be a tail sticking out of it. My cat, Johnnie, had followed his instincts to hide during this kind of frightening weather, but he picked a terrible place to hide like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. I couldn’t bring myself to leave him like that, no matter how fierce the storm or how annoying the repeated “nano desu” phrase got. I rushed over as the hailstorm upped the frequency and force of the chilly cacophony that battered my home and chorus started singing “la la la.” The winds no longer howled so much as screamed, doing all that it could to break my resolve, further solidifying my belief that Mother Nature hates me, as does my mental music box.
I bent down to the ground to scoop up the cowardly kitty, who clung to me for dear life and stared at me with wide-eyed terror. His claws dug into my shirt and broke the skin, but I couldn’t leave him there and let something happened to him while I was wandering aimlessly through the heavily windowed areas upstairs. The only safe/tiny windowless place I could think of was the bathroom, so I darted in, shut the door behind me, held the cat tightly, and hoped the storm would pass without incident, and that the girl would stop saying “hau” already, as we waited in pitch-black darkness. Johnnie didn’t seem to care for it, and jumped out of my arms so he could huddle behind the toilet. So not only was there no heartwarming moment, but the entire ordeal was still overshadowed by a whiny girl singing “nano desu.”
In retrospect, the experience would have made a terrible movie: the music choice sucked, the script was crap, the actors couldn’t cooperate, and the set designers had no sense of scale or placement, which made the plot look forced and any threat of danger unrealistic. On the bright side, though, at least the special effects were award-worthy.
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