I dreamed I was living in Houston, in an apartment in the West University area. I needed an outfit for a special occasion of some sort. Maybe a wedding. I drove to the mall. The sky was gray and heavy, and rain was spattering across my windshield.
I got to the mall and drove around looking for a parking place. There was a gate into an almost empty area surrounded by a chain link fence. I pulled into there and parked. As I walked toward the mall, I passed dozens of people running back the other way. One of them shouted out that we'd all better get our cars out while we could. They'd be shutting down the employee lot soon.
I guessed I must have parked wrong, and I was torn between running into the nearest shop real quick and getting what I needed and hurrying back, and going back to move my car first. In the end I went and moved my car into a parking garage. By the time I got back to the doors of the store, I could see there was no one inside, and the doors were locked. Yellow light glistened over empty jewelry display cases, and bare clothing racks. I hurried around the building to get to another store, but I could see people all coming out of that one, and a security guard waiting to lock up behind them.
As I trudged back to the parking garage, I could see the sky to the north boiling with black clouds. Obviously a horrible storm was coming, and I supposed the mall had shut down to keep people from lingering away from home. I hurried to get to my car, because I could see another guard gating off the parking garage. I wondered for a minute if my car wouldn't be safer there, but then, I wanted to get home, and I couldn't do that without my car. So I got in and drove to the gate, and the guard let me out, but he told me to hurry.
I was only a half mile away from home when I could feel the car slow and begin to shudder from side to side with the wind. I looked into the rear view window and saw a funnel cloud touch down a mile or to behind me. I'd always heard that inside your car is the worst place to be in a tornado situation, so I pulled into a parking lot and tried to figure out what to do.
There was a small cinder block building in the center of the lot, and I hurried to it, hoping the door wasn't locked. As I ran, I could feel the wind tugging at me from behind, slowing me down as I zigzagged across the pavement. Small whirlwinds were spinning up out of the puddles and falling rain all around me. It seemed to take forever to cross the lot, and I thought I would never get there, but would be sucked up into the clouds.
I finally reached the door, and I tugged and tugged, but it was bolted, and I burst into tears. Suddenly the knob twisted in my hands and I lurched inside as someone yanked the door open and pulled me through. The door slammed behind me, and I heard the bolt shoot as I wiped the rain and tears out of my eyes. There was only one person, a man about my age, who had thankfully found the door open and was sheltering there as well. He showed me his weather app, and I could see the brilliant red radar blob headed our way, with tornado symbols scattered across.
We inspected the windows, but they were all reinforced glass, so this was as safe as we were going to be. There was a pounding on the door, and we rushed to let in a school teacher and her class of kids who had been on a field trip. As we struggled to shut the door, I looked up and almost froze in horror.
A monstrous funnel cloud had formed not far away. It looked hundreds of yards wide, and was a deep, roiling gray wedge from heaven to earth. We slammed and bolted the door. I was so thankful it was heavy and metal, with bulky hinges and a solid lock. The man checked his app, and we could see that it was only half a mile from us, and headed almost right for us. We could hear it as a muffled roar, swelling louder and louder until we couldn't hear ourselves shout, much less speak. All we could do was pray.
So I prayed. I prayed desperately, crouching close to the walls, holding sobbing children. We all prayed. We all shook. We all wept and moaned in our fright. We watched through the rattling windows as the enormous tornado pass no more than two blocks to the east, headed due south down Kirby drive. I tried to picture who of my friends might be in its path. I begged the fates that they were out of the way, or had found some safe spot. The spinning pillar of darkness danced to the west a bit, and I knew it could be headed for my apartment complex, but I just hoped it wouldn't decide to come back north.
It didn't. The storm swept south. The afternoon sun began to glimmer palely through the clouds, then shine out, sparkling like diamonds across the wet streets and bushes. I looked out over the lot. My car was gone. But we were safe. The teacher and I exchanged names so we could connect on Facebook. Her name was Katharine Kate. The school bus was still there, on the west side of the lot, so she got all of the kids onto it and they headed off. The man offered to drive me home.
I got back to my apartment complex and people were all finding their way through debris to their doors, but everything looked mostly intact. It turned out that only the back corner of my building had been damaged, but it was my unit that had the gaping hole where the corner of what had been my half-bath had been knocked away. The management was already inspecting the damage, and all I'd need to do would be to keep that door shut until repairs were made. They installed a lock.
I went to a nearby school that was serving food, and went through the cafeteria line. There were several types of sausages and a huge variety of doughnuts being served, so that was nice. I got a bratwurst, a cinnamon twist, and a chocolate glazed, then remembered I should mark myself safe on Facebook, so people would know I was all right. But it was hard to get things to load, because obviously the bandwidth on all the networks was being strained. The guy behind me in line began to make fun of me, but I finally got things set.
After I finished eating, I went to look for my car. I finally found it beneath the I-59 overpass at Buffalo Speedway. It was smashed flat as a pancake, somehow. The only way I could be sure it was mine was that next to it was a black leather gig bag, also smashed flat, with the silver glint of my mangled trumpet winking out from the splits in the leather. Just beyond that were the splintered ruins of my father's guitar, which I'd had in the back to take to the event I'd gone shopping for. I began to cry, and then I woke up.
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