Whirlwind Relationship

Excerpt From: Whirlwind Relationship

Colleen Perry’s window exploded, propelling shards of glass across her bedroom. Her heart stopped, and her breath caught in her throat.

She screamed, yanked her covers over her head and squeezed her eyes tightly shut as she tried to hide from the storm. Wind moaned through the walls of her house. Ear splintering crashes ripped through her like bullets. Then water deluged her through the blanket.

“What’s going on?” She peeked over her bedspread, then wished she hadn’t when an angry sky stared back. Where the hell was her roof? Was this the hurricane that was supposed to hit Texas?

Hadn’t anyone told the damned thing this was the east coast of Florida?

The house quaked. More windows exploded. The dresser mirror swayed. The wind lifted her hair and tugged her blanket out of her grip.

Crazy with terror, she scrambled beneath her bed seconds before the mirror toppled onto the mattress where she’d lain. Shivering from fright and cold, she clung tight to the bed legs. Cries ripped from her throat but were lost in the wind’s relentless roar.

A movie of her life sped through her mind; her twin sister Kathleen, Gary her ex, old friends, her school days…

“If I survive, I’m moving up north!” She’d had it with Florida and unpredictable storms. With weathermen who swore South Florida was safe but didn’t know their heads from their asses.

Nothing remained. Her house was kindling. Her twin was long gone. The love of her life was but a distant memory. She should have learned her lesson and moved after Hurricane Wilma.

With an ear-shattering bellow, tunnel-like winds sucked the remainder of the roof into the sky. The bed shuddered and followed. Then she, too, was sucked into the vortex. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart thundered in her ears. Screams made her throat raw but all she could hear was the wind. Mercilessly, the storm slammed her to the ground and she was shrouded in darkness.

* * * *

Abba’s Dancing Queen yanked Colleen from her nightmare. She resented relinquishing her pillow. Blind from sleep, she patted the dresser, searching for the alarm clock. When her fingers touched it, she moaned, “Five more minutes.” Then she hit the snooze button and cocooned herself in her comforter.

But the nightmare returned filled with hurricane-spawned tornadoes that devoured buildings and trees. Splintered wood stabbed her. Concrete slabs crushed her. In terror anew, she bolted up in her bed. Then the room’s serene but strange décor filtered into her slumberous brain. Her brow furrowed, and she did a double take.

This wasn’t her room, at least not in 2010.

Eight-track tapes littered the dresser. A rabbit-ear antenna sprouted from the TV. A bright yellow phone on the nightstand sported a rotary dial.

She read the tapes and her jaw dropped. Captain & Tenille. Bee Gees. Linda Ronstadt. Rod Stewart. Queen. Billy Joel. Barry Manilow. Elton John.

Before she could figure out what this meant, Rhonda popped into her room. Her college roommate’s eyes danced, and her long hair was feathered like one of Charlie’s Angels. She looked to be twenty-something, not the fifty-something she should be. Rhonda shouldn’t be in her room at all. She hadn’t seen the woman in almost thirty years, not since she’d stolen Gary.

Rhonda sauntered over and shook her shoulder. “Sleeping Beauty, you’d better get up. Don’t you have early class today?”

Colleen blinked at the ghost. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand but the vision remained. Nothing was making sense.

On a gulp she asked, “What class?”