Heavy droplets of rain crashed against the cream brick walls of the apartment building. Its windows were tested against the sheer force of the hurricane. Rain has layered against city streets and gutters. A thick coat of rainwater had covered the concrete roads and sidewalks, stop signs had been turned over from the wind. The city was empty. The walks which has been littered with tourists looking to enjoy what little landmarks Wells had to offer, had now been shuffled off into the town shelter, but one man remained.

That one man stood atop the cream building looking down upon the clear streets, smothered in water and refuse. He thought about his own life, where he was to go. He didn’t want to be ordered inside a small room to hide from the devastating storm. He wanted to remain where he was. He wanted to go home. He stood upon the brick rail guard, looking down on the streets. No one would remember him, no one would put flowers on his coffin, not that he liked flowers to begin with. No doves would be released upon the news of his death. He thought of the cafe` that would forget his order. He thought of the postman who would misplace his few letters. He thought of the priests, and doctors, and townsfolk who would forget him, who would leave him to rot in his empty apartment, alone and left behind. No one would mourn him.
A voice called from behind him. It was a police officer, young and blonde, standing in the shelter of the doorway which led to the stairs. “What are you doing still out here?! There’s a hurricane, y’know? You need to be inside the shelter!”

“I could say the same for you...” The man replied, clutching the wet collar of his raincoat to shield himself from the ever pounding rain.

“Let’s not play that card, sir, with all due respect. We need to get you inside!”

The man saw no reason in trying to dissuade the officer, so he walked back with him to the stairs can walked down. Even inside the concrete walls, the storm was still loud and clear. The plastic coated stairs were drenched in rain water. The officer was scolding him for being outside, and disregarding city advice, but he didn’t care. The dim light of the hallway lit their path to the second flight of stairs where the officer continued to ramble about the storm, and the man still didn’t care. That man’s name, was Booker Moss. He was the town hermit, who lived alone in his three bedroom apartment. He was regarded as a haggard old man, though he was only forty-six years old. His disheveled brown hair was soaked, and his glasses now sported drops of condensation. The plastic yellow raincoat had not done its job, and he was still wet, and cold.
He and the officer had passed his flat, Number Four. The door knob was pristine from under use, and the mailbox was left untouched, save for the mailman who always treated the receptacle out of respect for the old widower. He was notorious for yelling from his flat at his young, irresponsible neighbors for making the slightest sound in the dead of night. He was revered by children, accusing him of being some warlock who feasted on the youth of Wells, that being why all his neighbors were suddenly older, when, really, the families with younger children had simply outgrown their small apartment. He was also known as a vampyre, and a mummy, and a generally wicked old man. But Booker was none of these. He was only an older man who enjoyed his solitude, and required nothing from the people around him. He stayed inside, and fed his birds. Although, he feared his precious connection from the world had been scared away by the omnipresent storm.

The officer and Booker had reached the front door of the apartment complex. “Now just go across the street and ask for the-”
“I’m not an old man,” Booker scolded. “I know the way to the damned shelter. Don’t patronize me!”
“I meant no disrespect, I on-”
“I know damned well what you meant, now leave me be!”

His worn brown loafers sloshed against the small sea of water that covered the now abandoned streets. The wind was brutal, pulling trees into an unnatural curve. Posters whipped and spiraled in the air, left to the mercy of the wind. Disconcerting sounds of metal being bent came from the green lamp posts that littered the street corners. Booker thought about how he should be worried about the future of the town, or how well it would persevere through the hurricane, but he found himself worrying solely about his bluejays. He worried about their nest, and the mothers newly born chicks.

The old, colonial main hall had come into view, past the whipping wind and rain. Men and women were still filing down the old, wooden emergency exit on the side of the building into storm cellar. He walked toward the line of refugees when another officer stopped him. “Name and address, please.” Booker sighed, and dug in his back pocket for his wallet. Inside was his driver’s license. In his photo, his face was sullen and uninterested, much as it always was. He removed his ID from its protective plastic sheath, and thrusted it towards the officer’s face. “Alright, you’re good. Head on in and Officer Bankwright will give you your spot in the cellar.” No producing any sign of understanding, Booker simply slumped back in line, and waited to get inside. Children, also waiting, were crying and clinging to their mothers and fathers. Mothers would hug and kiss their children to calm them, and comfort them, while fathers would rub their heads. Booker hated the thought of being cramped in a small room with these emotional madmen, but it was this or the storm. A younger woman, in an officer’s uniform and clipboard was checking off however many people were entering the shelter. She looked at Booker and nodded. Booker remained indifferent. “Do you need help getting inside, sir?” She asked sweetly. “Do I look like a damned paraplegic? I can walk down a flight of stairs on my own!” He scolded, reasserting his blindingly yellow raincoat back on his shoulders. She was taken aback, and merely said: “Suit yourself, mister...”

The shelter walls were cold and concrete. Clusters of wire and grey pipes lay in assorted columns at each corner. The floor, concrete as well, but of light colour, was cold enough to send chills through Booker’s shoes. Inside were shelves, with bottled water and junk-food organized upon each layer. Cots lay in an array, each with a family sitting on it, crying and mourning the possible loss of their homes and businesses. Booker sat down on his cot, which Officer Bankwright had directed him to, and put his head in his hands.

Across the dark room was a boy and his father. The boy’s complexion was sick, and pasty. His eyes, encircled in darkness, glazed around the room in a sort of daze. His eyes met with Booker’s, but swiftly found interest elsewhere. His head nodded and bobbed in a tired manner, but his father kept nudging him and reawakening him. Booker felt concern for the child, but not enough to get up and make a fool of himself trying to assist when he knew nothing of his condition. There was a family on the cot next to Booker’s, crying and hugging each other. One of the man stood up and walked over to him, asking if they could use his cot for their sick child. Booker glanced over at the other child, with the dark circles around his eyes, and nodded. “Sure.” He replied, gathering his things to go stand in the corner. “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.” The mother cried, taking her sick child and laying in gently on the cot. The child could not have been more than a year or two old, and Booker had a soft spot for children. The baby was pale, and reached out for its mother as she lay him down to soft at his feet. She felt the forehead of the child, and brought her opposite hand to her face to wipe a tear.

He had wanted to help, but he didn’t know enough about children to. He was uncomfortable around the child, so he quickly walked to the corner a few feet away from his old cot, now given to the ill child.

On his way over, he had grabbed a bottle of water from one of the many shelves that now littered the room in an unorganized fashion. He uncapped it and took a sip. Stale. The city must’ve kept these down here from the last bomb scare a few years back. He put the bottle cap back on the top and set it beside him. He looked at all the people, clustered together in this tight room, easily more than one hundred small families were in the room, clinging to each other for life. Booker laughed to himself: After the storm clears up they’ll all be back to whatever they were doing and not give a damn about each other again. They’ll all be back to their selfish ways. Booker felt a small pang of loss, thinking about families, but he quickly got over it, and picked up his water again. His nose curled as he drank it. His eyes wandered back to the child with the strange eyes. His was still sitting with who Booker believed to be his father. He was holding an emergency radio, hoping for words to come out, but all that left that radio was static and fragments of conversation.

All at once, the radio blasted with sound. Clear words and reports emanated from its small speaker. It spoke of the hurricane. “Hurricane-... Upper coast... Winds... Forty-five mi-...”
Booker closed his water and walked towards the boy who held the radio. He took the radio and turned the knob on its face. Surfing through other frequencies to find a clearer station. Fragments of other news channels chimed in while their frequency was present for a split-second, but eventually the voice came back, saying: “The Hurricane on the West Coast hit mostly Upper Maine. Southern cities and towns have been left mostly unaffected, although most have been damaged. Winds are still pushing at 45 mph near the East Coast, but some towns are being taken off of the Hurricane Warning. These towns are:.” people started to crowd around the radio, hoping for Wells to be called. Dozens of other cities were called until Wells’ named was listed.

People cheered and jumped in joy, but Booker remained unaffected. He was tired, and simply wanted to go back home. He wanted nothing more to do with sick children and cellars. Men and women with their children lined back up near the cellar door, while officer checked them off of their list. Outside, the landscape was still wet, and the wind was still shrieking past corners and stop signs. Small pieces of buildings were now on the ground, being torn off of the sides of offices. Stop signs and lamp posts were now horizontal, slowly sliding across the pavement. Trash bins now laying on the street. Booker now heard screams behind him. A group of people were devastated that the oldest tree in Wells had now been upturned by the storm. He became angry, “Bunch of grown men and women blubbering over a damned tree.” He grumbled, crossing the street, wary of any trash bins still being thrown around by the wind. A thick skin of mud now surrounded the apartment complexes door. Booker groaned, and tried to step over it, but one of his shoes became caught in the muck. He tore the shoe out of the grime and carried it in his left hand.
Now inside, he scraped his over upon the welcome at to no avail. His left shoe was now cloaked in a combination of mud and rain water. Not wanting to walk like an idiot, Booker took off his opposite shoe, and now held them both in his hand. His walked up the flight of stairs to the second floor, and turned his key inside of door number four’s lock. He opened the door and stepped inside. He threw his shoes into the bathroom near the door, and leaned back against the door. He sighed deeply and took his raincoat off as well to hand it on the wall rack along with his keys.

It was evening now, and the apartment was dark. Booker tried to flick the light switch to brighten the room, but the power was cut by the storm. He fumbled around the room until he came to his kitchen, barely illuminated by the setting sun and opened the drawer near the sink. Inside was a small colony of tea candles and matches. He held a candle an lit it with a struck match. An amber glow now reigned throughout the small counterpart of the apartment. He checked the stove to make sure it still worked, and the flames lit underneath the burner. He was relieved, at least the gas was still on. He turned off the stove, and turned the cold water valve on the sink. Plumbing still worked. Booker let out of soft sigh, and least now he could shower and eat something after being in the damned storm cellar.

The glow of the candles was enough to reveal to pea green walls of the apartment. Large mahogany bookshelves littered the entire wall on the left of the kitchen. A large, red armchair faced it with a small, dark end table sitting beside it with a lamb and several books laying on it. Three windows lined the wall opposite of the kitchen’s small rectangular opening, in which the whole base room of the apartment could be seen. Dusty blinds covered the window, revealing small rays of light from the town hall across the street.

Stack of books, five or six tall littered the room, covering virtually every surface that it could
manage. While an underused contrabass lay silent in the corner near the bedroom door, its view obstructed by the thick bookcases.

Booker sat down in the red chair, and slumped inside. Its old wooden frame creaked and groaned underneath him as he lay a candle down upon the table beside him. He pulled the cord on the lamp, no reaction. The power was still out.The dim,ambient light the arose from the kitchen and the end table wasn’t suitable reading light, so Booker stood up again and walked to the bedroom door. He picked up the contrabass and held the strings underneath his fingers. He gripped the bow in his right hand, and chimed a low A hum. He shifted his hand down towards the bridge, and the contrabass whined in compliance. He didn’t know many songs, but there was always one that he remembered. “Czardas Concerto”. The strings wailed and twirled in melody, the harsh minor tones rolling off the the twirled wire. Dust of the rosen wafted off into the air at each stroke of the bow. The beat shifted in his head, and the tone much like the tempo became quicker. His hands whirled around the strings, the bow becoming faster and higher at each measure memorized. Through his mind he could hear the accompaniment from when he was younger.

A large stamping came from upstairs. A man was screaming from downstairs for Booker to be silent, but he ignored the ill-tempered request. His hands continued along the large bass, and the mellow tones floated out from in between the wood. The last note was struck, and the last sound that reached out from Booker’s head was of melancholic harmony. He rested the instrument back upon its rest and sat back down. That song had brought back so many memories. Outside, the rain had returned. It pounded against the thick glass of the wooden framed windows. Booker sighed, while he like the rain, he had enough of it from the hurricane. He smirked at how lucky Wells was to have only gotten the tail end of the storm, and that it only lasted three hours. He had heard that Machias, up along the coast a few hours, was getting the storm now.

Booker checked his wristwatch. 9:58 PM. It had only been two hours since he had left the shelter, yet it felt like an age. He yawned and slumped back in his chair. Suddenly the room became bright and blinding. The lamp upon the end table became and white beam of light against Booker’s eyes. The power was back on, not he could at least clean himself without falling over in the shower without cracking his own skull open. He walked through the bedroom door and met the bathroom door on the right side of the room. It was cold, and the walls were covered in tile. He turned on the water valve in the shower and stared into the mirror above the sink. He thought about this morning, standing above the town waiting for Death to take him. He thought about trying again, finally sinking the deed. He stripped his clothes and stepped in the shower. Resting his head against the plastic wall, he thought about where he had thought his life was going. He figured he would be using his degree in biomedical engineering to get himself a nice house, a wife, maybe even kids.

He felt the hot water run down his arms and legs, watching the water drain back into the pipes to restart its endless cycle. That’s what life was. An endless cycle, doomed to repeat what you did the first day, and expecting a different reaction. Insanity. When he left college, he felt he was made for something. He felt he was going to change the world of science. Booker scoffed at his foolishness. He should’ve known, as smart as he was, that human life was never destined for anything. Only failure.

He turned off the valve, and let the remaining water run down his back. He grabbed the towel off of the rack, and wrapped it around his waist. He donned his bath He Again, as he passed the mirror, he looked into it. Seeing a foggy reflection of himself inside, he opened the cabinet that it hid.