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Adventure Creative Nonfiction Contemporary

  The Mysterious Disaster

                                     By Alexa P.

I woke up with a startle. There was a loud bang in my house in the middle of the night. I brushed it off, thinking it was one of my parents, but the noise continued. I was creeped out and pulled my covers over my head. I knew everybody had woken up, so I went out to look. The strange thing was that all of them were still sleeping. I thought I was hallucinating, but then I heard the bang again. It was coming from the first floor of the house, one story below the bedrooms. I decided to check it out even though I was terribly afraid of the dark. I turned on all the lights downstairs and found a note at the bottom of the stairs. It read:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN   FROM ANONYMOUS

Hello, the government told me to write this letter to this house. Nobody else knows this, but a massive storm is coming to this city, destroying everything here. Evacuate ASAP. It’s supposed to hit next Wednesday at 5:47 p.m. Please believe me. The weather forecast says it will be sunny, but their calculations are wrong. Warn everybody quickly, and attached to this letter are four plane tickets and a kennel for you, your family, and your pet guinea pigs to New York. The plane leaves the following Monday at 3:15 p.m.

Sincerely, Anonymous

I was shocked when I read this and thought it was fake, but then I realized it was real. The weather had been cloudy and rainy all month, and I had never considered it carefully. I returned to bed with the note, and I would tell my family in the morning.

The following day, I ran downstairs, where my family was having breakfast. I told them the news, and as I thought, they didn’t believe it. They told me it was probably one of our neighbors pulling a prank, but I knew in my heart that the storm would come. I spent the rest of the day convincing them that it was true and showed them the tickets. They were getting tired of my voice and forced me to stay in my room until I had control of myself. They didn’t understand. We had to leave immediately. I had to persuade them quickly, or we would miss our flight.

I had less than one week to make them believe me, so I didn’t stop. Finally, they said they might as well go on a trip, so we packed our bags and headed to New York. We arrived after a 5-hour plane ride and settled down in our hotel. We would stay there for two weeks or at least until the storm subsided. We were tired and went to bed. The next day, we had some fun and went out to explore. It wasn’t our first time there, but it was still fun.

We had a blast in New York, but questions were still in my mind. Is the storm real? Would it destroy everything? Did we make the right choice listening to the “mysterious” person? Well, two days later, we saw the news. It turns out the person was telling that truth all along. There was, in fact, a storm. But not just any storm. It was one of the most significant storms I had ever seen. It rained cats and dogs, and everything was being blown away. People were tossed into the air and flung what seemed like miles until they landed. They had nowhere to stay since their houses were wrecked and disappeared instantly as soon as the wind hit their part of the city. They tried to keep them in their basements if they had one but failed to be able to make it there.

The storm was thought to be going on for two weeks but would go on for four weeks! I knew before the second or third week came, all the people would be gone or highly injured, and everything would be ruined and demolished. It was tragic. Thankfully for us, my family and I were safe in New York, but we truly felt bad for those who had to endure this dreadful event.

Four Weeks Later:

It had been four weeks since the storm had begun, and it was, at last, coming to an end. We still decided to stay in New York for no less than a month more and tried to forget about what had happened.  But, as anyone would know, you can’t forget about the probably most significant moment of your existence. You will always have it somewhere deep inside you.

A Couple of Months Later:

Welp, there was a slight change of plans. We decided to move to New York and leave our old house in the past since we got the money for it back. A lot of things were unique in our old and memorable place to me, but someday, I had to let it go anyway, and I guess that day was Moving Day. A few months after the storm, I had started a new life in New York. I was going to a completely random school and had to make new friends. I got along with everyone quickly, and as I sat down on my chair in my new school in a different state, I realized I was going to have a wonderful life in New York, my new home.

In the end, I still didn’t figure out who the mysterious person was. How did he/she know that the storm was coming? Why did he/she give the note to my family? It will always remain a mystery but we were thankful for the person who did this. The storm changed my life even without me experiencing it. I had reset my entire living and had a fresh start all over again in New York. Even though our house was destroyed, we knew we would always remember the memories it had helped us make.

August 09, 2023 23:49

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1 comment

Tim Rathz
12:49 Aug 17, 2023

Hi Alexa! I enjoyed your story. It is definitely a very interesting premise, with lots of potential. I am curious as to what the loud banging noise was in the beginning that woke up our main character. Maybe some description of the family and dialogue so the reader can get a little more into the characters. Maybe also describe the storm a bit more. Why was it so massive? Why was there no warning? What state is our character coming from that makes New York safe? That kind of thing. Keep it up, because you definitely have very good, imaginati...

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