A storm named after her

From heaven, she sent lightning to a small town. From heaven, she watched her people scatter.

She was angry with them. A fat, silver-haired man wailed from his porch and she laughed - her kindergarten teacher. The market woman with the kind face and dulcet voice wept as her cribs burned. Charlotte poked at shame but the moment passed. She lit a church on fire, watched the devout burn from their knees up. 

Don’t feel bad because she didn’t. Of course they wronged her — had you guessed already? — accused her of sin, called her a dog, fed her worse. There were no innocents for she wilted alone; the noose contacted her flesh, the prayers her brain. Even her mother stayed from the ledge, told the neighbors she had no idea what happened to her angel-eyed daughter and cried that morning, baying at the sunrise. Her street flashed first, her mother’s prayers aloft. 

Flames licked windows and Charlotte laughed. She didn’t care for the monster; it felt wholly. She enjoyed the barbarity, the pettiness of her wishes from the branch. Sevcn days of pure bliss she gave them before she pointed her anger, generously and favorably. 

Coals danced on rooftops and jars, dirt and cows before she dreamt peace. Scorches embedded in the grass, ash snowed from rooftops, bitter smoke ran past town. And all the while Charlotte giggled; everything was so funny at once, so weird. What was she doing in heaven with such desires? Who would give her this power and still not confiscate it? This was heaven, she was sure– the plush seat, the heliotrope sky – but how could that be with such nasty bravity? Her brother asked the clergy once if you could punch in heaven or if that would transform to a wave. She sneered – the same way they had as her feet punted air and her hands clutched rope. They hadn’t weighed her properly.

From her cloud, Charlotte ushered a torrent. The rain doused fires and she watched people look to the sky and thank the heavens — who? her? — for what they mistook as ending. But she wasn’t ready to close the town’s suffering yet and instead, sapped and jaded, flooded the handy river, drowned the children and their mothers, swamped her world and theirs. Watch them swim, hallucinate a just God with plans better than mine. 

The waves swept roads and cried, grew tired but never slept. For hours she danced in heaven, flailing her arms like an unruly toddler until she grew bored and frustrated with death. People tried swimming but collided with underwater houses, crashing through the windows and drowning in the drawing room. The same people that had just commended the smog now cursed the fog – how could you? they howled. How could you? she muted. 

Next: brutish wind that skirled shingles and whipped fences miles from their posts. Her classmate Marge, all pointy chin and dragon teeth, gripped a branch and gritted her teeth seconds before Charlotte forwarded an extra gust at her tail. Marge slammed into a fence post, sending her teeth to hell and flattening her chin. Marge pointed and whispered after the rumors started. Marge helped her with spelling, brought her extra ham at lunch when Charlotte's pigs dropped, taught her how to put dress shoes on without having to undo the laces, wished her happy birthday with cake, sang in front of boys. 

Marge was annoying but not mean so Charlotte felt sadistic for gossiping about her parents. Marge was selfish but not undeserving so Charlotte pitched her the opposite, punishing the mercenary for the poacher’s greed. Charlotte hollowed watching her friend die and imagined a reverse world where they hugged and slept in one bed on weekends, chortling at sheets. Marge’s breath left, Charlotte waved goodbye.

Revenge obsessed Charlotte before her insides molded and rotted, leaving a stench she forgot. A week ago today, she was marched to the ledge. She was told there’d be a final trial, a chance for her to explain that no, of fucking course she’s innocent are you people stupid? She had rehearsed a speech even, planning to beg her city for mercy but they had lied to her again. Part of her heart darted when she realized for she had forgotten the premediation by then anyway and knew she’d screw it up, anger them anyhow, inculpate herself for the fortune. The clerk dragged her to the tree, she cursing and spitting like a tom cat and feeling stupid for hope. Her neighbors lauded the man holding rope and she watched her teachers and classmates edge in teeth first. 

Everything she loved was everything she knew at home. The dandelion pearls and her father’s tobacco nested in her heart until the earth wretched her soul. She was 19 but her heart was 60, having met every love and grief of which the human body is capable at so young. She just got here but she was also past curfew. Her girlfriends were swiftly hideous bitches on the ledge while she felt vile herself - were they not kind but confused as she had been only a week ago? Were they not doing everything for the first time as she was? She pretended to misunderstand the comfort behind silence, the ease that comes with patient grace. I would never, she thought, but she knew and ignored, I would maybe? It’s easy to decide you wouldn’t, it’s harder to decide you will. It’s easiest to torture bandits, to point without a gun, dance, and write bullets as God’s wishes. The market woman glowed and deluged in one night: Charlotte had checked back in every few hours to witness rotting flesh and extruded eyes.  

By morning Charlotte was exhausted. She watched the survivors pick at recoup, stowing on her forearm and crying from yawns. She felt no better. She felt as though she’d been lain forever and maybe she had, and maybe the night lasted for centuries for she watched people die in instants, stamping the curdled screams and spoiled pleads.