Fate's Twist

Harmony Peters stood in line at the ice cream shop, looking at the threatening dark clouds in the November sky outside. What an awful day for ice cream, she thought to herself. She perused the flavors as she waited for a man with three screaming children to proceed to allow them to sample at least 2 flavors each. He looked back at her and intermittently smiled sheepishly. She didn’t smile back. 

The flavors created a stunning display of colors: mint chocolate chip, pumpkin pie, lemon icebox pie, blackberry jam, key lime pie, chocolate covered cherry, chocolate-vanilla twist, chocolate lava cake, peanut butter and jelly, poppyseed, margarita sorbet, and plain vanilla bean. 

"Chocolate vanilla twist in a chocolate waffle, please," Harmony finally got the chance to say. 

The scooper had the greasiest hair she'd ever seen and tattoo sleeves full of an odd assortment of flowers, odd symbols, and animals. He was probably around her age: late 20s. He pushed his hair back with his free hand, and she could see the clumped segments shine in the fluorescent lighting, reminding her of the storm brewing outside. It was only 2pm. Fluorescent lighting shouldn't be so bright. 

“Supposed to be a bad one,” said the ice cream scooper nonchalantly, struggling to get the misshapen mint chocolate chip ball he’d created to sit on the cone.

“What is?” Harmony asked.

The scooper gestured toward the large store windows. “The storm. I heard F4 or F5 on the radio this morning. And likely more than one.”

Kansas City weather was perhaps the most unpredictable thing on planet Earth. As Harmony stepped outside with a chocolate waffle cone of freshly scooped mint chocolate chip, she realized how much warmer it was. That was never a good sign. She looked at the U-Haul truck she had parked in the store’s parking lot, rather obnoxiously, to be quite honest. How was she going to drive a U-Haul for the first time ever to Taos, New Mexico in the middle of a tornado? But there was no other option. She’d quit her job at the university, called off her engagement, packed up her things, and turned in her last rent check to her very confused landlord. 

But New Mexico was exactly what she needed. It was going to be beautiful. She’d envisioned putting a down payment on one of those beautiful adobe houses. Maybe she’d dye her mousy brown hair orange and dress in eccentric, thrifted multicolored floor-length dresses. Or maybe she’d get dirty blonde highlights, blending in to the desert sand around her. 

“You’re not planning on driving that thing right now, are you?” The scooper rested his arms on the counter, allowing her to finally get a good look at him. He had sea-green eyes that were surrounded by thick lashes, she noticed, and broad shoulders. He looked like he did more than just scoop ice cream as exercise. 

“Yeah, I am. I moved out of my apartment today, and I need to get going,” she responded, holding out a $10 bill for him to take. He wasn’t reaching for it.

“You can’t,” he said quickly, “It’s unsafe.”

“I told you,” she said, becoming frustrated. “I have nowhere else to go. I’ll pull over if I need to.”

She dropped the $10 bill on the counter, allowing him to keep the quite generous $5 tip, and exited the building. At this point, the parking lot had cleared out. The wind was blowing her hair in front of her eyes as she walked toward the U-Haul. She heard footsteps behind her and saw the ice cream man. He was following her. 

“Look, I don’t know what your problem is—“ Harmony started to say, throwing her hands up in the air. 

“At least let me come with you,” he begged. He wasn’t going to give up. “You’re going to die if you go alone.”

“And why would I survive if you were with me?” She asked, irritated. “We’d probably both just die. I don’t know you, and I’m—“

“Because I know a place we can go,” he said. “Look at this shack behind me. You think I want to stay here? Look, my name is Lincoln. I work way out of town, my car’s in the shop, and I got dropped off today by my buddy. We can literally go anywhere. I just can’t stay there. This shit is supposed to be record-breaking today.”

Record breaking did not sound good. He did have a point. The one-room ice cream shop was about 700 square feet at best and had about 5 large windows, a tornado’s dream. 

“Okay, that’s fine,” Harmony reluctantly agreed. “But now I’m less concerned about you being a serial killer. Get in the front.”

They were on the Kansas-Missouri state line when it really started getting bad. The road in front of them was obscured by slanted rain and the sky had begun to turn an eerie shade of dark green. Golfball-sized hail began hitting the windshield, shaking the entire vehicle and obscuring the sound of the weather channel that had been coming through the speakers. She could no longer see what was in front of her; the road was completely obscured by rain, hail, and dust. 

“I don’t know what to fucking do,” she cried out, her hands shaking on the wheel, tears starting to stream down her face. 

Lincoln grabbed her hand. “Listen, this is going to sound crazy. But we have to get out of the car.”

“Are you out of your mind?” She screamed. 

Suddenly, glass shattered and fell into the driver’s seat from a particularly intense hit. She felt it cut her face, just missing her eye. It continued to pour in. The front seat was filling up with rain. He grabbed her arm again, looked her in the eyes, and stared into her soul. “We have to.”

He helped her hop over the cup holders and into the passenger seat with him. For a moment, she briefly sat on his lap. They climbed into the ditch beside the road. He laid on top of her, and she could feel his heart beating on her back. They began to hear the sound of a train. She felt him squeeze her more tightly as the sound intensified. She felt bad for judging his greasy hair earlier. 

When they finally got up from the muddy ditch, the weather hadn’t gotten much better. It was still raining hard, and the wind was still making Harmony’s hair get in the way of her vision. When she was able to push it away for long enough, she saw that the U-Haul was gone. They could see a few cars in the distance, some flipped over, some miraculously untouched. 

“Where are we going to go?” Harmony asked, shaking. She crouched down on the ground and felt hot tears mix with the cool rain that hit her face. The air smelled like a strange mix of burnt rubber and fresh grass. 

“There’s a motel nearby,” said Lincoln. “I recognize the area, at least a little bit. Let’s walk very, very fast. And hopefully it’s still standing.”

The two quickly ran in the direction Lincoln indicated. They could at least see the road now and some of the flat plains on either side, but it was still hailing. Each time a ball of hail hit their heads, they winced a little bit. When the motel came into view, it was clear that it had been hit. Windows were broken out of several rooms. One door was missing completely. A remarkably thin woman with jet-black hair and a cigarette in hand leaned on the still-intact balcony on one end. The roof, though, still seemed to be intact. 

“Let’s just go into room 103,” said Lincoln. Harmony glanced over at his suggestion. The room had an intact door but a broken-in window. 

“How do we know people aren’t staying there? This place is shady as hell,” said Harmony, backing up. 

The wind wasn’t letting up, and the rain began to pour a bit harder, making it challenging to see individual rooms and doors. She finally agreed and followed him through the window, avoiding the shards of glass as best as she could but getting stabbed near the upper lip with a particularly sharp one. 

They sat in the rusty bathtub, she on one end with her arms over her knees, and he on the other in a similar position. The walls shook, and the hail pounded on the roof above them. But it was some form of shelter. She shivered and shifted around in the tub. Her adrenaline had worn off, and she was completely drained. 

“You can sleep if you want to,” said Lincoln. He seemed shy for a second. “You can lean your head on me. I know we don’t know each other… but we kind of trauma bonded.”

She laughed and scooted in closer to him, sitting in between his stretched out legs. He looked down at her face and saw her swollen upper lip. “Wait, it looks like the glass got you.” 

He attempted to pull a shard out of the skin above her lip and she winced. He put his arms around her, and she began to let herself relax. Somehow, after all of that rainwater, he smelled good. She thought she felt him kiss her head. She’d lost all of her belongings. She’d nearly lost her life. She figured she’d allow herself this moment, just for now. 

Fate is resourceful, she thought to herself, before slowly drifting off to sleep.