Hello, Readers, Writers, and Friends,

It is again Friday. Why does it feel like we were just here a week ago. Time’s funny like that. But that means Flash Fiction Friday is here once more where I do a bit of impromptu, unedited writing on a couple of prompts for your enjoyment and my edification.

This week’s prompts are “storm chaser,” and “large wild animal.”

Most of the folks one would call storm chasers have one of two primary motives. Some of them are just looking for the thrill of the chase and the adrenaline that comes with doing something potentially dangerous. Others are searching for scientific information, tracking down a new variable that will make dangerous weather more predictable and those predictions more accurate.

But not Dwayne. Dwayne was on a very particular kind of hunt.

You see, when Dwayne was a small boy a tornado that was on no one’s radar showed up in his home town. There were few injuries, but the town was left in ruins. Most folks in his area knew to run for the shelters when the sirens started up, but being a little tyke and not hearing his mother call him once before shepherding his siblings into the cellar, Dwayne went to the basement and hid in the bathtub.

It was from this vantage that he watched as the house above him was ripped from its foundations and thrown through the air. As he looked straight up into the swirling mass of clouds and debris he saw a dark shape. A massive winged thing, beating against the currents and the clouds. It opened a serpent-like maw and crowed in triumph or frustration, he was never sure.

But he had sat there mesmerized by the monster until his mother had found him, sobbing, several hours later.

From that moment on he was dedicated to solving the mystery of what his eyes had seen. He researched anomalies that could manifest as such an illusion, for illusion he’d assumed it must be in the beginning. But the longer Dwayne hunted for a proper explanation the more he became convinced that what he had seen must have been real, not the overwrought imaginings fo a frightened child.

And then as the hunt narrowed, he found himself i disaster zones of all stripes. He’d collected a scale, a talon, strange chemical concoctions that had been spewed across buildings and sent them off for analysis.

Now he was riding with a weather crew, headed into a series of storms that had lined up as they often do through tornado alley. Two confirmed touch downs already with three more reported and the possibility of more as the night wore on.

The van swayed and bumped along as drove down a two lane highway that promised to take most people no where, but promised Dwayne it would lead him into the eye of the storm. It was in this tin can, jostling his compatriots for elbow room amongst equipment and filming gear that the wind dropped to nothing.

The driver slowed, looking out the windshield as though trying to decipher what way the winds would blow when they picked up again.

The sound of screeching metal announcing the removal of the roof, and started the others screaming, but Dwayne just looked up. Looking down into the wreckage of the van was a thirty foot dragon, wings spread wide, staring intently at the crew, like sardines in a can, waiting to be placed on toast.

The rest of the crew bolted, and took off down the road back tot he last town they passed.

The dragon blinked. First with one set of eyelids and then another. It rumbled, thunder contained in its scaled chest

“Dwayne,” it said. “Why do you seek me?”

I hope you enjoyed that micro-tale. I will be back next week with another. For now it’s off to parent crazy children who are on summer break. (pray for me). And of course I’d love to see with you made of the prompts, so feel free to post it in the comments or link to where we can find your awesomeness.

~Anika