La Tormenta (The Thunderstorm)

It was the middle of the night. The lights had gone out earlier that evening, leaving the whole street a dark, inky black. Vaguely, my subconscious became aware of the sound of rain splashing noisily against my bedroom roof. I pulled the blankets more securely around me, sighed, and drifted back into my dreams. Then, kaBOOOOOOOOOM, a huge thunderclap broke above my head. I started awake, yanked my blankets up to my chin, and instantly was aware of the ferocious storm raging outside my window.

Sheets of rain slammed themselves against the building. Lightening flashed, illuminating the dark room in silvery light. Slowly, I crept over to the window and peered outside. Wind whipped the trees outside, knocking leaves of their branches. Rain lashed at the ground, drowning everything in sight. Thunder rumbled, grumbled, and moaned its way across the sky. Lightening accompanied these apocalyptic cracks from the sky. As the lightening flashed, I began to count, “one one-thousand, two one-thousand, EEK!” CRAAAAACK BOOOOM KABOOOM sounded the fierce thunder. Abandoning my nightly observations, I hopped back into bed, listening to the storm rage directly above my head. Was this the beginning of Hurricane Dean that was planned to hit the Yucatán? “I’ve never been in a hurricane,” I thought, “I’ve never been in a tropical storm either. Are there tornados here?” Apparently emergency mode was capturing my senses.

The storm dragged on into the night until finally I could count to six one-thousand, then seven one-thousand, then ten one-thousand as the storm edged itself away from my little home. As the thunder subsided and the rain resumed its gentle rat-a-tat-tat beat on the ceiling, I felt my eyes droop, lulled into the rainy night lullaby. “Goodnight, storm. Goodnight, rain. Goodnight, thunder,” I whispered before surrendering myself to sleep.