The scenario: You’re caught in a torrential downpour. Lightning blinds you and thunder thumps throughout your body. Wind uproots a nearby tree. The building you’re in is being torn apart. Water levels rise around your neck and you don’t know when it’ll stop. Time is running out. There appears to be no escape from the relentlessness of this rampaging storm.
It sounds more like a scene from a movie.
It isn’t.
Every year, someone drives their car into a swollen creek and gets swept away. The warning signs were there. It’s happened many times before. The danger was real but some drivers think they know better and drive into floodwater anyway.
Golfers die in storms too.
Players head out for a quick nine as a storm approaches. One waves a metal stick into the air — a bolt of electricity leaps between the highly charged cloud and the ground via a pitching wedge. Death shouldn’t have happened because golfers have died this way many times before. Lightning isn’t new and electricity has always been dangerous.
Child storm victims.
Kids are fascinated by rising waters. Their street becomes a river and a surfboard is dragged out of a cupboard for fun times. Underwater vortices don’t discriminate between surfboards, debris and child’s play. Small bodies are churned against logs and rocks, turned into meat paste with ease. It’s sad but not unexpected. Young people die in storms too.
Pedestrian deaths like these shouldn’t occur. We know the consequences of violent storms. We should know better — but we don’t. We continue to dice with death, believing we know what violent truly means.
The Surrogates.
Those who have the right to claim to be caught out were properly deceived. A change wasn’t forecasted. There weren’t any warnings. Their storm arrived on a sunny day.
I don’t blame The Surrogates for succumbing. I tricked them on purpose. They found themselves at the wrong place and time. Their job was to suffer in place of another — because that one won’t go near rain. She hides from the nastiness in a heartbeat. You won’t catch her outside. She stays inside to keep safe and dry.
The Surrogates get wet for her. They receive her pleasure but suffer her pain. Without these alternates, I’d go mad. My internal storm would devour me and I wouldn’t be able to tell you this story.
Meteorological storms come from unsettled air masses. Psychological ones are the result of an unsettled mind. One too many beatings change a person. I know, they changed me. Like a caged animal that’s been cornered and tormented, something inside breaks. I broke — and now I’m a storm on a rampage.
My advice about surviving storms is to not go out in such weather. If you’re an online dater, unfortunately, your weather is already turning dark. My storm is nearer than you think. Lightning will strike. I’ll make sure you’ll get wet and suffer like the others.
It’s just a matter of time, my dear surrogate.
Five women’s bodies are discovered after the nights of thunderstorms. Their spouses are suspected of the crimes, but it becomes clear that someone else is responsible. There’s no blood and few clues. A storm photographer who specialises in taking pictures of lightning may be the only witness.
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