White, puffy clouds scurried across the sky in a jagged pattern, and to Jason seemed to be racing toward him, as if to attack and destroy. He knew he’d drunk too much vodka after Mattie had found the condom, slapped him across the face, and threw up on his silk shirt. But he didn’t care. He just had to get out of that dump before Mattie tossed any pots and pans at him and gave him a concussion or something.
The wind picked up and Jason heard thunder in the distance. Ordinarily he loved those July thunderstorms, but not this evening. Still light out after eight on this Minnesota evening, Jason ran across the field and took cover in the blue shed. He’d no idea who owned it, but he didn’t care.
“Who the hell’re you?” a toothless old man asked. He sat on the floor, his back up against the wall.
“My name’s Jason. What’s it to you? I’m coming in from the storm.”
“Get the hell out of my place, isn’t yours to stay. Shoot,” the man said, waving. Jason took him in – a faded flannel and plaid jacket, too warm for the summer, combat boots with holes in them, long and greasy brown-gray hair, sunken eyes and hollow sockets. Homeless, Jason thought, just like him. Mattie’ll change the locks before he gets back.
The little house began to shake. Jason looked out the window. “Tornado’s coming, old man. We’d better seek safer cover.”
“Nowhere I know. Lay low, man. Isn’t any place we can go.”
Jason heard something like an approaching train, a deafening whirl of swooshing sounds with metallic clanks and wet swirls, and then he felt them and the house being lifted from the ground, rotating around at ever-faster speed, climbing into the funnel, seeing debris fly by the window, and then, before he knew it, landing with a thud.
“You all right, man?” the old guy said. “Some kind of tornado. But we’re here.”
“I’m all right. Let’s go investigate.”
They opened the door and went out – and discovered they’d landed it Munchkinland. “So it really is true, after all,” Jason said.
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