there are times when i am screaming
    so loud that it's a hurricane
but the only palm tree i want to sway
           simply will not bend

so i want to tell him to hold onto his nuts
because it's about to get a lot rougher.

CHALLENGE: Character Based off Wizard of Oz and a Burn Victim

       Asbestos and mold filled Donald's lungs like smoke. The ceiling above him creaked, heavy and loud, like some great troll was dragging his feet and club over what had once been smooth, sleek, hardwood floors. There were cracks and holes that showed Donald the second floor bathroom, but he couldn't see what was making the noise. He assumed it was probably a rock-monster that discovered the same heaping of healthy air that Donald was currently trying to filter through a bandana. Crouched beneath the kitchen table, he cocked his shotgun. Donald had run into this home because it was in a quaint little suburb that had clearly been abandoned the moment the Wave set in. There had been no evidence of life, and it seemed like the perfect place to hide from a treewalker; the front door was far too small for a leafed abomination to hulk its roots and branches through. He had been hoping he would find some nonperishable foodstuffs to add to his ever-growing horde of cans and dried vegetables, but all he had found was a house already claimed. Donald did not have any hopes of fending off a rock-monster armed with only a shotgun, which meant he would have to wait out the treewalker's passing and find another house to take refuge in.

         Plaster covered Donald's hair and glasses, and his hands shook nervously at the stock and trigger. He had never been a hunter or a sportsman, and learning how to use a gun had been a game of trial and error. The second floor crackled and popped like a bonfire. Donald bit his lip, and lay low on the ground, the hiking boots he'd stolen from a dead man stuck out of the backend of the table. That had been a downer – he’d had to abandon his treasured sequined footwear for a necessary exchange. As of yet, he hadn't mastered the art of hunting monsters as he had storms, but he had at least made some progress on sneaking up on them - he and the shotgun waited close to the ground, watching the bottom of the closed kitchen door with a pair of squinted eyes and a quickening heartbeat.

        Donald was wearing a pair of thick welding gloves, a habit he'd gotten into on the first day of The Storm, right after the shock had set in and instinct took over. A fire-breather had gotten into the neighborhood and nearly bit his left hand off - as it was, there was a distinct trail of a burn leading up to his elbow and that disappeared beneath his safety gloves, and every so often, when he could actually feel it, it hurt. He was just lucky he still had use of it, he guessed, or else he would have never survived up until now.

        He had never imagined the fates would turn like this. Every signal, every measurement, every degree pointed to an average storm; the Gulf winds from Mexico and the southbound Canadian winds were destined to meet and twist at Peidmont, Oklahoma; only long enough for a minor evacuation of the town though. Where were the electromagnetic frequencies that lead to corruption of nature? They hadn’t been calculated, because as far as scientists knew, until that very moment that the charges exchanged, no such current existed.

        No scientist but Alan Jensen that is. Currently, he was crouched next to Donald, his jacket zipped up over his mouth so that his breathing was muffled. It was usually muffled anyhow, considering half of his nostrils and lips were charred away from previously encountered fire-breathers from the last time this had occurred. Yes, there had been a last time, this occurrence was not the first; granted, it was the first time it had been full scale an effected so many people at once.

“We could ushe a fire-breather right now,” Alan grumbled, shifting the weight on his elbows and looking up through the damaged roof at the lumbering arbutus casting the shadow on the complex. His companion was mildly horrified at this suggestion; surely turning one fowl beast on another would unleash only chaos on the two men cowering beneath it all. And besides, as of yet, all the beasts seemed to coexist quite peacefully, or rather, ignorantly. There were too many discombobulated humans tearing about that were ripe for the picking to worry about other hell-beasts. Donald was a meek storm-chaser, purely nomadic, and didn’t much like the idea of taking charge in situations like this. Sure, Alan was all for being Mr. Macho man, and he was good at it too, since he’d experienced this before, but that didn’t mean Donald could rely on him solely. After all, before this had happened, they had only known each other for about three hours. Donald had innocently enough, been doing his job. Following coordinates to the next major storm, and a tornado was due in Piedmont at the exact location where Alan happened to live. Coincidence be it, they had met when Donald had been driving into the blocked off town, as opposed to the rest of the population driving out of it. Alan’s van was blocking the road block of outgoing traffic and the officer’s head was hanging in the driver’s side, arguing with Alan. Intrigued, Donald pulled over (seeing that there was nobody on his side of the road anyhow), and with his camera, walked over to the squabbling citizens. Their voices were tense, and one side of the argument was that both lanes should open to speed up the evacuation procedure, and the other was in the voice of safety, a blatant no to the suggestion. He’d walked right into a thumb pointing backwards at him.

“There Alan, people like him are the reason we just can’t.” The policeman hadn’t sounded completely sold on his side of the argument, but he was still solid in his decision.

“People like him,” Alan muttered angrily, shrugging his shoulders and concealing his face. At the time, Donald had thought he was doing this because of the camera, now he realized that it was to shield his face from human judgment. He quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and forced his car door open, the civil servant hardly had enough time to back out of the way. “People like ‘im coming into town and chashing after our shtorms, ishn’t that right.” His index finger was driven into Donald’s clavicle accusingly. “You won’t be finding no ordinary tor-nay-do here boy.” His eyes (which poked just above his collared jacket) were slit at Donald, glowering at him with all his might. This had made Donald exceptionally uncomfortable, and he looked towards the policeman for help, of which he found none other than the middle-aged man rolling his eyes.

As it had happened, Alan had become so frustrated, he marched on over to Donald’s truck, pushing him right back into the driver’s seat as Donald dotingly asked him question after question about what he meant by ‘no ordinary tornado’. The man never answered, only complaining about people considering him crazy or senile before his time; only because he’d witnessed something unfathomable. Just as Alan was convincing Donald to turn around and go back, to get out of the 10,000-mile radius as soon as possible, an engine revved and the two men quickly looked to Alan’s former van; it was being driven away by the law in order to get the rest of the traffic moving. And it wasn’t coming back. The two of them had both been in awe at the circumstance, but, seeing as Alan was the loon of the down without a ride, he was forced to get in the passenger seat of Donald’s vehicle. Only complaining about the smell a little as they drove into the city. They’d driven to Alan’s house and reluctantly, Alan made lunch; finally explaining all about why this storm was not regular. He used scientific terms, calculations, statistics, all things Donald could understand and calculate for himself in order to realize the validity of the theory.

An hour and a half later, the winds met, and the storm began to brew. It was violent, tearing and uprooting buildings and nature from all around, throwing it into the funnel of chaos like they were lettuce being tossed like a salad. Then the currents strengthened, with all caught up in the Twister, and the lightning from above striking the electrons of the ground, there was a massive surge of power. Physical, uprooting power that spanned over the entirety of Oklahoma, pillaging most of it on site; the farther out cities, like where the two were right now, remained only mildly scathed. The monster’s hometown was Piedmont, that place was now forsaken.

“Or Dynamite,” Donald finally replied, crawling out on his elbows after the stomping from above ceased to stop. “There are a lot of things we could use right now.” The addition to his suggestion was wholeheartedly depressed, and his shoulders slunk once he said it. The shadow of the treewalker had also vanquished, and the two men had the house to themselves.

“Let’s loot and keep going,” Alan muttered, on his hands and knees dislodging himself from the previous shelter he’d been hiding beneath. “We keep in the boundariesh of Oklahoma we’ll either perish by government hand, or monshtersh.”

It was true. The government would act on Oklahoma, no doubt quarantine would already be in effect, but the two survivors had to press on nonetheless, because without hope, they had nothing. Nothing whatsoever