I’m sitting at a desk outdoors – the kind with a hutch that has a few shelves & cubbies for books, notepads, cd’s. The weather is gorgeous. There’s a green smell in the air that comes with spring.

On one of the shelves of the hutch, I have my red walkie-talkie – one that my husband and I have used on our trip back from New Jersey when we drove both cars down. Nothing’s come from the walkie talkie in what seems like months. I’ve been sitting at this desk for months. Just sitting.

It’s definitely spring. The sky quickly turns dark and the green smell is replaced with the electric smell of a thunderstorm. I don’t move, even though I know I’ll get soaked.

A voice crackles from the walkie-talkie. Someone very familiar, but the voice is distorted, turning to static each time lightning strikes.

“Alexia… come…”

Buckets of water start pouring from the sky. And still I sit listening to the crackling, familiar voice. Water everywhere – running down the hutch, forming puddles on the desk, saturating my clothes & soaking through to my bones. The walkie-talkie is getting as saturated as I am – catching in the little holes for the speaker, filling all the little indentations where the knobs and buttons are.

The unintelligible voice is still coming through but all I hear through the static is “Alexia… come.”

Then silence.

The water’s done its work on my walkie-talkie and fries the electronics. My familiar voice is gone. My walkie-talkie is dead…