November- "Isn't there always?"

“Isn’t there always?” retorted Mike. Something struck the street light nearby and it fell over with a clang, barely missing them. “Great, he’s aim’s improving—run faster people!”

It was a sensible order and it would’ve been better had they any way of carrying it out. Another lightning bolt struck a nearby convertible. Its lights went on and its alarms went off and the general racket, coupled with undiluted fear, was making Mike feeling positively murderous and so when Zach gave a strangled gasp and froze, causing Mike to skid to an abrupt halt, he was somewhere at his worst. “Dammit Zach! KEEP RUNNING!”

“Orange. Furry. Lots of teeth,” said Zach.

“Guys!” Nick shouted from somewhere up front.

“Zach,” Mike marched back to his friend, then jumped back when something that was orange, furry, and had a great deal of teeth lunched itself at him from behind Zach. “ARG! GE’ITOFF!”

The orange thing had attached itself to the front of Mike’s sweater like a horribly bloated piece of orange lint and refused to budge. When Zach approached it with a tentative hand it snarled, uncurled its head, and bared a set of impressive fangs at him, and Zach snatched his hand away with a reflex that might’ve impressed Mike had there not been a lightning bolt waiting (in more sense than one) to strike them down.

“Good grief,” said Zach.

“It’s not doing anything.” Mike moved tentatively, the orange bundle of fur stayed where it was like it’d grown there. “Alright, let’s move it.”

“Are you okay?”

“Let’s see, I’m trying to prevent myself from being killed and there’s a weird thing attached to the front of my sweater,” Mike decided to go for a generous helping of sarcasm. It made him feel better, sort of. Only not really. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Just a thought,” muttered Zach, as they caught up with Nick. The feat was made a great deal more possible by the fact that Nick was still carrying the girl.

In college, crazy things were known to happen on Friday nights, however, Mike felt that they had just stepped the limit. Okay, not so much stepped over the limit as zoomed over it at eighty-something miles per hour to land with the splat at the bottom of the cliff. Fine, they hadn’t gotten to the ‘splat’ part yet, and Mike would like to stay as far from that part as possible, namely by maintaining a reasonable run-for-your-life sprint.

They went down one boulevard, rounded the corner when the road stopped and sped down another street. It was late, the lights were on, the streets were empty though they could hear the tantalizing sound of TVs and dinner taking place inside houses. It sounded absurdly normal before a low rumble of thunder cut off the sounds.

Something clattered out of the many folds of whatever the girl was wearing and landed with a crack on the cement. Zach ran past it, stopped for a moment, and was about to turn back when the lightning promptly electrocuted whatever that thing was. Or had been, at this stage.

“Okay, maybe not,” said Zach under his breath.

“Hurry up!” hollered Mike, who was secretly condemning many things in his head, from meteorologists to the stale package of popcorn.

Two blocks later they realized that the lightning had stopped. They kept going another block because being frightened and adrenalin-filled, stopping and waiting didn’t appeared to be a viable option the first time round. By the forth block they realized that the sky had cleared and Mike eloquently cursed fate for all that it had put him through before leading his somewhat paranoid friends back to his great aunt’s house, where they’d originally planned to spent the weekend.

Plans, by general consensus, seldom worked out the way they were supposed to.

[edit: okay, in grand total, this is the forth time I've written this part...isn't that pathetic? On the whole though, I've decided to just write this story for the sake of writing this story. Makes it easier. Am going to stick with original depiction of Zach (also will be feeling oddly guilty if see the guy who looked like Zach in the DC again), freckles and all. Am going to develope the story without over-thinking it. Have decided over-thinking is the worst crime you can possibly commit to an existing story plot. Will stop.]