It was three days after the storm...

It was three days after the storm, and Marie still had not left her apartment. She was trapped inside with her Dad and Atlas, all of them slowly going crazy. Cabin fever they call it, when one starts to become irritable, and restless resulting from isolation in a confined place. Their food supply was dwindling; a few cans of chicken noodle soup, a handful of evian water bottles, and a few cups left of dog food. Marie wasn’t sure when she would be able to go to the grocery story or even leave her apartment because the destruction was simply devastating and all of the grocery stores within walkable distances were closed. All of the power lines were down and there was no electricity so Marie sparingly checked the news on her phone which provided only more bad news. The news broadcasted that it would be another couple of days until everything was up and running. Another couple of days until Marie could escape her Dad who was a stranger.

For hours on end, Marie sat in her overstuffed, large, black chair and peered out the window. Her thoughts troubled her and looking out the window was the only relief because it detached her mind from her body being in her apartment. The streets desolate but destroyed. Turned over cars lined the street adjacent to Pointe Place and trees were down everywhere. However,

Marie didn’t focus on the destruction, because the whole time Marie sat in her chair, one thought endlessly crossed her mind; her conversation with Mr. Gatollia. Questions plagued her mind, “How did he know me? What was his connection to my family?” Although she wished to not admit it that it didn’t have to do with her father, she knew it to be true. Marie knew that Mr. Gatolli and her own father had worked together and she also had a feeling that whatever it was, it went wrong. Marie knew that in the next couple of weeks something was going to happen she just couldn’t quite pinpoint what that “something” was. She thought back to a conversation with her Mother when she was 13 and a huge storm had hit their region. Her mother’s words that permanently imprinted themselves in Marie’s memory was, “When there’s a bad storm, there’s always some bad change coming with it. You can’t have one and not the other.”