Episode 3 — The Forecast That Never Ends Filed under: Dale’s Serial Files — The One Where I Got Stuck in Weather Purgatory (and It Was Hu...
Episode 3 — The Forecast That Never Ends
Filed under: Dale’s Serial Files — The One Where I Got Stuck in Weather Purgatory (and It Was Humid as Hell)
I should’ve known better than to watch a VHS tape handed to me by gas station storm cultists.
But in my defense, it was labeled, which in the world of cursed tapes counts as full disclosure.
I popped it in.
Static.
Then an old weather broadcast, complete with neon radar swirls and a slightly panicked meteorologist sweating through his pastel tie.
He kept saying the same thing over and over:
“A slow-moving system is stalling over the region… expect repeat conditions… expect repeat conditions…”
His voice warped, stretching like taffy until it was barely words anymore—just a looping drone of “repeat conditions… repeat conditions…”
I blacked out somewhere between the fifth and fiftieth loop of that tape.
When I woke up, it was morning again. Same weather alert blaring on the TV. Same gray sky outside. Same exact storm on the radar.
And outside my window?
Same squirrel digging in the same flowerpot.
Déjà vu hit me like a wet sock to the face.
I figured maybe I’d just had a bad night, too much Mountain Dew, not enough oxygen—but then I checked the calendar.
Still Tuesday.
Same Tuesday as yesterday.
The phone rang.
I didn’t answer.
I already knew who it was—it’d been ringing at the exact same time every morning for the past two… well, same mornings.
And Aunt Nettie?
Oh, she was loving this.
Her voice crackled through the static on the TV, syrupy sweet:
“Oh, sugar, didn’t they tell you? Storms linger when they’re invited.”
I grabbed the remote and flipped channels, trying to drown her out.
Didn’t matter.
Every channel, every device, every screen repeated the same warped forecast:
“Expect repeat conditions… expect repeat conditions…”
I tore out of the house, determined to break the cycle.
The streets were the same.
The storm clouds, the same.
The same lawn flamingos leaned at the same angle on the same front lawn.
I thought maybe if I made it back to the Buc-ee’s, I could undo this mess.
But every road I took somehow circled back toward my house.
Didn’t matter if I took a left, a right, or drove in reverse like a maniac—I’d end up right back in my driveway, staring at that same cursed stormfront.
Aunt Nettie’s voice followed me, playful and sharp:
“Round and round you go, sugar. You called the storm, now you’re part of its pattern.”
And then—because nothing’s ever simple in my life—my old emergency weather radio turned itself on and hissed:
“Message for Dale T. Doll. Please remain indoors. Forecast calls for… indefinite looping.”
I’m not gonna lie—I nearly passed out right there on the lawn.
But just as I was about to curl up on the welcome mat and accept my fate, there she was again.
Verity Bleu.
Cool as a cucumber in kitten heels, standing on my sidewalk like she’d been there all along, holding an umbrella that didn’t seem to mind the wind.
She glanced up at the storm and said, matter-of-fact:
“You’ve entered a recursive weather anomaly. Highly inefficient.”
I sputtered something about VHS tapes and weather cults and evil radios.
She simply raised a brow.
“The real question isn’t how to break the loop,” she said. “It’s whether you should.”
Then, she vanished again—just like that.
Aunt Nettie’s laughter rippled through the clouds overhead:
“Better hurry, sugar. You’ve only got forever to figure it out.”
And with that, I stumbled back inside, stuck in my own personal hurricane rerun, wondering if I’d ever see Wednesday again.
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