Episode 5 — The Wind Demon Comes Calling Filed under: Dale’s Serial Files — The One Where I Fought the Weather (And Maybe Lost) Here’s ...
Episode 5 — The Wind Demon Comes Calling
Filed under: Dale’s Serial Files — The One Where I Fought the Weather (And Maybe Lost)
Here’s something they don’t tell you in storm prep brochures:
Sometimes the storm isn’t outside your house.
Sometimes, it’s waiting for you inside—and it already knows your name.
When I woke up, everything was gone.
No furniture. No walls. No house.
Just me, standing barefoot on a patch of soggy carpet floating inside an endless swirling cloud.
Lightning arced through the mist like cracks in the sky. Wind screamed from every direction.
And in the middle of it all… there it stood.
The Wind Demon.
It wasn’t a monster, not in the traditional sense. No horns, no fangs, no glowing eyes.
It looked like… me.
But taller.
Skinnier.
Hollowed out by too many sleepless nights spent watching storm updates and plotting wind speeds on napkins.
Its eyes glowed like Doppler radar screens, and its voice—when it spoke—was my own, warped by static:
“You called me, Dale. You named me every time you checked the radar.”
Aunt Nettie’s voice floated in, slick as oil:
“Oh, sugar, you do have a knack for conjurin’ the uninvitable.”
The Wind Demon reached toward me, and I swear I could feel every gale-force gust I’d ever panicked over whipping through my bones.
“You’ve fed me for years,” it rasped, “every hurricane you watched, every alert you chased, every storm you wished would come your way just for the thrill.”
It wasn’t wrong.
I’d spent years glued to the forecast, fixated on every cloud swirl like it was some divine message meant just for me.
And here it was—my obsession, my paranoia, my hunger for disaster—given shape.
It took another step forward.
My feet wouldn’t move.
Aunt Nettie hummed, somewhere nearby:
“Time to decide, sugar. You either dance with it… or let it sweep you clean off the map.”
That’s when Verity appeared again.
No grand entrance this time—just there, standing on a floating porch swing, as calm as if she were sipping iced tea.
She didn’t even look concerned.
“Fascinating,” she mused, watching the Wind Demon coil around me.
“Self-referential atmospheric manifestations. Very rare. Very… messy.”
I begged her to zap it, banish it, pull out some kind of cosmic vacuum cleaner—anything.
She gave me a dry little smile.
“I can’t interfere in this part. It’s too personal.”
She pointed at the Demon, then at me.
“This is a storm only you can end.”
Great.
The Wind Demon raised its hand—my hand—and I saw the storm swirling inside its palm, pulling pieces of me toward it. Photos. Childhood toys. Old blog posts. VHS tapes.
Everything I’d ever hoarded, physically or mentally, dragged into its vortex.
It grinned.
“Let me in, Dale,” it whispered, soft as falling rain. “We’re already the same.”
Something clicked in me then—maybe it was fear, maybe it was stubbornness, maybe it was Aunt Nettie cackling in the background—but I realized something.
It wanted me to surrender.
It wasn’t just my obsession—it was my permission.
So I did the only thing I could.
I laughed.
Loud, wild, unhinged laughter—the kind that echoes through an empty house during a blackout.
And I shouted right in its swirling face:
“You can take the storms, but you don’t get me.”
I turned my back on it—literally—and walked away.
And just like that…
Silence.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my house.
Same old creaky walls. Same half-watched VHS tape still sitting on the table. Same weather radio, quiet as a tomb.
Aunt Nettie’s voice drifted lazily from the unplugged TV:
“Oh, sugar… you’re not out of the woods yet. You just changed the forecast.”
And Verity?
She appeared once more—this time sitting calmly at my kitchen table, sipping from my mug like she owned the place.
“Congratulations,” she said, setting her mug down.
“You survived the preliminary cycle.”
She gave me a small, unsettling smile.
“But storms… always return.”
I didn’t ask her to elaborate.
Some things, you just know.
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