(This is poorly written, so apologies in advance.)
William awoke in a bed, lacey white sheets hiding the room from him. There was a cat sitting at the foot of the bed, and it sleepily eyed him as he sat up. He had a bandage on his head, and touching it stung fierce. The cat stretched out its back like bending jello and pawed next to him, sniffing at him. He gently patted it, and it hissed and spat at him, clawing and biting his hand and dashing off before he could react. Cringing and holding his hand, William James slid off the covers to the bed and made sense of his surroundings.
He was in a cramped room, full of books and stuffed animals. The bed was shoved up against a wall, with a mesh window overseeing the city outside. A radio blared quietly, reporting a storm warning for area codes.
He stared out the window, looking over the city. "What happened last night..?"
"I'd like to know that, too." said someone behind him. William whirled around to see the young woman from the brief few seconds he'd been in the street. She looked a little worse for wear. "My name's Amy. What's yours?"
"Williams. William James." He said.
"Okay.. William. How are you feeling? What do you remember?" Amy asked. The cat from earlier peeked out from behind her legs, purring softly.
"I'm okay, I think. My head feels weird, but it doesn't hurt. Last thing I remember is the street.. and before that, the.. cold. The darkness." Williams eyes went quiet, and he stared off into an unfathomable distance. "The storm." He pulled himself out of his strange reverie, and looked at Amy.
"The.. storm? It wasn't raining when you appeared. You know, I could have sworn I was looking right at you when you... fell. You just sort of.. came out of nowhere, but.. not. Like you were sort of always there and suddenly we could see you." Amy said, her voice quiet and afraid.
"That doesn't make sense." William said.
"No. But.. what was it like, from your perspective? Did you just spring out of nothing?" Curious, fearful eyes looked at William.
"No. I mean, yes, but there was something before that. The storm. I was on my way home in Pasadena, and-" Amy's eyes widened. "What?"
"No, finish your story." Amy insisted.
"Huh? Well.. the storm happened. It was like a really bad hurricane out of nowhere. The sky got really dark, and there was an earthquake, and.. there was screaming and howling. I was right there, when it happened. A vortex in the sky and earth.." William sat down on the bed suddenly, breathing hard. "Things.. my dad, I don't know if he.. I don't know how I got out. I just ran, and suddenly I was here."
Amy was quiet for a while. "This was yesterday for you?" She asked.
"Yeah. ..Why?"
"Well, for starters, this is Baltimore. Follow me." Amy said quietly. She left the room, and William followed her down a small hallway to another room, where there was a small bed and a computer desk. She opened up a browser and googled "Pasadena tragedy". News articles and images filled the screen. A little alarm beeped in the lower right corner of the screen.
"Pasadena was destroyed twenty years ago." Amy said. "A freak storm.. they said it was a really bad geomagnetic thing. A force of nature. The whole place was levelled."
"..no.." William stared at the images. The ground look like it had been torn apart into neat chunks, lifted or deposited within the earth.
"No one ever really found out what happened. Everything and everyone in the area was just sort of.. gone. The whole area is supposed to be really haunted, too. People hear things. We've seen things.. they say it has something to do with the magnetics messing with our head, but I don't think anyone really knows. The only team sent in to study it didn't come back. The government's closed it off until we understand what happened."
William sat down on the floor in a stupor. Amy looked at him for a while, and then looked out the window. "So you can't be from there. You wouldn't even have been born when it happened.."
"I am." William said, blinking. "I am from there. I swear. I grew up there. It can't just be.. gone."
"You took a really bad head injury. Maybe you're just remembering that stuff."
"You said you SAW me appear out of nowhere."
"..yeah. I can't explain that. I think I believe you.. but I don't know what this means."
The beeping alarm was all the sound in the room for a minute. William gestured at the computer. "What's wrong with it?"
"Oh, that? It's a weather alarm. It looks like a storm has.. actually wait." Amy clicked the alarm through to a warning.
EMERGENCY: TROPICAL STORM IN PASADENA AREA THAT APPEARED LAST NIGHT UPGRADED TO HURRICANE AS OF 15:00. THOSE IN AFFECTED AREAS, GET TO THE CLOSEST STORM SHELTER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND STAY AWARE OF NEWS AS IT IS UPDATED.
"Oh." Amy said. "That's us."
William had a dread feeling in his gut. "We need to get outside." He said with a shaky voice. "Right now."
"Why?"
"Just do it! How do we get outside?" William insisted. Amy stammered, got up, and showed William the way out, where he stumbled into the streets.
From their vantage point, they could see all the way to the other side of the city. A great mass of clouds was approaching the far end of the city, shadowy and violent. Silent gusts of wind blew against him as he stared into the distance.
Amy followed him, holding her arms in the wind. "It looks like the storm's coming in fast. We need to find a storm shelter."
"There's no point." William said. "It's the storm. It's here. It's HERE!" He pointed his finger. "Look. Can't you see it? Can't you feel it?"
Amy stared into the approaching clouds, and felt a pit of despair in her stomach, as if though she was looking at a blade flying for her heart. "..It's just a storm. A bad one. Look, come with me."
"It's the SAME storm." William said.
"..twenty years apart?" Amy said.
"Yes! No! I don't know! It's the same storm. I can feel it. It didn't stop."
"It hasn't been storming since twenty years ago!"
"It has for me." William said. Above them, the clouds rolled over. A faint rumble began to shake the ground. "It's the same. This is how it started." In the distance, buildings shook, cracks formed. A powerful force whipped through the air, blowing past Amy and William. A structure collapsed, sending plumes of dust and smoke into the air. Distant screams.
"We need to get to a shelter." Amy said, looking between William and the storm, fidgeting her fingers.
"The pictures of Pasadena.. There's no point." William repeated.
"If this is the same storm.. nothing was left in Pasadena. What are we supposed to do? HOw do we escape?"
William turned to look at Amy, looked at the storm, and then bolted. Amy took off after him. Behind them, buildings began to tumble. Water and wind gushed from the docks, surging through the streets. William ran past a building as a funnels of wind lanced from the sky and smashed into it, ripping foundations up from their roots and tossing cars into the air. A gas station collapsed into the ground besides them.
The road cracked and rose upwards, forming a cliff that blocked William and Amy. A wave of water was coming at them from behind. Amy grabbed William. "Whatever you did, do it!"
"What?!" Water was licking at their shoes, surging forward from the crashing storm.
"ESCAPE!" Amy screamed.
Something tugged inside of William. He closed his eyes and screamed, grabbing Amy and pulling it out from himself. Cold smashed into him as if he had been launched through ice. Cold, silence. The same as before, he thought. Amy was with him. The city of Baltimore simply rushed away from them through space.
The ground rushed up at him, and he collapsed in a dead field with Amy beside him.
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