The storm started at around 7:30 PM just south of Clarkdale. The wind came to the motel first before any thunder or rain. I heard it all whipping around outside, pushing around loose newspaper and tearing off car paint with sand. The rain started when I was in the shower so I didn't notice right away. If I had I might have tried to bust out earlier. As soon as the TV signal died, the sirens started going off. I don't know what for. Maybe tornadoes or gale force jets. Maybe flash floods on a patch of earth that'd been parched for 360 consecutive days. My neighbor, the kisser, packed up and left just a couple minutes after the sirens started. I admit, I panicked a little and yelled for him to stay. I still couldn't get past the cactus flower Sid had hung above my door. In fact, I think its radius increased. I couldn't even sit on the edge of the bed without feeling sick for it. Things were getting desperate.

I'd never heard rain come down so heavy. It sounded like I was living behind a waterfall. I couldn't get to the window to check out the damage. When I tried I just ended up dry heaving for ten minutes. I started to get antsy so I soaked a towel in a sink-brewed perfume of bar soap, pillow mints and a stray ounce of vodka hiding away in my backpack. Wrapping the towel around my face, I made my way to the window and tried to concentrate on the fresh, soapy scent in the fabric. When I peeked through the blinds, I saw twenty feet of water in an agitated chop swallowing the town and its 3-story architecture limit.

I tried to open the door with the towel's help, but it was still too powerful. No recourse and no regard for myself, I ran as best as a crippled man can run and I bashed through the door in an explosion of nausea, hatred and love. Once outside I got soaked through my clothes almost immediately. It wouldn't be long before the water got up to my floor.

I hurried two doors down and screamed for Sid to open up. I bashed out the window with an ashtray, but when I got inside I saw that Sid and the gold-haired woman were already gone. The bastard had abandoned me. I looked around for a note or some stupid little symbol, some origami or a lotus made out of cucumber, but no joy. The two of them just up and disappeared. They still had my kiss on them. My lips were ice cold.

The flood water was littered with urban flotsam. I worked my way over to a bobbing vending machine and paddled it with a plunger. Pushing my way out of Clarkdale, I caught a westbound current that moseyed out of the weather until my life was nothing but black water and stars. And pain. Deep agony of the leg, the heartward lines therein, wishes for a dive bar at the ass end of America burning down around me and a whiskey rocks. What in azure blazes made him think I was done having a teacher?