My Collection of Short Stories & Published Works
My Collection of Short Stories & Published Works
My Collection of Short Stories & Published Works
My collection of writings and published stories for you to enjoy!
My collection of writings and published stories for you to enjoy!
My collection of writings and published stories for you to enjoy!
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Stories Menu
And Then the Flood
And Then the Flood
He had the lightning dream again––the last flash so intense it struck him awake. Richard blinked hard, took a deep breath, and reached for his eyeglasses, his fingers adding new smears to old smudges. It was only a few minutes past midnight; he hadn’t slept long. His head fell back on his sweat-stained pillow. Weeks had passed without a single thunderstorm to break the cycle of stifling heat. No thunderstorms, no lightning. Richard craved lightning the way a junkie craves drugs. He ached for it––the satisfying thrill of it. Exhilarating white-hot flashes that affirmed his faith in a higher power, and that interrupted life’s unending monotony. But lately lightning had only come to him in dreams, taunting him like an itch he couldn’t reach––impossible to ignore, impossible to quell.
Knowing that sleep would not return, Richard wrapped himself in a flimsy blue bathrobe, went into his parents’ bedroom, and opened a gold-filigreed jewelry box on his mother’s bureau. He removed her beaded rosary and coiled it in the palm of his hand. He made the sign of the cross and called upon St. Joseph to protect his modest home. A hurricane had entered the Gulf of Mexico. Its presence threatened his house and its contents, which were not simply the physical remnants of his life and that of his deceased parents; they were all he had left in this world.
From there, he trudged into the bathroom, wincing when he flicked on the light and caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. Dark circles surrounded darker eyes. He’d once been thought quite handsome. Everyone had said so. Leading-man material. But at age fifty-nine, his features had begun to coarsen and his sallow skin sagged. His once thick, mahogany-colored hair had thinned, turning brittle and gray.
His shuffling footsteps echoed as he entered the dark, cluttered kitchen. Ignoring the unwashed dishes in the sink, he opened the refrigerator and smelled the milk. It had only just begun to spoil.
He had the lightning dream again––the last flash so intense it struck him awake. Richard blinked hard, took a deep breath, and reached for his eyeglasses, his fingers adding new smears to old smudges. It was only a few minutes past midnight; he hadn’t slept long. His head fell back on his sweat-stained pillow. Weeks had passed without a single thunderstorm to break the cycle of stifling heat. No thunderstorms, no lightning. Richard craved lightning the way a junkie craves drugs. He ached for it––the satisfying thrill of it. Exhilarating white-hot flashes that affirmed his faith in a higher power, and that interrupted life’s unending monotony. But lately lightning had only come to him in dreams, taunting him like an itch he couldn’t reach––impossible to ignore, impossible to quell.
Knowing that sleep would not return, Richard wrapped himself in a flimsy blue bathrobe, went into his parents’ bedroom, and opened a gold-filigreed jewelry box on his mother’s bureau. He removed her beaded rosary and coiled it in the palm of his hand. He made the sign of the cross and called upon St. Joseph to protect his modest home. A hurricane had entered the Gulf of Mexico. Its presence threatened his house and its contents, which were not simply the physical remnants of his life and that of his deceased parents; they were all he had left in this world.
From there, he trudged into the bathroom, wincing when he flicked on the light and caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. Dark circles surrounded darker eyes. He’d once been thought quite handsome. Everyone had said so. Leading-man material. But at age fifty-nine, his features had begun to coarsen and his sallow skin sagged. His once thick, mahogany-colored hair had thinned, turning brittle and gray.
His shuffling footsteps echoed as he entered the dark, cluttered kitchen. Ignoring the unwashed dishes in the sink, he opened the refrigerator and smelled the milk. It had only just begun to spoil.
***
***
Dire warnings had scattered most of the city’s residents like milkweed on a summer’s breeze, but not Richard. A life of isolation, with mirrors that only reflected the past, had rooted him firmly in place and made the thought of leaving home far more frightening than facing any storm, even one as large and powerful as this, which forecasters had christened Katrina.
After flipping through a collection of vinyl recordings he’d amassed years earlier, Richard lovingly slipped his chosen record from its well-preserved jacket and protective plastic sleeve, and placed it on the turntable. He sat, removed his thick eyeglasses, and held his breath in anticipation. Sounds of an orchestra surged forward, pierced by a woman’s anguished cry. Maria Callas. He adored the way that she left notes dangling and conveyed emotion with the slightest shift of vibrato. As she sang, his head swayed. He felt the kinship of their shared, real-life miseries. Richard considered Callas a soul mate. She had died alone, of a broken heart.
“Mi chiamo Fedeltà. Un soffio è la mia voce che al nuovo dì morrà …” Reading the translation in the libretto from Adriana Lecouveur, Richard sighed with sympathetic resignation. To the casual listener, the beauty of that aria might have masked its bitter poignancy, but he never listened to music casually. For him, music delivered messages––some reflective, others predictive. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that he had been through many other storms. If I die in this storm, who would know? Who would care? Would anyone even come to check on me? It had been years since he’d confronted such profound loneliness.
Richard turned off the lights and pushed open the living room curtains. He positioned a chair before the picture window, and sat as though looking at a movie screen, anticipating bolts of forked lightning, but seeing only rain, illuminated by streetlight, as it pelted against the window and blurred his view of the trees that swayed and shook in front of his house.
As the storm intensified to a full-throated rage, all chaos and jumble, Richard shifted from opera to works by Brahms and Beethoven, composers he thought an appropriate match for the ferocity of the weather. Whooshing noises outside intruded, along with random booms and crashes––a barrage of percussive commotion that reminded him of a child with a new set of drums, banging away without the slightest concern for rhythm. He watched the wind spray rain into misty veils and spirals that glowed like shimmering gauze woven with threads of nickel–– silvery dark. Grateful that the electricity had not gone out, he changed the music once again, deciding that an even better complement would be Wagner, played full blast, letting the opera build as his three maiden warriors sang their stirring battle cry, “Hojotoho!” The Valkyries would defy the storm’s wrath, and stand up to the winds that rattled the doors and window casings like thieves testing points-of-entry. “Hojotoho!” But when something large smashed against his living room window, making a sound as sudden and jolting as gunshot, and cracking the glass, Richard leapt from his seat and dropped onto the floor, the fingers of his hands interlaced behind his head, as though he was a prisoner of war.
Simultaneously with the music reaching its crescendo, the walls of his house began to heave. He watched with amazement as the large oval mirror hanging above the sofa swayed and scraped against the plaster wall. When the whole house started to tremble as if caught in an earthquake, adrenalin forced him to jump up and move, but provided no direction. He spun in place. Where do I go? What do I do? The clatter outside had now been joined by a chorus of creaking and cracking sounds coming from inside. Terror pursued him into his bedroom, where he threw himself across the bed. Enough! Make it stop! Please, Lord, make it stop!
Within minutes, a loud pop punched through the cacophony and announced the end of electrical power. Thrust into total darkness, he jammed his fingers in his ears, longing for deafness to accompany his blindness. If this was to be his end, he pleaded with God to make it come quickly and without pain––to have a bolt of lightning strike him and reunite him with his parents. He counted aloud. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One, two, three, four… over and over; anything to escape the din outside and inside his head. Eyes shut so tightly that he saw a kaleidoscope of geometric patterns, he began to sing. Kyrie Eleison. Christe Eleison. Lord have mercy on us. Christ have mercy on us.
Dire warnings had scattered most of the city’s residents like milkweed on a summer’s breeze, but not Richard. A life of isolation, with mirrors that only reflected the past, had rooted him firmly in place and made the thought of leaving home far more frightening than facing any storm, even one as large and powerful as this, which forecasters had christened Katrina.
After flipping through a collection of vinyl recordings he’d amassed years earlier, Richard lovingly slipped his chosen record from its well-preserved jacket and protective plastic sleeve, and placed it on the turntable. He sat, removed his thick eyeglasses, and held his breath in anticipation. Sounds of an orchestra surged forward, pierced by a woman’s anguished cry. Maria Callas. He adored the way that she left notes dangling and conveyed emotion with the slightest shift of vibrato. As she sang, his head swayed. He felt the kinship of their shared, real-life miseries. Richard considered Callas a soul mate. She had died alone, of a broken heart.
“Mi chiamo Fedeltà. Un soffio è la mia voce che al nuovo dì morrà …” Reading the translation in the libretto from Adriana Lecouveur, Richard sighed with sympathetic resignation. To the casual listener, the beauty of that aria might have masked its bitter poignancy, but he never listened to music casually. For him, music delivered messages––some reflective, others predictive. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that he had been through many other storms. If I die in this storm, who would know? Who would care? Would anyone even come to check on me? It had been years since he’d confronted such profound loneliness.
Richard turned off the lights and pushed open the living room curtains. He positioned a chair before the picture window, and sat as though looking at a movie screen, anticipating bolts of forked lightning, but seeing only rain, illuminated by streetlight, as it pelted against the window and blurred his view of the trees that swayed and shook in front of his house.
As the storm intensified to a full-throated rage, all chaos and jumble, Richard shifted from opera to works by Brahms and Beethoven, composers he thought an appropriate match for the ferocity of the weather. Whooshing noises outside intruded, along with random booms and crashes––a barrage of percussive commotion that reminded him of a child with a new set of drums, banging away without the slightest concern for rhythm. He watched the wind spray rain into misty veils and spirals that glowed like shimmering gauze woven with threads of nickel–– silvery dark. Grateful that the electricity had not gone out, he changed the music once again, deciding that an even better complement would be Wagner, played full blast, letting the opera build as his three maiden warriors sang their stirring battle cry, “Hojotoho!” The Valkyries would defy the storm’s wrath, and stand up to the winds that rattled the doors and window casings like thieves testing points-of-entry. “Hojotoho!” But when something large smashed against his living room window, making a sound as sudden and jolting as gunshot, and cracking the glass, Richard leapt from his seat and dropped onto the floor, the fingers of his hands interlaced behind his head, as though he was a prisoner of war.
Simultaneously with the music reaching its crescendo, the walls of his house began to heave. He watched with amazement as the large oval mirror hanging above the sofa swayed and scraped against the plaster wall. When the whole house started to tremble as if caught in an earthquake, adrenalin forced him to jump up and move, but provided no direction. He spun in place. Where do I go? What do I do? The clatter outside had now been joined by a chorus of creaking and cracking sounds coming from inside. Terror pursued him into his bedroom, where he threw himself across the bed. Enough! Make it stop! Please, Lord, make it stop!
Within minutes, a loud pop punched through the cacophony and announced the end of electrical power. Thrust into total darkness, he jammed his fingers in his ears, longing for deafness to accompany his blindness. If this was to be his end, he pleaded with God to make it come quickly and without pain––to have a bolt of lightning strike him and reunite him with his parents. He counted aloud. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One, two, three, four… over and over; anything to escape the din outside and inside his head. Eyes shut so tightly that he saw a kaleidoscope of geometric patterns, he began to sing. Kyrie Eleison. Christe Eleison. Lord have mercy on us. Christ have mercy on us.
***
***
With dawn, his spirits lifted. The storm had subsided. He and his house had been spared. His modest world hadn’t been destroyed. He stretched out on the bed and allowed himself to relax. His breathing slowed. He let go and, for a time, was enveloped in blankness, awareness floating far above him. Reaching it would have required more energy than he could muster, so he
remained immersed, eventually drifting into dreams of his mother. She stood before him, her hair hanging thickly as it had when she was young. He took her hand. They began to dance, effortlessly and without words. She drew nearer. Richard leaned forward, filled with anticipation. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his face. “Wait,” she whispered in his ear. “It’s not over.”
Richard bolted upright in bed. He put on his glasses, and glanced around the room. What’s not over? He parted the curtains above his headboard. The weather had calmed further. The sun was shining. The room sparkled with unusual brightness. Light flickered and flitted, casting patterns on the walls and ceiling. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, lowered his feet to the floor, but then jerked them up again. Water covered the floor. Had a pipe broken? Did the toilet overflow? Had he left a faucet running? He headed for the bathroom, sloshing through ankle-deep water in an eerie silence. He waded into the living room, splashing though the water as a child might, but without a child’s delight; dirty water that rolled over the baseboards and along the walls.
Richard hesitated before allowing himself to look outside. As he feared, water had transformed his entire neighborhood into a swamp. Though houses in this part of town stood several feet off the ground on brick pilings, their foundations were not high enough to avoid the incursion, and had already disappeared. His foot brushed against a submerged copy of Saturday’s Times-Picayune. He was able to read its headline, which warned, “Levees could be topped.”
He understood. The worst had happened; and since the city’s pumping stations could not function without electricity, the floodwater would continue its invasion. It wasn’t long before he knew that his only choice was to seek refuge in the attic. Richard pushed through the murky brown water, now thigh deep, and retrieved his mother’s rosary, as well as his two favorite Maria Callas record albums. Not knowing if he might be stranded for hours, and never suspecting it would be days, he remembered a flashlight kept on top of the china hutch. He grabbed it as well, although its batteries were old and weak. After pulling down the folding stairs in the hall ceiling, he paused to take a last look at his ruined home, and caught sight of a small creature swimming frantically in the water outside. At first he thought it might be his neighbor’s cat, but then realized it was a rat frantically trying to save itself.
With dawn, his spirits lifted. The storm had subsided. He and his house had been spared. His modest world hadn’t been destroyed. He stretched out on the bed and allowed himself to relax. His breathing slowed. He let go and, for a time, was enveloped in blankness, awareness floating far above him. Reaching it would have required more energy than he could muster, so he
remained immersed, eventually drifting into dreams of his mother. She stood before him, her hair hanging thickly as it had when she was young. He took her hand. They began to dance, effortlessly and without words. She drew nearer. Richard leaned forward, filled with anticipation. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his face. “Wait,” she whispered in his ear. “It’s not over.”
Richard bolted upright in bed. He put on his glasses, and glanced around the room. What’s not over? He parted the curtains above his headboard. The weather had calmed further. The sun was shining. The room sparkled with unusual brightness. Light flickered and flitted, casting patterns on the walls and ceiling. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, lowered his feet to the floor, but then jerked them up again. Water covered the floor. Had a pipe broken? Did the toilet overflow? Had he left a faucet running? He headed for the bathroom, sloshing through ankle-deep water in an eerie silence. He waded into the living room, splashing though the water as a child might, but without a child’s delight; dirty water that rolled over the baseboards and along the walls.
Richard hesitated before allowing himself to look outside. As he feared, water had transformed his entire neighborhood into a swamp. Though houses in this part of town stood several feet off the ground on brick pilings, their foundations were not high enough to avoid the incursion, and had already disappeared. His foot brushed against a submerged copy of Saturday’s Times-Picayune. He was able to read its headline, which warned, “Levees could be topped.”
He understood. The worst had happened; and since the city’s pumping stations could not function without electricity, the floodwater would continue its invasion. It wasn’t long before he knew that his only choice was to seek refuge in the attic. Richard pushed through the murky brown water, now thigh deep, and retrieved his mother’s rosary, as well as his two favorite Maria Callas record albums. Not knowing if he might be stranded for hours, and never suspecting it would be days, he remembered a flashlight kept on top of the china hutch. He grabbed it as well, although its batteries were old and weak. After pulling down the folding stairs in the hall ceiling, he paused to take a last look at his ruined home, and caught sight of a small creature swimming frantically in the water outside. At first he thought it might be his neighbor’s cat, but then realized it was a rat frantically trying to save itself.
He had the lightning dream again––the last flash so intense it struck him awake. Richard blinked hard, took a deep breath, and reached for his eyeglasses, his fingers adding new smears to old smudges. It was only a few minutes past midnight; he hadn’t slept long. His head fell back on his sweat-stained pillow. Weeks had passed without a single thunderstorm to break the cycle of stifling heat. No thunderstorms, no lightning. Richard craved lightning the way a junkie craves drugs. He ached for it––the satisfying thrill of it. Exhilarating white-hot flashes that affirmed his faith in a higher power, and that interrupted life’s unending monotony. But lately lightning had only come to him in dreams, taunting him like an itch he couldn’t reach––impossible to ignore, impossible to quell.
Knowing that sleep would not return, Richard wrapped himself in a flimsy blue bathrobe, went into his parents’ bedroom, and opened a gold-filigreed jewelry box on his mother’s bureau. He removed her beaded rosary and coiled it in the palm of his hand. He made the sign of the cross and called upon St. Joseph to protect his modest home. A hurricane had entered the Gulf of Mexico. Its presence threatened his house and its contents, which were not simply the physical remnants of his life and that of his deceased parents; they were all he had left in this world.
From there, he trudged into the bathroom, wincing when he flicked on the light and caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. Dark circles surrounded darker eyes. He’d once been thought quite handsome. Everyone had said so. Leading-man material. But at age fifty-nine, his features had begun to coarsen and his sallow skin sagged. His once thick, mahogany-colored hair had thinned, turning brittle and gray.
His shuffling footsteps echoed as he entered the dark, cluttered kitchen. Ignoring the unwashed dishes in the sink, he opened the refrigerator and smelled the milk. It had only just begun to spoil.
***
Dire warnings had scattered most of the city’s residents like milkweed on a summer’s breeze, but not Richard. A life of isolation, with mirrors that only reflected the past, had rooted him firmly in place and made the thought of leaving home far more frightening than facing any storm, even one as large and powerful as this, which forecasters had christened Katrina.
After flipping through a collection of vinyl recordings he’d amassed years earlier, Richard lovingly slipped his chosen record from its well-preserved jacket and protective plastic sleeve, and placed it on the turntable. He sat, removed his thick eyeglasses, and held his breath in anticipation. Sounds of an orchestra surged forward, pierced by a woman’s anguished cry. Maria Callas. He adored the way that she left notes dangling and conveyed emotion with the slightest shift of vibrato. As she sang, his head swayed. He felt the kinship of their shared, real-life miseries. Richard considered Callas a soul mate. She had died alone, of a broken heart.
“Mi chiamo Fedeltà. Un soffio è la mia voce che al nuovo dì morrà …” Reading the translation in the libretto from Adriana Lecouveur, Richard sighed with sympathetic resignation. To the casual listener, the beauty of that aria might have masked its bitter poignancy, but he never listened to music casually. For him, music delivered messages––some reflective, others predictive. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that he had been through many other storms. If I die in this storm, who would know? Who would care? Would anyone even come to check on me? It had been years since he’d confronted such profound loneliness.
Richard turned off the lights and pushed open the living room curtains. He positioned a chair before the picture window, and sat as though looking at a movie screen, anticipating bolts of forked lightning, but seeing only rain, illuminated by streetlight, as it pelted against the window and blurred his view of the trees that swayed and shook in front of his house.
As the storm intensified to a full-throated rage, all chaos and jumble, Richard shifted from opera to works by Brahms and Beethoven, composers he thought an appropriate match for the ferocity of the weather. Whooshing noises outside intruded, along with random booms and crashes––a barrage of percussive commotion that reminded him of a child with a new set of drums, banging away without the slightest concern for rhythm. He watched the wind spray rain into misty veils and spirals that glowed like shimmering gauze woven with threads of nickel–– silvery dark. Grateful that the electricity had not gone out, he changed the music once again, deciding that an even better complement would be Wagner, played full blast, letting the opera build as his three maiden warriors sang their stirring battle cry, “Hojotoho!” The Valkyries would defy the storm’s wrath, and stand up to the winds that rattled the doors and window casings like thieves testing points-of-entry. “Hojotoho!” But when something large smashed against his living room window, making a sound as sudden and jolting as gunshot, and cracking the glass, Richard leapt from his seat and dropped onto the floor, the fingers of his hands interlaced behind his head, as though he was a prisoner of war.
Simultaneously with the music reaching its crescendo, the walls of his house began to heave. He watched with amazement as the large oval mirror hanging above the sofa swayed and scraped against the plaster wall. When the whole house started to tremble as if caught in an earthquake, adrenalin forced him to jump up and move, but provided no direction. He spun in place. Where do I go? What do I do? The clatter outside had now been joined by a chorus of creaking and cracking sounds coming from inside. Terror pursued him into his bedroom, where he threw himself across the bed. Enough! Make it stop! Please, Lord, make it stop!
Within minutes, a loud pop punched through the cacophony and announced the end of electrical power. Thrust into total darkness, he jammed his fingers in his ears, longing for deafness to accompany his blindness. If this was to be his end, he pleaded with God to make it come quickly and without pain––to have a bolt of lightning strike him and reunite him with his parents. He counted aloud. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One, two, three, four… over and over; anything to escape the din outside and inside his head. Eyes shut so tightly that he saw a kaleidoscope of geometric patterns, he began to sing. Kyrie Eleison. Christe Eleison. Lord have mercy on us. Christ have mercy on us.
***
With dawn, his spirits lifted. The storm had subsided. He and his house had been spared. His modest world hadn’t been destroyed. He stretched out on the bed and allowed himself to relax. His breathing slowed. He let go and, for a time, was enveloped in blankness, awareness floating far above him. Reaching it would have required more energy than he could muster, so he
remained immersed, eventually drifting into dreams of his mother. She stood before him, her hair hanging thickly as it had when she was young. He took her hand. They began to dance, effortlessly and without words. She drew nearer. Richard leaned forward, filled with anticipation. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his face. “Wait,” she whispered in his ear. “It’s not over.”
Richard bolted upright in bed. He put on his glasses, and glanced around the room. What’s not over? He parted the curtains above his headboard. The weather had calmed further. The sun was shining. The room sparkled with unusual brightness. Light flickered and flitted, casting patterns on the walls and ceiling. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, lowered his feet to the floor, but then jerked them up again. Water covered the floor. Had a pipe broken? Did the toilet overflow? Had he left a faucet running? He headed for the bathroom, sloshing through ankle-deep water in an eerie silence. He waded into the living room, splashing though the water as a child might, but without a child’s delight; dirty water that rolled over the baseboards and along the walls.
Richard hesitated before allowing himself to look outside. As he feared, water had transformed his entire neighborhood into a swamp. Though houses in this part of town stood several feet off the ground on brick pilings, their foundations were not high enough to avoid the incursion, and had already disappeared. His foot brushed against a submerged copy of Saturday’s Times-Picayune. He was able to read its headline, which warned, “Levees could be topped.”
He understood. The worst had happened; and since the city’s pumping stations could not function without electricity, the floodwater would continue its invasion. It wasn’t long before he knew that his only choice was to seek refuge in the attic. Richard pushed through the murky brown water, now thigh deep, and retrieved his mother’s rosary, as well as his two favorite Maria Callas record albums. Not knowing if he might be stranded for hours, and never suspecting it would be days, he remembered a flashlight kept on top of the china hutch. He grabbed it as well, although its batteries were old and weak. After pulling down the folding stairs in the hall ceiling, he paused to take a last look at his ruined home, and caught sight of a small creature swimming frantically in the water outside. At first he thought it might be his neighbor’s cat, but then realized it was a rat frantically trying to save itself.
Awards
Literary Award
The Outing” — Winner, Stories Through the Ages Baby Boomers Plus 2022 International Short Story Contest
The Outing” — Winner, Stories Through the Ages Baby Boomers Plus 2022 International Short Story Contest
The Outing” — Winner, Stories Through the Ages Baby Boomers Plus 2022 International Short Story Contest
Editor’s Choice
Counting the Ways” — Editor’s Choice, Ignatian Literary Magazine, University of San Francisco
Counting the Ways” — Editor’s Choice, Ignatian Literary Magazine, University of San Francisco
Counting the Ways” — Editor’s Choice, Ignatian Literary Magazine, University of San Francisco
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© 2026 Alan Gartenhaus
© 2026 Alan Gartenhaus