I've always been so fascinated by storm chasing, and I got the inspiration for this on a stormy car ride home one day. Feedback is appreciated.

"Blown Away"

“I can’t do it anymore.”

Cameron paused with a bite of gravy-soaked mashed potatoes halfway to her mouth. Well, she thought, a little shell-shocked as she gazed across the small dining table into her boyfriend’s eyes. This is…sudden. Feigning ignorance, Cameron went ahead and swallowed the food on her fork. “Can’t do what, honey?” she inquired pleasantly.

Keith huffed and leaned forward, his jaw set in that haughty manner Cameron never had liked. Instinctively, as Keith shook a finger in her face, Cameron sat back in her chair. “I just can’t stand by and watch you get yourself killed!” he hissed.

Nodding briefly to herself, Cameron thoughtfully sipped her soft drink. Just for kicks, she looked around her in a concerned fashion and looked back to Keith with wide, faux-confused eyes, as if to say, ‘Why, honey, whatever could you mean? Our waitress isn’t really a crazed ax murderer poised to strike, and the old man in the corner always wears that sour expression. No one here has it in for me.’ Both of them, however, knew what he was talking about: her storm chasing.

Keith pounded a fist on the table, making everyone in the little diner jump. “Don’t give me that look. I refuse to spend another minute wondering whether you’ll come back to me in your truck or a hearse after the next tornado you chase!”

“So don’t.” Cameron shrugged brazenly.

His jaw opened and closed, fishlike; clearly, this wasn’t the response Keith had expected to his little outburst. “But you…aren’t you telling me all the time how news stations in Tornado Alley like to hire retired storm chasers as meteorologists?” he spluttered.

“Yeah,” she laughed incredulously. “Retired storm chasers.”

“It’s me,” said Keith darkly, “or storm chasing.”

“You or…” Cameron laughed again, this time a few seconds longer. Honestly, him or her calling in life? Could Keith get any more full of himself? Pressing her napkin to her lips for a moment, Cameron replied, “I think you know the answer to that.”

It took a moment for her statement to register in Keith’s mind. Before he could say anything, though, a warning siren began to wail mournfully outside. Cameron glanced out the nearest window. The winds were whipping the trees into a fierce, wildly uncoordinated dance. Lightning cracked through the sky like a white-hot whip, and thunder followed the lightning with a crash that shook even Cameron not two seconds later. Heavy clouds had moved in since they’d entered the diner, the sky had grown dark….

A first-class storm was brewing, and it begged her attention.

Cameron glanced at Keith, who had narrowed his eyes. Him or storm chasing? The solution was all too easy. Pulling out her wallet and getting to her feet, Cameron dropped enough money on the table to cover her part of the meal. “You wouldn’t….” Keith breathed, watching her with his jaw agape.

“Close your mouth, Keith,” Cameron bade the slack-jawed, arrogant young man coolly, giving a hand signal for the rest of her fellow storm chasers to get ready to hit the road. “Wouldn’t want folks confusing it with a storm shelter.” With that, Cameron threw on her rain jacket, fished her keys out of her pocket, and set out for the door at a run. She didn’t look back to see if Keith was running after her.

In fact, Cameron didn’t look back until later that day, when she came up on the diner on the way home. Her stomach churned in dismay as she drew closer. The same diner where she’d walked out on Keith was now a twisted pile of metal and tree limbs. Crud. There went her once-a-week meal of June’s steak and mashed potatoes. She considered slowing down for a moment of silence; those mashed potatoes were out of this world.

It was the blue, battered Mustang propped upside down on what used to be the diner’s entrance that made Cameron decide to pull over. Parking her truck with an overwhelming sense of dread, Cameron couldn’t leap from the driver’s seat to the ground fast enough. Keith drove a blue Mustang.

As far out as the diner was from the nearest town, the police had yet to get a wrecker out to move the Mustang. They had, however, begun the process of removing its occupant. A young EMT stood on the ground nearby, her gloves and uniform smattered with blood. She was shaking her head in a fashion all-too-familiar to Cameron; Cameron knew, in that instant, that Keith must’ve died.

Hanging her head, Cameron kicked at a piece of glass. The one way Keith had dreaded her dying had been the very way his life had winked out. Mother Nature was funny like that, sparing the lives of those who sought out danger and killing those who sat at home afraid to live. She sighed, saying a prayer of thanks to God for keeping her alive. She wouldn’t slow down, now or ever. …if only Keith had stopped fearing life and started living it.