Every gust of wind shook the lone window, rattling my bones. The lightning danced across the glass, and the crashes of thunder sent the family picture on the shelf crashing to the ground. I hated how dark it was outside; the early hours of the morning hid the storm, taunting me with what was hidden in the rain falling from the sky. I could see the black silhouettes of the trees; the sound of breaking splinters repeated itself in my head. The moon was invisible, the light from the sky completely gone.


The walls of the bathroom stretched to the sky until they met the ceiling, where the light was flickering like a firefly about to loose its shine. The patterns that danced around the small space melted with hopelessness to the ground, where the spikes of the carpet poked at my exposed calves. The pillows piled on top of my body were strangling me, the seams wrapping their hands around my throat and squeezing as hard as they could.


My nose caught the smell of the candle that had been burning in the corner; the flame was gone.


The warning beep of the approaching disaster echoed from the other room, sending a fist into my gut. I shook my head. I wondered if anyone else knew about the storm, if anyone else was seeing the same darkness out the window.


My eye caught the glitter of the broken glass on the ground; though the covering was destroyed, the picture was intact. I scanned over the four grinning people; they were waving back at me.


As my hand reached out to rescue it from the shards of glass, a flash cut the lights, and I was in the dark. The last flash of lightning lit the picture up one more time; the four people had wide eyes, and looked as though they had seen a ghost. When I looked out the window, up at the ceiling, I found out what that ghost was.