Page 2 of There's No Place Like Oz

“Aunt Em!” I called into an oddly empty house. “Uncle?” I searched the whole homestead—which didn’t take very long considering its size. “Aunt Em? Where are you?”

With no one in sight, I opened the door, despite knowing better, and rain came rushing into the house sideways. I was drenched in a matter of seconds, while the winds ripped the doorknob from my grip. The wooden door broke on its hinges, and it slammed into the side of the house. My gaze shot frantically around the field, trying to find where my Aunt and Uncle must have gone on this most treacherous night. It was too dark to see very far, and the entrance to the cellar was on the other side of the house, so it wasn’t visible either.They must have darted for the storm cellar.

Though I couldn’t imagine they would do such a thing without me, but perhaps there was too little time, and they figured I was old and mature enough to know what to do. I frowned as I shielded myself from the violent deluge with my arms in front of my eyes.

It was then that a massive cyclone came into view. It sucked in the dark clouds, and rain, and lightning like a black hole, twisting and destroying everything that neared its path. My jaw dropped, and I forced myself to close it again. Though that only made it more apparent how much my lips were quivering. It was far too slow that I processed the fear I was feeling so deep in my gut.

Right, the storm cellar. I had to get to the storm cellar.

“Toto! Come here, Toto!” I yelled back into the house, hoping he would come to me by choice and save me the precious seconds I would need. But he remained in the room, cowering under the bed. “Dammit!” I shouted, but still I rushed back to the room. Toto was the only good thing about my life lately, and I wouldn’t risk losing him. I reached under the bed, and he backed up out of range. I tried again, and he whimpered.

“I don’t have time for this. Please just come here, Toto.” I pleaded in near tears. Water was dripping on my legs as I squirmed further under the bed. A loud and violent gust pounded at the thick log walls of the house, as if to warn me that I was running out of time. With a last desperate stretch, I managed to get a grip under Toto’s tiny body, and I hauled him out from beneath the bed. Just as I was getting back on my feet, I swear the whole goddamn house moved, and I was thrown right back onto the ground.

I scrambled for footing once more, but as though I was staring at a surrealist painting, the room started to spin and warp before my eyes. I blinked rapidly, trying to bring the scene into a coherent view, not believing at all what I was seeing, but the world kept spinning. The walls began to melt into each other in a twisting blur. It was like I’d set out on the worst possible acid trip, and someone mixed in mushrooms and molly along the way. I gave up trying to stand, and just braced myself on the floor.

I clutched Toto tightly against my chest, and I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping when I opened them again, this vision would have all been a dream. I shivered as wind penetrated the walls, rapidly drying the water from my wet clothing.

Then the room started to warm. A gentle, comfortable heat blew into the cracks until the whole place was blazing hot, and the water penetrating every opening in the old wood was now instantly turning into steam.

Toto barked at the distorted world around us, and I clutched him more tightly. Sweat coated my body, and the heat was so intense, I could barely breathe. It felt like pure fire in my lungs, while the roar of wind completely commandeered the sound waves. My senses were being assaulted from every angle, and I was already too overwhelmed to act. The spinning intensified. The wind howled.

If one were to manifest the word chaos into a visceral reality, this would be it. I must have been captured by the cyclone. Ridiculous as it sounded, that was the only thing that made sense to me right now.

Wood started to splinter around me, as though the old house was folding in on itself, and the speed of the cyclone picked up yet another several miles per hour, The G-forces threw me against the wall, and I lost my hold on Toto. He yelped as he hit the opposing log barrier.

Then we spun and spun and spun as though we were in a Gravitron at a demented carnival.

I was on the verge of puking when those intensifying forces of gravity in this rapid twister snapped the logs behind me. The deafening gusts of wild winds, pounding rain, and the roar of unending thunder were the last things I heard before I blacked out completely.

Chapter 2

The warmth of a summer sun engulfed my face, the whizzing of powerful winds hit my back, and the bright red image of light penetrating my eyelids filled my vision as I came back to consciousness rather abruptly. I opened my eyes slowly, blinking gently to regulate the amount of brightness hitting my eyes after what felt like a long rest. The clouds in the sky were obscured by a combination of the dryness of my eyes and the fluttering of my eyelashes.

I forced myself to keep them open as I rotated in suspended motion, and wind whipped into my dried corneas at an alarming rate. It was then that I realized I was freefalling through a bright blue sky, and much unlike the whipping winds of the plains, it was pure gravity that was creating this powerful gust.

I patted my chest, feeling around for a ripcord, as if I’d had any chance of having put on a parachute at some point.

Because Aunty Em’s homestead would have such a thing, and who doesn’t put on a parachute when a Tornado comes through…

I sighed at my own ridiculousness, then I flailed about in hopes of getting a hold of something to slow my descent.

I was surrounded by random bits of wood and logs, splintered and broken by the cyclone, careening to the ground at the same rate I was. I reached for a large log, and I pulled myself through the air to get a better hold on it. I wrapped my arms and legs around the broken wood like I was a koala bear, and I rode the thing down on the vague, absurd notion that it might help break my fall somehow.

The green grass was still distant, and I was still picking up momentum. I had no clue how I got here or how I was going to survive this. I was almost so overwhelmed, I didn’t have time to register what that impact would mean once it came.

I couldn’t believe I was supposed to die here. I just couldn’t.

I chewed on my lip, hoping a blanket or sheet would suddenly appear as a makeshift parachute, but by physics, the chances of a sheet catching up to me while I held onto a heavy log were not very strong.

So instead, I just tried not to look down at my impending doom. I told myself this was a dream once again, but the sensations were all far too acute and vivid for that to be true.

I made the fatal mistake of glancing downward, and the ground had gotten even closer. Toto was nowhere to be seen. I could only hope he had somehow been spared this same bizarre fate.

Just as I began saying my prayers to whatever gods did or didn’t exist, something that looked startlingly similar to a woman on a broomstick crossed my field of vision. She was just be-bopping along like there wasn’t a violent rain of jagged wood careening through the sky above her. She was like a witch from a storybook—black hat with a yellow band, blond hair flowing behind her, stripy black and yellow socks, a tight little black dress, and six inch red stilettos to give the whole outfit some pop.

I blinked several times to assure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.

If that’s a magic broomstick, that might be my chance. There was no time to think about whether that made sense or not. This was a time to act.

---