Chapter 1

Story tags: group sex, interracial, lesbian, older, oral

I started writing this the night after a hurricane came through my area, isolating the small town where I live by flooding all the access roads. Learning over the next several days about the loss of life in this town alone and the personal and business financial hardships the flooding caused made me take a long break. It’s not a tasteless pun when I say the whole muddy mess dampened my enthusiasm for the story.

Months have passed. The damage, for the most part, has been cleaned up. Now, it’s time for a hurricane party.

The only thing that kept me from beating someone’s face in at work that day was the complete absurdity of it all. I manage a large do-it-yourself home improvement supply store. A hurricane was churning up the coast, and people were going insane with their over-preparation for the storm. The media’s “public service announcements” warned of Armageddon. The official forecast called for heavy rain with some river flooding. That happens some times. Usually the storms don’t have names. This one did.

Fear-mongering sells papers and air-time, so the local media outlets have gone nuts. “Buy ice! Get bottled water! Stock up on food! Buy flashlights and batteries! It’s the end of civilization as we know it!”

A hurricane that came through here when I was a child killed a family trying to cross a flooded bridge down the hill from my parents’ house. Right after I finished college, another hurricane turned some towns around here into islands for a few days.

Funny thing. Except for people who tried to drive through rushing water or who insisted on going back into their flooding homes to save one more thing, no one died. No one starved to death. No one was blown away. No levee broke. We’re north, inland, and uphill. And yet, people panic. It was like a feeding frenzy in a school of sharks at my store.

One customer was having a panic attack because we were out of plywood. “What can I do? What can I do? You have to sell me plywood!”

“I’m sorry, sir. We’ve out of plywood,” I said.

“What about flake-board?”

“The last skid went about an hour ago.”

“Particle-board?”

“All gone.”

“Get more!” he yelled.

“It’s been ordered.”

“When will it get here?”

“Some should get here Monday, sir. We have six trailer-loads of plywood, flake-board, and particle-board coming.”

“The hurricane will be here tonight! What am I going to do?”

“Sir, this far inland, you don’t need to board up your windows.”

“Don’t you tell me what I need to do! Are you implying I don’t know what I’m doing?”

“Sir, I would hate to see you waste money and cause cosmetic damage to your house to guard against a threat that doesn’t exist.”

“I’LL MAKE SURE YOU GET FIRED! I NEED PLYWOOD, NOW! I WANT TO SEE YOUR MANAGER!” the customer shouted.

“I’m the manager.”

“GET ME THE DISTRICT MANAGER!”

“I’ll give you the number for the corporate complaint department.”

“Will they bring me plywood?”

“No, sir. The complaint department is in California. They will investigate your report and take disciplinary action as required.”

The moron was practically in tears. “Why don’t you have plywood?” he wailed.

I was very proud of myself. I didn’t smack him, and I didn’t laugh. “Sir, certain irresponsible media outlets are making the threat from this storm out to be more than it is. The major weather services are calling for us to have heavy rain and some flooding, but minimal winds, nothing more than the gusts we get once or twice a year from thunderstorms.”

“But I need to board up my windows!”

“Where do you live?”

“Serenity Hills. Why? Are you going to deliver plywood to my house?” he asked anxiously.

“If you live up there, I doubt you’ll need to do anything special to weather the storm.”

The guy gave me a disdainful look. “Maybe you don’t care about keeping your family and your possessions safe, but I do!”

“Sir, you’ll do more damage to your house screwing plywood to your window frames than the storm is likely to do.”

“But what about the storm surges?” he shouted.

“This store is a hundred miles inland and five hundred feet above sea level, and you live on a ridge above us. I’m not sure storm surges from the flood in the Bible hit there.”

“You don’t know that! I want to be prepared!”

A fool and his money are soon parted. “Probably, you could use pressure-treated deck boards, sir. We still have racks of those left, but they’re all one and five-eighths inch premium select grade.”

“So they’ll be good and strong? Now you’re talking!”

An hour later, I was amazed at how much expensive lumber this moron and I managed to fit in, and on, his Mercedes SUV. Armed with enough top-of-the line tools and fasteners to start a construction business, this foolish homeowner left to secure his castle. I was tempted to sell him a roll of aluminum foil to make hats for him and his family, but I was afraid he’d buy it.

By the time I locked up the empty store and drove home, I was exhausted. Doing this work keeps me in shape, but even with all the heavy lifting I had done today, I knew I’d be okay in the morning. That’s not what wears me out. It’s the emotional strain of keeping myself and my staff from hitting obnoxious customers with a sledgehammer.

This was my weekend off. On Monday, the trucks would roll in, and we would face the Herculean task of re-stocking the store. I called my second-in-command, the acting manager for the weekend, to tell him what happened.

“Jake?” I said when he picked up the phone.

“Hey, Harry!”

“Have fun tomorrow and Sunday,” I chuckled.

“Buying panic?”

“That’s an understatement. There isn’t a sheet of plywood, flake-board, or particle-board left. We’re out of generators and flashlights. Picnic coolers and ice-packs ran out this morning, there are no more grills or camp stoves, no charcoal or propane – you name it, if it would have any usefulness at all in a disaster, it’s gone.