The Storm of '78 and an Alien Invasion

A story about imagination

When I was 13 years old there was a wonderful snowstorm. (At 13, blizzards are still considered good things.) It was one of those storms that everyone refers to by the year. “Back during the blizzard of ‘78” is what they would say. School was canceled for days. That almost never happened in the Grandville district, so this was quite an event.

On one particular day of the aftermath there was snow everywhere, but it had finally stopped falling. I spent most of the morning trying to build an igloo. This involved a lot more scooping out than actual building. I guess what I actually built was a cave. The snow drifts and plow piles were so high you had to work at climbing them, and falling off was actually dangerous.

Eventually I tired of digging and started sort of wandering around the ditch by the road. The snow had already crusted over so there were hard, flat areas and broken bits of snow kicked up by walking through it. I spent some time taking these chunks and arranging them into cities. Small, elaborate cities. Alien cities. Some time after that I found myself with a stick. This stick worked very well as a weapon of mass destruction, if you happened to be an Evil Alien Warlord. Which I was. I rained death and disaster down upon my snow crust alien landscape with a vengeance. The tip of my Ultimate Death Stick could smash entire communities with a single sweeping motion. The insignificant life forms trying to escape had no chance as I showered them with ice and slush and dirt bombs from on high. I was unstoppable.

Eventually I stopped. My fingers were cold and my toes were numb and it was getting dark, so I went inside and watched Gilligan’s Island reruns and drank the hot cocoa that my mom always made for me when I was cold.