🌪️ How a Tornado Gave Me a Story
By Michael S. Haralson
I was about 19 when it happened. I was out visiting my girlfriend at her parents’ place—a mobile home out in the country. We’d picked up some VHS rentals earlier in the day and were settling in for a night of movies. Just the three of us there: me, my girlfriend, and her mom. Her dad was working overtime at the aircraft plant.
It was summertime. We had the windows open when a few stray raindrops started blowing in. The three of us split up to shut everything tight. I remember my girlfriend coming back down the hallway and saying their weeping willow out front was getting whipped around something fierce. The next thing I remember is hearing a series of deep booms—like explosions. To this day, I still don’t know what I was hearing. Then the floor shifted beneath us.
And everything went black.
I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel something close in front of me—my breath bounced back at me like I was inside a box. There was this strange underwater feeling… rain and hail hammering down, a ringing in my ears. Then my girlfriend screamed, and that snapped me awake.
I saw a line of gray in the blackness and crawled toward it. I heard her mother sobbing from the other direction and knew I had to get out. I thought I could drive into town to get help. My teenage brain didn’t even think about knocking on any of the neighboring doors.
I squirmed out through a gap—past what felt like an entire plumbing aisle, pipes and elbows sticking out everywhere—and finally made it to my car. A 1979 Z28 Camaro. I loved that car. Fired it up, spun it around in the driveway, and when I looked toward town, the sky was orange. I thought the whole place was on fire.
I eventually pulled into a neighbor’s driveway and pounded on the door in the pouring rain. Power was out, and they were hesitant, but when they opened up, their faces went white. They pulled me inside and called 911. As soon as they hung up, I ran back to the car and raced to the wreckage.
The mobile home had flipped over completely—roof flattened into the dirt, resting right on the propane tank. The garage had lost its roof and doors. I could see it all now, lit by flashes of lightning. Some folks had already arrived and were helping my girlfriend and her mother. The ambulance came.
Someone made a joke about Kansas and Toto. I gave him hell for it.
My girlfriend had a broken back. Her mother, miraculously, only had a torn fingernail. She’d landed under a loveseat—literally the only thing that kept the ceiling from collapsing on her. The only reason I had room to crawl out.
Me? I had a goose egg above my eye so big I could see it when I looked up, and a gash down my back. But I walked away. Ran, even.
I had come out there that day planning to break up with her. After that, I couldn’t bring myself to. That tornado changed more than just the shape of a house. It shifted something in me. I never feared storms after that—if anything, the more violent they are, the more alive I feel. I guess I felt ten feet tall and bulletproof.
I wasn’t a praying man back then, but I did believe that God hadn’t meant for me to go just yet.
A year later, on April 26, 1991, our son was born—the same day the infamous Andover, Kansas tornado tore through town. An EF5. We were on the third floor of the hospital. I remember looking out the window and seeing everything turn green. Clouds hanging too low. Debris flying sideways. Eventually, they moved all the patients into the central rooms for safety.
That memory’s stayed with me just as long.
And it’s only now I realize it: that’s exactly how Maleficia: Birthrite begins.
With pressure in the sky and something waiting to be born.