riders on the storm

we settled in for the night ahead of what felt like the storm of the century. the abandoned building looked like a stretched architectural rendition of the Mothership; wider rooms, higher ceilings and bigger windows. there were tiny leaks everywhere. during the night, the wind got so strong that all i could make out was the wild shadows dancing off the walls. i was convinced the windows were going to burst into a million little pieces but i couldn't help but press my face right up to them. the rattling eventually died down, enough for us to step outside the room and survey the damage to the building. more leaks, but nothing more than that. what we did find was that we hadn't been the only ones hiding from the storm. the first person I recognized was my cousin Chantal. she came out of the room next to ours with a bunch of random women and praised the soothing guitar lines I never actually played. there were lots more people upstairs on the mezzanine. one particular couple had spent the night high painting designs on the dirty bare walls. it struck me as senseless art for the most part but i was particularly fond of the man and woman drawings on the bathroom doors. they reminded me of a Dali, i explained. his girlfriend replied with a told-you-so shrug. survival was the talk of the building as we continued to climb higher toward the terrace. it had almost the same dimensions as the real Mothership terrace except this one was many stories higher and worlds more intimidating. the entire cement platform was slowly heaving like the haul of a small boat on a giant wave in an even bigger ocean. it felt like we were all balancing on the world's biggest marble. so much so that i was constantly checking the railing to make sure it was stable. it seemed loose and way too short. but there were too many people to warn. my brother was busy building some kind of roof structure to keep the rain out but it only seemed to exasperate the swaying motion. there was no longer any solid point of reference to the ground. i was nauseous and completely terrified at this point. i half-slid to the bar and ran into Jules and the group of strangers he was with. i told him i would do the gig, half joking. a couple of days to practice would never be enough for me. and yet everyone seemed happy on hearing it. Jules suddenly became some weird Freddy Krueger character and i urged him to look into my eyes to see just how scared i really was. he did.