In Hell's Eye: October 10, 2018

In Hell's Eye is the story of a town devastated by Hurricane Michael on October 10, 2018. The town was there on October 9 and gone by sundown on October 10. Winds exceeding 200 mph tore through the town and pushed a 15-foot wall of water over homes, businesses, and some of its residents. When it was over, there simply was no town left. This was a town unlike most beach towns. It was Redneck Riviera meets Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. Toucan's was the emblem of the little town. Shops sold pastel colored Adirondack chairs and brightly colored flip-flops, standard footwear for residents. It was as it had always been--until it wasn't. A drunken bum and a shaggy gray Russian Wolfhound survived and slowly began to pull the community back together. In the midst of his efforts, a secret was unveiled that would change his life forever. Life was churned and set down anew. Some things became even better than before, and some would never be again.

Hell is what most of us perceive as the worst thing that can happen to us. For Native Americans Hell was a vision of ice, cold, and starvation because they had survived the Ice Age. The lore had been handed down to them. The people of the Mediterranean Basin imagined Hell in terms of volcanic eruptions because those were the worst tragedies their lore contained. The people of Pompeii knew hell in the form of Vesuvius. It erupted in 79 AD. The people of the Florida Panhandle know Hell as hurricanes. The ultimate Hell arrived October 10, 2018 when the mother of all hurricanes came ashore with its eye directly passing through the small coastal town of Mexico Beach. They were in Hell's eye. This story is fiction, but the event was all too real. It lives in all of us who rode it out. I was there.