Califas

Great wheels of cheese sat rotting in the caves below the clifftop overlook, the humidity having been altered drastically by the atmospheric rivers flowing through the upper atmosphere. No one had been available to attend to this issue, all of the Salvadoran employees having been conscripted into the fire brigade working the western slope of the Sierra. So, the camembert sat melting, rotting beyond repair, or, perhaps, intensifying in flavor, depending on your tastes and, of course, your dairy tolerance.

Many of the residents of Crestview Drive had stayed behind to protect their homes, their belongings, their accumulated possessions and land holdings. A strange word, belongings, to describe the items and artifacts that one accumulates over the course of a lifetime. These things belong to me. They are my belongings, because I possess them. I am in possession of them, therefore they are mine, they are ours. They belong to my family. No matter which terms one chose to use, these people had a lot of stuff and they really wanted to keep it dry. 

Many of the homes on Crestview, overlooking the rough seas of the Pacific below, were equipped with elevators that went down the cliff face to their owners holdings below, including the cheese caves, wine cellars, bomb shelters and storage units. As the atmospheric river sent wave after wave of rain-laden clouds over the coastline and on into the inland empire, the wealthy home owners went down their elevators to their holdings below, trying to save what they could amidst the rising sea levels. In fact, if one were situated at a vantage point on a ship, perhaps, anchored about 500 feet from the shoreline, that would offer a panoramic view of the entire rocky escarpment, with a half dozen or so external glass elevators going up and down the cliff, carrying the men and women who occupied these homes along with their staffs, what was left of them anyway, back and forth from their manors above to their holdings below.

Once down at the base of the cliff, where the gates were located, the residents were in for quite a surprise, the water streaming in, the rain cascading down from the sky and from the runoffs at the top. Great waves of water, the likes of which none of them had ever seen before, especially since up until the day before yesterday they had been in an extreme drought. That’s what they thought, that’s what they were told, not to water their lawns more than once a week, not to go to the golf course any longer, not to take too long of a shower, and yet here they were a couple of days later, drowning in an overabundance of precipitation sucked up from the ocean by the powerful thunderclouds, and dumped down upon them with no deference whatsoever.

The sea turtles were clambering around at the gates to Bob’s cheese cave, trying to keep from getting their heads struck against the craggy rocks. Like all turtles, these sea turtles had shells of course, but one of these immense waves would send the turtle against the rock with such force that their soggy water-soaked shells would crack and crumble like wet plaster. So, the turtles tried to creep underneath the metal gates leading to the cheese cave to escape imminent violent events leading to their demise, and perhaps, if they were lucky, nibble on a bit of cheese, once they were safe and dry. 

These thoughts briefly entered Bob’s mind as he saw the turtles gathered at the entrance to his caves, as he unlocked the gate quickly and hurried within, the water already about thigh deep all the way back into the farthest reaches of the bunker he had built with the sale of his Tesla stock right before it tanked. Standing there, he had a brief vision of a small group of sea turtles sitting around the table in his cheese cave, toweling off, treating their bruised faces and taking stock of cracked shells, sharing oceanic tales of near death with each other as they nibbled on some soggy Camembert and prepared to ride the storm out within Bob’s cave system. That’s the image Bob had in his head when a giant wave came in through the opening at the base of the cliff where Bob stood within. He was not standing for much longer after that, as the wave knocked him instantly off of his feet and floated his unconscious body back through the cheese cave, past the wine cellar, the cigar humidor, the contemporary art collection, the bitcoin locker on into the last small cavern at the rear of the cave system, next to the folding table where the non-fungible token catalogue was kept. That’s where Bob’s body came to rest as the rain came down harder and harder.