VIGNETTE | WRITING PROMPT | FICTION | SHORT STORY

The Meteor Showers in Central Valley, California

The Vignette Gazette Edition #157 — Evacuate & Stay

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Meteor showers — Photo by Raman Deep from Pexels.

We must choose whether we want to respond to the prompt by writing a Vignette — 150 words minimum, 300 words maximum (no exceptions) or a Short Story — 301 words minimum, 1000 words maximum (also no exceptions).

We must use the magic words: Evacuate and stay.

I chose the short story.

It had come to the point where the usual “meteor showers” in the Central Valley were no longer showers, but full-on storms. Sometimes, they were just inconvenient, like hailstorms, but some days, they were downright deadly.

Recently, these showers intensified into full-scale storms. Several houses and buildings had already been destroyed, as had cars traveling on the Five and on State Route 99. It could get ugly when a car going 80 or 90 mph gets hit by a meteor.

Anyway, there’s not much a driver can do to control a car ablaze after being hit with a meteor, even if the driver survives. And in some cases, they do. I mean, not all meteors are that big.

Some are the size of a marble, a golf ball, or a baseball. But then, some have been as big as a house. Even those small ones, when they hit a tractor-trailer hauling hazardous material or a tanker hauling propane, can make a hell of a mess, hella quick.

The Meteors Make It Personal

We had an eco-friendly house built outside of Buttonwillow, CA, about 15 miles from Bakersfield. The town population is less than 2,000 — just my style. Some of the many eco-friendly amenities were the rainwater and filtration system, an all-solar roof, waste water recycling for the garden, and solar power throughout.

We had steel shutters installed on all the windows and doors, with a smart home protection system with infrared cameras everywhere.

Although we had a central air conditioner, I had the builder put a lawn-sprinkler system in the roof so that it would help cool the house and take some of the load off the HVAC.

That’s what happens, I guess, when you have more money than you can spend. However, all of those amenities came in handy when the meteor showers started.

If the news called for meteor showers, we turned on the sprinklers, closed the shutters, and went to sleep — rather soundly, I might add.

That was until the meteor showers turned to meteor storms, then the dipshit governor decided he wanted to evacuate his constituents for their own protection.

The Calamity of the Governor’s Plan

His “grand plan” was to cover the windows of all the public schools and buildings with corrugated steel and wait out the storms. So, for however many days or months it took, they would be sleeping on cots and eating cafeteria food.

No, thank you, Mr. Governor.

Well, the first rescue wagon came along. A helpful gentleman from the sheriff’s department knocked on the door and asked if we were ready to go to the shelter. I politely told him, “We will stay and wait it out right here.”

Of course, he gave us the safety spiel and told us there would be no fire or rescue. We would be on our own. I said thank you and goodbye.

The next fellow wasn’t as friendly. He insisted we were to go to the shelter with him. I told him we weren’t leaving our home. He started to say he could make us… but a meteor the size of a baseball hit him, and his head exploded.

Since there was nothing I could do for him, I pushed the button to lower the shutters and went into the kitchen to watch the news with my wife. We saw the highways jammed with people trying to escape, and some of those were hit as we looked on in horror.

People were running around screaming, and fireballs were hitting stranded travelers trying to get somewhere safe. We were already somewhere safe, and we weren’t leaving.

The news went out a few minutes later. We flipped through the channels, but all we got was an error message, “no signal.” I don’t know if the feed was lost, our satellite dish got hit, or if there was a bigger problem.

So, we just hunkered down to ride it out.

When the storm subsided, we went out to assess the damage. Our house stood up to it surprisingly well, but many of our neighbors weren’t so lucky. Even our satellite dish was still standing, so that answered that question.

We saw on the news after the TV came back on that meteors destroyed six of the buses carrying families to shelters. The death toll was around 25,000 across the state.

Later that day, the Governor came by to ask me about some of the things we had done to the house. It seems they might install some of my ideas in government buildings and schools.

The Governor offered me a post in his administration, but I politely declined. I’m a writer, not a politician.

As we stood in the field by his helicopter talking, a meteor that must have been 20 feet wide struck dead-center of my house, driving it into the ground.

I stared in terrified horror as I realized my wife was still inside. I sank to my knees sobbing, as my world came to an end.

Thanks to Michael John Scott, Robbi Walls, and the Fiction Shorts editors for their support of the daily challenge. 👇👇👇

[embed]The Vignette Gazette Edition #157 For Tuesday, May 12, 2026medium.com

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That’s all for today. Come back tomorrow for another random word vignette.

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Stephen Dalton is a retired US Army First Sergeant with a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and a Certified US English Chicago Manual of Style Editor. Also, a Top Writer in Bitcoin, Business, Investing, Nutrition, Travel, Fiction, Transportation, VR, NFL, Design, Creativity, and Short Story.

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