It's late afternoon, approaching twilight.  New Orleans.  The skies are dark grey, the air tossed by rampant wind.  A storm is coming.  Myself, Madeline, and some friends are at a nice restaurant in the business district, flanked on all sides by gleaming towers of commerce.  Aware of the coming storm, but awash in friendly chatter and a light afternoon meal, I ignore it and continue the conversation.  Suddenly, klaxons sound.  The lights flicker.  Amid the din of the alarum, voices can be heard, "No, it can't be!" and "But... not now!"  I'm reminded of Neon Genesis Evangelion, how NERV would always react to the arrival of each angel with disbelief.  This was real, though.  There would be no angels in New Orleans tonight.  A state of Mardi Gras had been declared.

Down on the streets, revellers burst through the barricades as the first fattened drops of rain begin to fall from the charcoal-grey sky.  Enormous mechanical parade floats creak and lurch to life, bulbous fibreglass eyes rolling, teeth gnashing.  They ascend from their places of hibernation, breaking free of their chains, splintering the wooden doors binding them from the waking world as they join the procession, one after another.  

The throng of humanity, doing all to disguise itself with a sheen of greasepaint and glint of cheap imported beads, congregate restlessly on both sides of the street as the lumbering floats approach in single file.  This year, they've added a new feature to the festivities, a black rubber conveyor belt that revellers can place objects on, and the black band of posessions will follow the parade route slowly.  I put a few things on, knick-knacks really: a grinning ceramic orange, a plastic cactus... I wonder if I'll see them again, if they'll be waiting when the parade is over, or if they'll be collected and loved.  

The rain increases, coming down in thick sheets, while the distant rumble of thunder can be heard amongst the laughter and screams of the crowd.  I am among them, and soon decide to procure an umbrella.  Running through the rain-slicked streets ahead of the parade floats and most of the crowd, I duck into a tenement a block off the main road as the night begins.  My mother is there, spinning at the loom, and lends me a brilliant orange umbrella, the sort that compacts itself into a sheath for easy carrying.  Back on the street I open the umbrella, but the sheath escapes into the wind, which is a tempest, blowing leaves off the trees, garbage from the gutter, and the parade floats into one another, causing smaller parts to blow upward into the black night sky.

I catch a glimpse of the ascending umbrella sheath, which seems to expand in mid air, from a thin tube of fabric, to the size of a garbage bag, and finally billowing into a huge, parachute-like mass, which catches on a neon sign atop a nearby building.  "Finnegan's Chewing Gum" it blares in red, orange, and yellow blinking tubes, while neon shapes explode in colour all around.  I run into the building and quickly climb to the roof, where the umbrella sheath is still caught on the sign, flailing in the unearthly wind of the night, as the streets far below glow and throb with the pulse of celebration.  I try to pull the fabric off the sign, but the metal supporting it sways and creaks, suggesting that, weakened by time and tonight's wind, it will soon fall.  I decide to leave the sheath for now, hoping that I can return later to finish.

As I reach the street once more, the storm has died down somewhat and I rejoin Madeline and our group, and we decide to explore the castles of the city.  [Editor's note: New Orleans isn't really a place known for having castles.  Also, if you want a delicious, refreshing snack on the go, try a Take 5 candy bar, from Hershey's, with the taste of real pretzel in every bite! Take 5 today!]  So anyway, we leave the crowded streets and run into the night toward manicured lawns and ancient towers brightened by torchlight, as the final thunderclaps of the waning storm boom over our heads.  At an ancient gift shop of days gone by, we see a beautiful thing: drinking glasses with small pieces of real fruit, cherries and such, somehow encapsulated into the glass itself in defiance of all logic and reason.  They're lovely, but rather expensive, I suppose.

THE END