The three young men had gone to a music festival that afternoon, and with the radio blasting away their favourite songs, they drove home. The October day had been unusually summer-like, and the early evening was cool but not cold. Had they'd been older, perhaps the three of them might have appreciated the twilight skies. The moon rose full and orange above the sea, and the sky was painted in hues of purple and red.

As they drove along the nearly deserted seaside road down to South Wales, the three boys had decided to take on a few extra passengers. In the back seat, besides a beverage cooler full of energy drinks and pints of beer, was a sheep and its faithful sheep dog. They'd only planned on giving the sheep a lift, but the dog had insisted on coming along for the ride as well. The black and white dog rode with it's head turned forward, watching the road ahead with its tongue lolling gleefully out of its mouth.

"Oh cripes," Richard said in disgust, after taking a swig of his beer. "I think I just got some doggie drool down the back of my neck!"

"That ain't nothing compared to what that sheep just done on Jon's trousers." Adrian laughed, looking over his shoulder at his friend.

Jon looked down and swore. He made a face at the dark smudge of poo on his Levi's. He swore again, when the dog's tail hit him in the face for what seemed like the fiftieth time since they'd picked it up from a field a few miles back. Jon hadn't known when he'd left the festival that afternoon, that he'd be stuck riding in the back seat, with the beverage cooler at his feet, sandwiched between a sheep's bum and a dog's arse. Then, he got an even stranger look on his face, as his eleventh beer started to take effect. He hung his head down until it almost touched the cooler lid.

"Oh jeez, I think I'm gonna' be sick. Pull over!" He shouted to his two mates in the front seat.

As Richard pulled the car over, he noticed that some storm clouds seemed to be piling up far away on the horizon. Jon stumbled out the passenger side door and went across the road. The sheep, bleating, followed him like a lamb after its mum. While Jon was busy being sick in the weeds alongside the pavement, Richard decided to ditch the dog put the top down. But, when he opened the car door on that side, the dog began to growl. At first, Richard thought the dog was growling at him, but then he realized that the dog was looking out to sea.

Following the dog's gaze, Richard realized that the storm clouds that had been many miles away on the horizon mere seconds ago, were now almost right on top of them. He shook his head, bewildered. How was that even possible? Suddenly, the air around him seemed charged with electricity. The hairs on his neck stood up. The dog whined and bolted out of the car door and down the road, its tail between its legs. The clouds seemed to be piling on top of each other. Adrian was looking up, staring at them open-mouthed.

And, as the two of them stared at the clouds, the sky turned a bilious green. With a tremendous, earth shaking crack, a jagged streak of green lightning sizzled down, lighting up the two young men, until their skeletons shone through their skin. Their bodies stiffened, their mouths opened wide in silent screams, Richard and Adrian turned to gray dust, and then the dust slowly vanished, drawn up into the clouds.

Chris jumped when he heard the thunder, tripped and fell into the soggy ditch at the side of the road. When he got up and looked around, the sky was clear again, and his two friends were nowhere to be seen.

"What the hell?" Jon shouted, throwing his hands in the air and looking around for his missing friends. "Alright, ha-ha, very funny. You can come out now." But, there was no answer. He looked down at the sheep. "They picked a fine time to take the mickey. This is the last time I go anywhere with those two."

"Baaaa!" said the sheep.

In 2011, the weather had been taking a nasty turn all year, with unprecedented heavy snows, tornadoes, hurricanes and other natural disasters, all over the world. Weather forecasters were perplexed by the number and ferocity of the storms. The fierce weather began shortly after the new year, and continued on through the spring and summer.

The encroaching autumn was rapidly changing the leaves of the surrounding trees from green to gold. Elisabeth stood at her kitchen window, watching the rushing waters of the stream that ran beside her cottage. She looked down upon the stream, daydreaming.

There wasn't much else for her to do, these days, except for a bit of gardening and taking care of her two cats. The silvery waters were rushing over and around the solid mottled black and gray rocks. Soon, all of her world will seem gray and lifeless, which is why Elisabeth cherished this time of year. She knew that every leaf that fell, every blade of grass turned bitter brown by the frosts, were merely the harbingers of the death of nature, before its regeneration in the spring.

Shreds of mist entangled themselves in the trees and shrouded the moors.. Already the wind was backing in from the north. The old woman smiled as she watched the wind send the leaves raining down slantwise into the foaming waters of the stream. It looked like a golden snowstorm, changing a gloomy day into a living work of art. She should know about art. Elisabeth had been a children's book illustrator for over forty years, until her retirement.

Sighing, she looked up at the sky. It had been a funny sort of day. Like the weather, Elisabeth felt unsettled. Since morning the sky had continually changed from sunshine to clouds and back again. Now it looked like a storm was coming.

As she was turning away to put the kettle on, Elisabeth heard a tremendous crash from outside. It was so loud, it rattled all the dishes in her cupboards and shook the very walls of her home. She hurried over and threw open the kitchen door. What she saw, left her speechless. There was a hole in the floor of her garden! The earth had been thrown up, as if some sort of object had crashed at a great velocity. Judging by the steam rising up from the spot, whatever it was had been quite hot when it had crashed. Perhaps it was a meteor of some sort.

Putting on her cardigan and slipping into her wellies, Elisabeth cautiously ventured outside for a closer look. Standing on the edge of the steaming hole, the elderly woman peered down into it. Her unbelieving eyes blinked in astonishment at what she saw there. Sitting in the mud some eight or ten meters down, was an old fashioned blue wooden police box.