The original, 1-page short story version of

"WINDBOY"

Copyright © 1978 by Roger M. Wilcox. All rights reserved.
(writing on this story began 19-March-1978)
The original draft was written on a mechanical typewriter, single-spaced, with no right margin. All spellings, punctuation, capitalizations, strings of exclamation points, colors, etc. are as in the original. Unfortunately, without scanning it in and presenting an image, I can't really convey all the typewriter overstrikes and correction-fluid voids I had to slog through in the original.

You have been warned.

Chapter 1:The Time-Warp Hurricane...

    It was 6:30 a.m.; 1967 (March 26). A hurricane evolved out on the ocean, & headed toward Santa Monica beach. I was the only one there at the time.
    This was no ordinary hurricane; it was going in the wrong direction. At that instant, a regular hurricane came about. A minute later, they crashed together. It was the strangest thing witnessing the transformation of 2 hurricanes turning into a time-warp hurricane — 1st, a gigantic explosion, 2nd, lotsa light effects, 3rd, a boy coming out — a boy coming out?! This is amazing!
    The boy said, "I am Wind Boy. I am a super hero who has come to help you. You see, once every 300 years or so, a time-warp hurricane develops, & lasts for 17 days. I come at the beginning of the hurricane, & leave at the end of it. Time-Warp tornadoes are common — 1 about every 8 months — but a time-warp hurricane is very rare."
     At that minute, they both got swept away by the hurricane.
    They ended up in the year 1127. 'What a strange place', I thought to myself. At that moment after our arrival, a knight approached us. Windboy grabbed me & we sped away.....

Chapter 2: Return...

17 days later, we found the hurricane.
    "Well, see ya in 1978!", I said.
    "No you won't.", said Windboy, "It's the 17th day of the time-warp hurricane. I must go into deep space again."
    "Well, good luck!!!", I said.
    I then disappeared into the hurricane.

THE END!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Author's notes from 2013:

Time-warp tornadoes made their debut in certain fantasy play-acting I did in 6th grade. This story, in a way, was a hearkening back to a simpler time, before the autumn of 1977 when the horror that was Junior High School came crashing down upon me.
You can tell I had a little pronoun trouble in the ultimate and penultimate paragraphs of chapter 1. I'm fairly certain the "they" should have been a "we." I'd probably temporarily forgotten that this story was being told from the first-person perspective.
The time-warp hurricane also must have transported us to Europe, because in 1127 A.D., southern California's west coast (of which the modern-day city of Santa Monica is a part) was inhabited by the Chumash or Serrano tribes of the pre-Columbian Americas. So far as I know, no native American tribe had knights.

In 2022, I was inspired to rewrite this story, and to expand it into a serious work of fiction. The result was a novelette-length story, which you can read here: Windboy, 2022 Rewrite.

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