The long summer day had been filled with dark and gloomy clouds. The air was so thick I could hardly breathe. My pajama's clung to my body as if I had just been sprayed with the garden hose. I remember thinking that I wished that it would just hurry up and rain already. The next thing that I remember is running to my parent's car in the middle of the night. With the distinctive loud wail of a tornado siren, the wind howling, and lightening filling the dark sky, I have never been so afraid in my life. The loud tornado siren was not something new to me, even though it frightened me every time that it went off. Most times, though, it was just going off for a weekly test and was not in the middle of the night. That night it was no test. It was the real thing. We had to jump into the car for the short drive to my memaw's house, running over my dog Joe in the process. Even though my memaw only lived a mile away, the drive seemed to take forever. Would we ever reach her house and the safety of her cellar? I have never run so fast in my life as I ran that night, from the car to the ground cellar in the back yard. The wind was blowing so strongly that I felt as if I wasn't moving at all. The lightening filled the dark cloudy sky and, all I could see was the shadow of my silhouette on the ground in front of me. Loud thunder clapped in my ears and made me shudder, the ground shaking under my feet. Finally, I felt relief and fear at the same time as I reached the cellar door. I climbed quickly down the stairs into the dark and damp ground, not even thinking about what might be lurking in that dark cellar. As I climbed down into the ground, I realized that my family wasn't the only one seeking safety underground. We couldn't even reach the bottom step, as the cellar was filled with at least two feet of water. I could see the bugs and spiders swimming in the water that filled the cellar floor. When my father closed the cellar door we were immersed in complete darkness, I was almost more afraid of the cellar than the raging storm outside. Time seemed as if it were standing still as we were locked inside that cold, dark and bug infested cellar. My heart pounded loudly a relief to my ears, almost drowning out the sound of the raging storm outside. When a sense of calmness enclosed the small underground cellar, we knew the storm had finally passed. My dad slowly lifted the cellar door, and as we climbed out of that dungeon of a cellar we were greeted with rush of crisp clean air. The clouds had lifted and it was a beautiful star filled night. There isn't a loud siren wail that doesn't frighten me to the bones, flooding me with the memories, of that dark night running to the car and heading off to me maw's dark scary cellar.