Crashing slowly through the lower islands of the Bahamas chain did nothing to diminish Simone's intensity and as soon as the eye passed back into deeper, warming waters, the storm stalled again, becoming voracious as it lingered. The tropical warmth fueled Simone's insatiable engine, tightening the vortex and creating more spin, which drove up the wind speed and drove down the barometric pressure.

Building hillocks of water pushed through the surf, which shone in the pre-dawn darkness like obsidian striated with silver. Joining with the morning's high tide and the pull of a waxing moon, the hard sea slammed onto over-built Floridian beaches, mauling the few hardy, thrill-seeking fools in the starlit shallows and hurling onto the sand anything that lay within the water column. Boats built for industry and idleness alike sailed upward and inland on a sea of saline froth, coming to rest on unlikely berths from which they'd never depart intact. Rooflines opened hospitably before the wind and unsecured windows shattered. Every surface that inhibited the movement of the sand-and-water laden air soon bore the deep, dull scars of fruitless resistance.

The causeway leading led north through the Keys to the mainland was clogged with newly panicked skeptics, their early, blustering courage having eroded with the weather. Too late they tried to flee to safety and were instead witness to the full and indiscriminate brutality of Nature. Hundred of white-knuckled hands gripped steering wheels as once-stalwart drivers drove through blinding rain and lateral winds, battling for stability.

Despite their puny efforts and belated prayers, their cars slid and spun across traffic channels running improbably deep with rain and seawater. Hundreds of eyes widened in horror as vehicles in front, behind, next to them were lifted and flipped, some onto other cars, some into guard rails, and some over them, to be blown into the enormous storm-hardened concrete pilings on their descent to pierce the fractured, seething surface of the Strait.

Communities farther up the coastline were watching the growing spiral on their television and computer screens, watching the red sawblade spin madly, knowing the worst had not happened yet, praying they would not have the opportunity to experience it, but packing their cars with their belongings none the less.

As winds and sea grew heavier and stronger, Simone became capricious for a split second and turned ever so slightly away from the land that would diminish her. Assured now of continual care and feeding, she continued her destructive, leisurely crawl parallel to land in the deep, near-shore waters, flirting with mankind as only a waiting disaster can, and destroying whatever dared to remain in her path.