Damjan and I were in the city when the sky turned on the faucet at full blast. We ran through torrential rain to Flinders Street station and joined other drenched rain refugees.

The train took off and we stripped off jackets, dumped umbrellas and squeezed out our hair.

Not quite six stops away from home, the train stopped. We sat in silence for five minutes. There was no announcement came to explain the pause.

A few people began peering out the window.

‘Hey, Damjan, do you want to look what’s happening?’ I said.

‘Okay.’ Damjan got out of the chair and joined the growing crowd.

‘The track’s covered in water,’ he said, as he slipped back next to me.

We sat for another five minutes before the train finally started inching forward. Slowly, slowly, we pulled into the next station. The train had made it past the flooded section.

When we finally reached our home station, the rain was as heavy as ever. We readied our umbrellas.

‘AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGHH!!!!!!!’ I said quietly as I ran down the platform through the biggest storm I have ever known.

Damjan and I paused for a breath under the station canopy.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Ready.’

I barrelled down the ramp to the underpass squealing, ‘I can’t see! I can’t see!’

Then, ‘AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGH’ as I found myself knee deep in water. I leapt back.

‘It’s all water!’

The underpass was flooded. I looked back to the platform, where a couple of people were huddled in confusion. There was no other way out.

‘YAAAAAAAAAAAAA!’ A man flew, charging into the water.

‘You dropped your keys!’ I cried, picking up his keys and a USB disk.

‘I’m taking my shoes off!’ Damjan yelled.

‘I’m just going to go for it!’ I yelled back. My shoes were made of netting and rubber. So I gritted my teeth and ran into the cold swirling brown water.

The water came up to my thighs.

I burst out the other side yelling, ‘Your keys! Mister, your keys!’ He wasn’t there. No one heard me.

A red car flashed at me. Damjan’s dad was waiting in the parking lot. I threw my wet self into the back seat. Thirty seconds later, Damjan arrived too.

On the way home, three times, we reversed out of flooded roads to find another route.

We finally made it home, where Damjan’s sister was mopping up the water that had come through the ceiling.