Rain Might Come

Henry sat at the kitchen table, tapping his finger against the woodgrain. Each tap, a metronome of life ticking away time, each second blending into the next with mechanical precision. He watched dust motes dance in the light that seeped through a crack in the blinds.

Lunch lay before him, half-eaten, an egg sandwich with the yolk oozing out, bleeding into the white of the plate. The incessant ticking of the wall clock filled the room. Henry took a bite, chewed without tasting, swallowed without savoring.

"Another day," he said to the room, to the dust, to the silence. His voice was flat. A statement. Not a complaint, not a revelation. Merely a fact.

The afternoon stretched before him, barren and unyielding. He rose from the chair, the scrape of its legs against linoleum a brief cry in the stillness. In the living room, he stood before the window, hand hovering over the sill. He could open it, let in a gust of air, but the stillness suited him better.

Instead, Henry reached for the paper, folded neatly—even religiously—on a small side table. He unfolded it with care. Headlines screamed of a world moving too fast, but Henry's eyes skipped past them all.

In the margin of page three, where the obituaries inscribed ends and legacies, he drew a small doodle—a man with an umbrella standing beneath a cloudless sky. Absurdity sketched in blue ink. He chuckled to himself.

"Rain might come," he muttered to the doodle, "or not."

The umbrella-man kept his silent vigil on the page, prepared for a deluge that would never wet the newsprint. Henry set the paper down, the doodle obscured by the fold. The amusement faded as quickly as it had come, leaving him in the quiet company of ticking clocks and the eternal hum of nothing changing.

He glanced at the empty chair across from him. The table was set for one. Always for one. There was comfort in the solitude, in the absence of expectation. Henry sat again, folding his hands in his lap, meeting the gaze of the empty seat.

"Tomorrow, then," he whispered. Tomorrow, another sandwich. Another doodle. Another echo in the chamber of routine.

____

Henry leaned against the cold, indifferent wall of the butcher's shop, his eyes tracing the cracks that webbed its surface. Passersby moved like shadows, their faces etched with the day's toil. One shadow paused to light a cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating an otherwise forgettable face.

"Did you hear?" Henry's voice barely rose above the whisper of traffic. "The statue in St. Jude's weeps at dusk."

The stranger exhaled a plume of smoke, eyes narrowed in a moment's curiosity. "Weeps, you say?"

"Or so I've been told," Henry said with a shrug, the corners of his mouth curling up in a mischievous smirk. The absurdity of the statement tickled him, making it hard for him to contain his amusement.

The stranger flicked ash onto the pavement and walked on, the rumor clinging to the smoke left behind.

In the pub, over pints of beer, the stranger’s voice cut through the fog. “Heard St. Jude’s got a weeping statue.”

The barkeep paused, glass in hand, “Tears?”

“Like sorrow turned to water,” the stranger embellished, savoring the sudden attention.

Whispers huddled in corners, slid under doors, settled into the fabric of daily drudgeries. At the bakery, between the exchange of loaves and coins, a woman repeated, “It weeps real tears, they say. A miracle, perhaps.”

The baker nodded solemnly, adding his own thread to the tale, “Heard it’s been weeping for days. They’re gathering tonight to see.”

The rumor grew legs, arms, a body of its own—it marched down streets, leapt from tongue to tongue, became a creature that belonged to everyone and no one. It promised something, anything, to fill the void of evening chats and morning silences.

Children ran through alleys, breathless, chanting of the statue that cried like a widow, while old men nodded wisely, asserting that such things were omens of a long overdue change.

As daylight faded, Henry passed St. Jude's. The street was nearly empty now. He peered at the statue through the iron gates, its stone face ever still, ever dry.

"Rain might come," he murmured, half expecting the statue to nod, to acknowledge the jest. But it stood silent.

Night draped St. Jude's in shadows, not quite dark enough to hide the faces. They stood, a small congregation of the lost, before the statue. Eyes fixed on stone, they waited. The air bore a cold anticipation, as if it too sought deliverance from an endless cycle of nothing.

Henry lingered at the fringe, his gaze moving from the statue to the gathered townsfolk. In their stillness, a shared hunger, a longing for a sign that would never come. He remembered his words, idle and light, now heavy with the weight of collective expectation.

A woman clutched her shawl tighter, eyes brimming more than the statue ever could. A man's whisper cut through the silence, "Tonight, surely." Henry felt the whisper like a shiver.

"Surely," he echoed under his breath, but certainty eluded him.

Days turned. The vigil became ritual. Each evening, more joined, drawn by the pull of something to believe in. Each morning, they left, empty.

Henry watched, night after night, how hope settled on their shoulders, a shroud that grew heavier with each tearless dusk. His own shoulders began to ache.

"Any moment now," someone breathed into the chill.

"Any moment," Henry agreed, though moments stretched and snapped like worn threads.

The statue loomed, indifferent. No sighs parted its lips, no moisture graced its cheeks. It was cruel in its constancy.

"Rain might come," Henry said again, a refrain without melody. He glanced skyward, but the stars mocked him from afar.

"Rain might," a voice echoed, but belief had thinned.

Henry was uneasy. His proclamation had led to this pilgrimage of despair, this parade of shadows marching to an empty promise. He wanted to confess and tear down the lie until only truth remained.

Yet he remained silent, watching as the nights drew out, waiting for a miracle etched in stone.

____

The woman stepped forward. Her shadow stretched, darkening the concrete. She faced the statue, eyes hollow, searching for a hint of the miracle that had been promised.

"Tonight," she murmured.

Henry watched her, his heartbeat too loud in the quiet. The crowd held its breath, waiting.

"Tonight," Henry echoed, but his voice was a ghost, already retreating into silence.

She reached out, fingertips grazing the stone cheek. But the stone offered no warmth, no solace. It stood unmoving, unfeeling, the cruelest of idols.

"Please," she whispered.

There was a shift in the crowd, a collective leaning forward as if they might will the tears to start. The woman’s body tensed, coiled like a spring wound tight.

"Please," she begged again, louder this time, her voice shattering against the still air.

The statue remained silent, its stony gaze fixed on some distant nothing. The woman's shoulders slumped, defeated by the immutable.

"Damn you," she spat, the words sharp and sudden.

She recoiled from the statue, then lunged with a ferocity that seemed to come from the earth itself. Her hands shoved against the cold marble, a push to topple both her despair and the object of it.

There was a moment, suspended, where everything could have been different. But gravity is indifferent to human longing.

The statue wavered, an impossible lean, then came crashing down. A sound like thunder split the air, and dust rose in a choking cloud.

Screams pierced the night, a chorus of shock and fear. The statue lay in pieces, a decapitated deity. And beneath it, the woman, crumpled, her desperation etched into the ruin.

"Miracle," someone gasped, a word now devoid of meaning.

Henry staggered back, his feet uncertain. Around him, the crowd erupted into chaos, their reverence shattered as surely as the statue. They had wanted a sign, any sign, but not like this.

He stood alone, the architect of a broken faith. Silence fell, heavy and absolute, save for the crackling echo of falling debris settling into its new shape of ruin.

Feet shuffled, hands withdrew into pockets. Whispers ebbed as the crowd thinned, each figure retreating to its hollows of existence. The night air filled with the residue of breaths, misting then vanishing like the promise they had clung to.

Henry watched them leave. Shadows swallowed their forms, anonymity reclaimed them. Their absence left a profound silence, punctuated only by the occasional scrape of shoe against stone, a cough, the distant shutting of a door.

He approached the rubble, his steps measured, deliberate. The fallen statue lay fragmented, an epitome of disillusion. Henry bent down, his fingers grazing a severed hand, marble turned cold flesh in the moonlight.

A laugh escaped him, brittle and without joy. It was a sound that mocked the stillness, echoing off the walls of the silent houses. His own joke, and he the punchline.

"Miracle," he whispered to the dismembered stone, the word hollow, absurd. He sat beside the headless torso. The vestige of awe it once inspired bled away, leaving only the stark reality of stone and gravity.

His breath slowed, eyes fixed on the dark horizon. The emptiness where hope once resided grew wider and deeper, a bottomless pit. The whisper that had started it all now seemed a distant dream, a fool's errand.

Henry let himself sink further to the ground, arms wrapped around knees. The pieces of the statue, sharp and definitive in their brokenness, mirrored the fragments of his own being. He closed his eyes to the night, to the hushed world, to the emptiness that no longer whispered but roared.

Henry watched the seconds falter, then proceed, as if even time grew weary of this charade. The town clock's hands crept towards midnight, the hour when miracles were rumored to be born. His gaze lingered on the statue's broken visage.

The cold seeped through his coat, a reminder of the night's indifference. Frost gathered on the statue's sightless eyes, mocking the notion of weeping stone with its own icy semblance of sorrow.

"Midnight approaches," he muttered, not to the statue but to the void around him. "Time for your grand performance."

But the joke fell flat, swallowed by the heavy silence that blanketed the square. There was no audience left to be deceived, no believers hanging onto the false hope. Only Henry and the stone remained, two relics of a faith misplaced.

As the clock tower chimed the hour, a stillness settled over the world, profound and complete. Henry felt it resonate within him. The sound tolled twelve times, each ring a knell for illusions now shattered.

In the echo, reality whispered its cruel truth: there was no miracle to come, no redemption in weeping marble. Henry's lips parted, the beginnings of a chuckle.

He rose unsteadily, limbs stiff with cold and resignation. The broken pieces of the statue gazed up at him, inert, blameless in their destruction. They held no answers, offered no solace. They simply were.

With a final glance at the desecrated idol, Henry turned away. His footsteps were soft against the frost-hardened ground, the only evidence of his passing. The weight of his realization bore down upon him as he looked up at the cloudless night sky.

“Rain might come.”