Rain-soaked Nightmares

Soft, swishing beads filled the world like a giant bathtub, silently drowning hopes, thoughts, and lives. Buildings swayed gently yet roughly, and Abigail was there when the screams fell into silence. The tapping turned to slamming turned to wrecking, and no one knew who was next.

It didn't help that Abigail was drowned in the horrors of absolute darkness, the power having been disrupted when the storm started. She trembled on the cold, shaky floor of her room, grabbing onto some unknown piece of furniture, waiting. All she could do was wait. The last thing she remembered before the blackout was watching the news on TV and seeing warnings about a storm crashing in, and then talking lapsed into static, which fizzled out into silence. Then all there was left were the unanswered questions swarming through the minds which still survived, each sting of anguish propelled by the hard tilts of the somewhat sturdy buildings still holding up. And Abigail's wild, far-reaching imagination.

In one dream, she groped about and found a torch. Trembling, she shone it ahead of her, and her breath stopped short as the warm light brushed across a kindly pixie-like woman, her long golden waves cascading down her back and her blue eyes alert and vivid despite the darkness engulfing her. When she spoke, her voice rang clear and sweet like church bells. And she promised Abigail unending sunshine. Abigail desperately yielded, her breath held as her hand clasped the woman's hand, and the world was saturated in light. Yet somehow the flesh rubbed against her own then dissipated like a final exhale, and the bright broad space expanding from her feet remained silent and empty. Abigail felt the raw and painful yearn of waiting for people who would never come.

A floorboard near Abigail tumbled into the chaos, and she woke, drenched in cold sweat, with the faint sensation that she had fallen into some trap that was inescapable. Her stomach knotted as she gazed out into the eternal and suffocating darkness, and it was at that moment when she found herself surrendering a final torn strand of hope. The rain clawed at her window and the thunder shrieked, and she curled into a small ball shrouded by all the menacing shadows.

It was with a cry that she slipped into another realm of dreams, where she ran blindly to the window in her room and jumped out, shaking and screaming from desperation. Outside there might be light, even if it was merely cast from the occasional cold lightning strike. Yet when her body crashed against the ground, all she found was darkness, and now there was no protection from the beads that came pelting down. They stung her, cut her skin open, made her bleed. Her blood spilled onto the gravel, where it was washed hastily into the nearest gutter, coldly and without any further ado. The water swiftly piled up and lapped over her head as she fell under, her screams blocked by silence. A violent splash next to her made her turn around with all the remaining energy that she could muster, and as she hung limply in the torrents, her hand reached out and tightly clasped another. She had no idea who the storm had bonded her to, but she clung on with all her might. Tears flowed down her cheeks and travelled out through the outside world, and distantly some half-conscious part of her wondered how much of the water was made of tears like hers, a painfully silent final protest from the lives that had been lost. And then she sunk into this twisted abyss, consumed but not alone.

The furniture Abigail had been so helplessly clinging onto since she started waiting toppled suddenly from her reach, clanging hard into a wall and forcing Abigail out of her head. Her eyes snapped open and she froze, for what she now saw sent a thrill through her body that delighted her but also somewhat frightened her, as if she was afraid to hope and then lose.  It was strange, delightful, mysterious, confusing, but most of all, it instilled faith in her and everyone else who now peered shyly from behind their battered windows.

A single ray of sunlight burst from Abigail’s window and illuminated the path ahead of her.

Tentatively, Abigail wobbled as she rose from the cramped position she had been forced into for several merciless hours and tip-toed forward. It was a straight, narrow pathway between a closet and a table, and it led straight to a window. Abigail made her way over, slowly at first but with small pieces of confidence gathered and held close as she got nearer. Finally, with only three steps to go, she stopped. Perhaps it was all an illusion? Another dream? What if she saw the figment of her wildest hopes come true, only to then wake back up into that chilling nightmare of waiting? Would she risk it all?

Abigail shut her eyes, reached forward, and grabbed the windowsill. She nervously pulled herself forward, and with her breath held, she dared to open her eyes.

Broken remains of buildings and houses lay scattered on the streets, their items spilling out for miles in the way of everyone who still survived and walked slowly through the ruins. People were cautiously brimming out of their homes, most places of which had been half-destroyed in some form during the disaster.  They softly murmured to each other and themselves in astonishment and disbelief. The world was quiet, its inhabitants were, for now, scarce, but everything and everyone was flooded with sunshine. Abigail took several shaky steps from the window and her room until she reached her door, careful to avoid shards of destroyed furniture along the way, and, her mind still spinning from blinding fantasies and gut-wrenching fears, she gently swung her door open.

And as the world began to heal, caressed warmly in golden light once again, Abigail stepped hopefully out into the sunshine.