When It Rains It Pours

C.W : mentions of alcohol.

With her hands resting on the metal poles, Constantine looked practically crucified in the middle of the playground. Her hair lays tangled across her face, the cold weather beating into her cheeks, leaving her unaware of the shiver that travelled through her body. 3 bottles of liquor will do that to you. Especially right after exam week. But our little protagonist didn’t seem to care much about what brought her there. In the middle of nowhere, sitting on the rusted roundabout, swivelling her legs on the stubbled ground so that the world swayed beyond the strands in front of her. She picks up the bottle from the ground, and tips her head back to finish the liquid at the bottom.

“Cheers,” she toasts to the darkening sky. “May my luck be as fruitful as there are the stars in the sky.” Peering up, she notices that there aren’t any. The clouds overhang thick and stubborn without letting any persistent light pass through. The smell of thunder follows. But she doesn’t make much of an effort to stand.

“Bloody hell,” she shakes the empty bottle, as if it’ll conjure up the liquid inside “I thought I only took a sip of that.” She slurs, before chucking it into the nearby grass.

She doesn’t exactly know how she wound up on this roundabout, let alone where she wound up. A bottle before she remembered bright lights and the sounds of music pumping through her ears, bodies bashing themselves against her until she almost moved with them like one beating, breathing organism. Two bottles ago she’s never felt so undone. 

Her constitution crumbled beside her by the hour, as each swig carried with it a merciful remorse, let alone an escape, from the reality that Constantine is soon to graduate yet has no idea the direction she is to be headed next. Before, she was a compass, straight and unmoving on her journey laid before her by those around her. Now with all of that gone, with the last word written the final sentence closed, she wanders blindly trying to find the metaphysical door she just stepped out of. This then translates to her wandering into the nearby marketplace, where she’d often traveled during the earlier hours of her school mornings, always rushing, and looking for something to fill up the hunger that came with never having time to herself.

“Watch it.” A man in an overcoat yells at her, shoving off her body as she struggles to stay standing.

“Sorry.” She mumbles, desperately hanging on to a nearby streetlight. The sidewalk expands around her, as people rush by to escape the cold. Women in trenchcoats, kids with earmuffs and mittens who stare and point at a staggering Constantine. Their mothers pull on their limbs to silence their stares, Constantine curls her lip at the shake of their heads. How would they know what she’s going through, how would anyone know? It’s not as if she expected them too, but with her heightened and yet, somewhat dulled, senses makes the wrong emotions crank up at the wrong time.

The skies darkened with every step she took, leading her to believe under a pretence of security, but even that gets stripped away with her not knowing where to walk next; with how quickly her eyes scatter over the scenes around her, like the fingers of a witch and her glass orb, only to find a fog and the glass cracked around its edges. They say the act of putting things together come at a price higher than it staying broken, Constantine herself wouldn’t go as far as claiming to be in need of a mend, or some sort of grandiose fixture of self. But at the seams she was falling apart, she could feel it as one could feel the lightning conjuring in the air around them.

She trips over a loose stone, half falling onto the ground just as she catches herself with her hands and gasps at the sharpness erupting from her palms. The sharp tang of the alcohol has travelled throughout her body, giving her a temporary false warmth, making her realise she had left her jacket hanging back at the park. It is left forlorn at the broken swingset.

“Can this night get any better?” She yells to a passerby, he scurries off in alarm.

“My jacket is gone,” she holds up a finger to count, her other arm draped over a large flower pot, “I just finished my last bottle.”Another finger. “And I can’t for the life of me know how to get home. Or how to get anywhere for that sake,” all fingers are abandoned by now.

Her head rests on the pot, her head pounding as more people pass by her with eyes averted. Some reach their hand out to her, but she looks away and lets her misfortune to rest around her instead of ecsaping it’s comforts, the rain continues its beating, and now most of the streets have gone quiet with only the sounds of water hitting against the dark pavements. With a set in her jaw, and a furious resolution she thinks she hears her mothers voice amongst the rushing of water. It chides her.

“Get out of the water you silly thing.” It says, beyond the growing headache, underneath her eyelids. “You’re going to catch a mean cold if you stay sitting out here like this. What have I told you before? Always bring an umbrella even if you know it’s never going to rain. See? I was right. As always.”

“Yeah Mom,” she cuts back. “You were always right and it was always my job to not care. How was I supposed to know it was going to rain like this?” She hoists herself up, talking to the drenched hydrangeas .“I mean, who knew graduation night would be suucchhh a blast right?”

“Just find some-“

“Yeah, yeah mom I know.” She begins to walk, or resemble something like it. “Not everyone gets to escape the rain.”

Constantine feels the deepest of her regrets find their way back into her conscience, she knew that graduation parties were something to be a legacy of memory, her dorm-mate even said something on the lines of : “It’s like almost ritualistic how we all get under a roof and forget all sense and being. Plus, I think the guy that’s hosting it is ,like, in love with me or something I don’t know. But you should come.” She said. 

“It’ll be fine” she said.

Constantine cackles at this, before she spots the bright lights of a storefront amidst the frenzy. She crosses the road, shielding her eyes from the flood, not even bothering to check if there were any upcoming cars. Why not anyways, a chance of shelter seemed to be the only thing that made sense in this confusion.After all,another drink is all that consumes her, another shot, another reason to continue in this heated dance between her reality and what’s to become of it. The jacket gets blown onto the swing sets as Constantine enters the bakery.

“Hello” she calls out to the empty shop. “Helloooo I’m-“

“Who’s there?” A head pops out behind a swinging door, an older woman, she thinks she knows her but both can’t seem to remember. “The store’s closed lady, come back tomorrow when it’s not pouring outside.”

“What if its pouring tomorrow too?” Constantine mumbles, shaking the rain from her hair. The old woman steps out and guides an unbeknownst Constantine to the terrance exit.

“No no wait,” she resists, “you don’t happen to have whiskey underneath your bread cupboards or something do you?”

“Gods sake, no child!” The old woman says incredulous.

“You see I think I’m rather lost. I don’t know how a roundabout has brought me here.”

“You’re talking about the one at the Green-rose park? That park’s been closed for decades lady, best you get home then.”

“Wait but-“ her sentence ends at the shut of the door. Back out into the rain, she noticed how she already missed the warmth of the inside. 

“I think I hate bakers.” She whimpers in defeat.

“Now, don’t hate all of us.” Another voice perks up behind her. Constantine sharply turns and stumbles at this, and squints her eyes to the figure approaching her from the dark. To her, he seemed to have materialised out of a thin air, like the thunder itself before the lightning. 

‘No that’s not right’, she thinks.

She wouldn’t have spotted him picking at the lily pond nearby, her being too self accompanied by the rather unsurprising of inconvenient events.

“No, I’m in the right to.” She argued back.

“Doesn’t seem much of a strong argument to me.” He replied.

“I’m not speaking to convince of anyone else other than mine. Me.” she corrects.

“Where are you headed?” He faces the door, not before he notices the tremor of her arms.

“A park.” She racks her brain for the name, the headache making it rather difficult to even remember her own name. “My jacket. I seem to have lost it.”

“Well that’s a shame.” He turns to face her, placing gardening gloves on a table. Constantine notices his eyes underneath the hood of his raincoat, a curious blue. She thinks she’s never seen a blue so dark.

‘I need to get it back’ she realises, like a child’s thoughts, slower but quick to react to them, “I know something important is in it." She adds. "And it’s one of those things where you know? You don’t know you lost it until you found it? One of those.” She rambles on, taking determined steps back “The park, yes. That’s where I’m going to go now. Tell your wife or whoever that woman inside that she dosen't have to worry. Even if she didn’t really care much. Actually wait, don’t tell her anything, I think she thinks I’m a little unhinged or something.” She added as an afterthought. “Why do you laugh at me?”

“Because,” he shakes his head, "you look like some lost lamb in the rain like that. Chivalry may be dead, but here.” He hands her the flower he’s been carefully turning over in his hand “It’s not much and it's not a map, but since when does anything of beauty have to be used other than viewed?”

“Uhm,” she takes the flower, eyes widening at its elegant white petals that seemed to glow in her hands. “Thank you,I guess?”

She begins to walk away but turns back just as he gets in.

“Yes?” He asks over the rain.

“Nothing.” She smiles. “Forget about it.” Before finding her way back to the main walkway.

Back at the playground, the winds have pushed half the paint off the slide and left a swing dangling on for dear life by one metal chain. Constantine traces back her steps, spotting the flower pot, the small street sign and the small crevice she previously hurled up in. She touches all these like milestones. The clouds darken with heavy thunder, and they press against her almost pummelling her back into the street as if she were the very gravel itself. Constantine was never one for directions at all, on campus she would find her classes by sheer luck and never really bothered to ask anyone about which class was in which building. This stayed tried and true to all other aspects involving her manner, her grace was that of how easily she rests in the palm of lucks fortune. Tonight would be no different. Even then ,to her own concealment, she let out a gasp when she hears the squeak and rust rail against one another just beyond an outcrop of oak trees. 

“I think we found it little friend.” She giggles to her flower, its petals a little beaten but she managed to block out most of the wind from abusing it any further. “Now, what say the chances of me finding it…”

She climbs over the wrought iron fence once again, and scours the playground for a bright yellow jacket, the one so carelessly left behind that ,almost, seemed to pull her into this eye-of-the-storm-esk surrounding, closed off from the outside world by the thick layers of bark and leaves. 

The jacket itself stayed practically in hiding, over the hours of her departure the storm whisked it away left and right before it landed in finality under a shrub of bushes near the closed down popcorn stand. Constantine wouldn’t notice this for a while, so instead she climbs up the play set, up the monkey bars and underneath the scavenger telescope whose kaleidoscopic glass shattered inwards years ago. Reaching the top of the slide she dangles over the entire area like some sailor looking out at sea. In the midst of her search the skies have finally calmed down, only a sporadic few fall back down to the earth and in turn, the moon has taken its rightful place amongst the sky. 

Constantine has had most of her intoxication rocked out of her system by now, not enough to stop her from jumping from the slide ,up the monkey bars once again; dangling upside down with the flower tucked into her hair singing 'rain rain go away' but enough for her to get a clear eye in spotting the yellow poke out just in sight.

“Bingo” she whispers.

With the rush of success replacing the alcohol, she hoists herself up the bars, weaving her limbs until she hops off it entirely, making a run to the bright spot of colour, in the middle of all the mucked out colours : grey, brown, the kinds in puddle reflections; she pulls out her jacket with triumph.

She puts it over her shoulders, shaking a bit at the cold that seeps into her skin but ignoring it for the comforts it’s brought to her again.

‘Oh yeah the pockets’ she thinks, before rummaging into the inner seams sending out a silent prayer that nothing got too wet. 

She pulls out three things : a folded sticky note, her wallet and a bus ticket.

Constantine stares at all three things, remembering now, at five in the morning, just exactly where she was supposed to go; she studies the ticket she was supposed to use in about another three hours. And in another nine, she is bound to never see this park again, or any of the people here. 

She re-pockets the ticket, with it, she also tucks away all the late night desperations that came with the decision alone, as well as the wallet (which didn’t hold much to begin with). In her hand, with her yellow jacket around her shoulders, and trembling fingers, she unravels the note.

Our protagonist now reads out a number, a set of numbers actually and takes a moment to remember who gave her the note in the first place. It spells out nothing more than the phone number, and an initial at the bottom, written hastily: T.L.

“Hm.” She leans on the stand, and plucks out the flower from her hair, gives it a little contemplative twirl in her fingers, before walking back onto the main street.

She runs these numbers in her head the whole way there like some mantra, her feet now sore, and as the skies clear so does her mind. The bottles remain hidden and forgotten underneath the grass, her priorities now redirected into something a little new and a little wilder. Constantine passes the bakery, her reflection against the chalk painted glass making her look twice and re-inviting her mothers voice to chide once more.

“I don’t look that bad.” She answers.

“You could look better.” 

“I could always look better. That’s not the point.” She reaches the phone booth.

She slides the door open, and gets shut within the stand. Constantine does much in this moment, although to anyone looking in they would just see a strange girl with a strange jacket thinking of stranger possibilites.

Like at a fork-road with three possible endings.

She eventually plucks the phone from its stand, pulls it up to her ear and remembers the motion of doing the same with seashells on a beach. This time her mothers voice is softer, beaten under the dreary summer suns. Constantine decides.

The dial tone fades after she punches in the number. To the outside, they wouldn’t have heard the warmth in Constantines ear, a voice she wouldn’t have heard in any other circumstance.

“Hello again.” She says through a smile, maybe a tear.

A block down the old man settles into his bed with his baker wife; late into the day the wife rustles at the shifting of weight.

“Did you give that drunk the flower? I thought you’ve been caring for them for months, why would you give it to some stranger?”

He gruffs in response, and switches off the lamp by the nightstand. The blanket over him covers his trembling body.

In her little booth, the coins on the payphone rattle into the machine with use, and a pair of headlights shine onto Constantine’s figure. She waves them over, the ticket long forgotten, like the seas that pull sand from it’s shore.