The Rainy Season

When solid ground trembles like river water through the canyons; when the trees bend like blades of grass and the blades of grass are ripped out at their roots; when the sky becomes a memory and clouds thick as blood roil in the heavens, writhing like hellbeasts dragged from the depths, the season has begun.

There is shouting in the alleys between tents, but it can’t hope to compete with the thunder as it bellows its fury from above. Only fragments of each hysterical cry can be heard, and they come together in a picture of terror like a child’s collage:

“...tent!”

“Which way is…”

“...the baby…”

When the storm clouds first curled their wicked fingers around the horizon a week ago, we were already moving. Even without the telltale signs of its arrival, the season will close its fist around you should you dare have the hubris to assume it isn’t watching. Still, no matter how far ahead we seemed to be by nightfall, come morning our work was all but undone. 

And now here, in the dead of night, we are caught unawares. 

It’s a herculean effort to remain upright as the wind slices like so many blades, but I face it head-on as I make my way across camp, my path lit only by occasional flashes of lightning close enough to singe. 

As I pass, I feel against my skin the flaps of tents as they’re either rolled up and packed away or ripped from the hands of their inhabitants into the ever-encroaching void. In all likelihood they’re following mine, which I abandoned in my haste to get from my plot of dust to the one thirty-six down and two to the right, the one I should never have left to begin with. 

So intent am I on my destination that I don’t notice the figure coming towards me until we’ve collided. 

“Sorry,” I mutter, not considering the apology will go unheard for the thunder roaring overhead until it’s already passed my lips. I try to push past, but hands hold fast to my shoulders.

“Cas!” Lightning flashes and dark eyes reflect it. Devastation outlines his face so starkly that he looks like a vintage comic. “You can’t save her, Cas!”

Rage floods my veins and he staggers to the side as I barrel forward. 

Men have died on these plains for less. 

My blood is pounding so intensely in my ears that at first I don’t notice it--the creeping silence, crawling, sprawling like ivy over the tent city. I still at the wrongness of it, the perfect hush that overtakes all as we listen to the sound of our damnation.

Raindrops.

The rush of liquid tumbling from the sky, its impact upon the dust--raindrops are falling. 

The silence breathes its last as screams ring out from the east. 

I’m moving again, running towards that tent, running towards her. Bodies shove past me, and in the lightning flashes I see blood and bone. Guttural, animal sounds of undiluted agony are playing in stereo, walling me in, cinching the noose as I count down the spaces until hers. 

There is no more resistance this close to the rain, and the lightning is so violent now that my path is fully lit. 

It’s so violent, so constant, so goddamn bright that I can see it, see her, from where I fall to my knees. 

The thunder is deafening, but her cries are louder still. 

“You were going to get yourself killed, Caspian.” 

I was right; my tent had been carried away by the winds of the season’s first storm. Here I am, then, in my brother’s tent, a blanket wrapped around me and a mug of soup in my hands, being coddled like a child.  

“Nothing to say?” he asks, dark eyes tired as he looks up from drying the mug his own dinner had been in. “Is that it, then? Is that why you haven’t eaten anything since last week, either? Was that the point?”

“The point was to save her. You know that.” The words are a rasp, even as they force themselves out. “You knew it when you told me not to try.”

He snorts, an ugly, derisive sound, as he throws the towel over his shoulder. “Do you really, honest to god, think that woman needed saving? I mean--”

“It sure as hell looked that way by the time I got there.” I stiffen in defense and the motion slops soup onto my knee. I start--I hadn’t even realized it was cold. 

“She lived this way for years, Caspian. We all have. You’re a fool and an ass if you think she was relying on you alone all this time.” 

“So what,” I say, and the world blurs at the edges as I stand and start towards him, untouched soup forgotten on the ground behind me. I barely register it as the blanket slides off my shoulders and into the dust, hardly note the heavy, chill air as it slides into place against my skin. “She just stayed there, knowing full well what would happen? She did it to herself?” 

There’s that snort again, ringing in my ears, as he turns from me to put the mug away. “I would’ve done the same if I was your wife.” 

I would knock his teeth out for that, but my vision splinters into an upside down kaleidoscope, and the ceiling is rising to meet me. 

Evalee and I met the January before the world went to shit. I mean, it had been headed that way for a while, but at least rain was still water back then. We’d been so young and different, so soft, but I suppose the apocalypse will wring from you any tears you may have one day cried.  

It was easy to run off together when the clouds started rolling in, raining down hellfire upon any and everything they so chose. We’d joked, back then, that it was like a movie. Star-crossed lovers in a disintegrating world--hadn’t that just come out last summer? Wasn’t Chris Pratt in it?

The thing about movies, though, is that you get to leave the theater. You get to go home.

We’d split up at the end of the last rainy season. I can hardly remember now why; it seems to me so unimportant. I think maybe, after the rains had razed to ash every other good thing in the world, those weary, hopeful smiles she would give me every time we made it out alive seemed a tease, a taunt from the universe saying look at the life you could have had. Look at what the world could have been and weep that you will never see it. And instead of treasuring the last beautiful thing that God ever made, in my ignorance, I let her burn.

Every day is a slog. Survival is a chore, and we do it because there is nothing else to do.

Today marks twenty days since the first rain of the season, twenty days since Evalee’s death, and twenty nights I haven’t slept for fear of what I might see, what screams I might hear. Instead, I sit by one of the fires and I watch.

I watch children playing tag, watch as their dirty faces break into grins and they squeal in delight at the adrenaline rush of a near miss. I watch them forget to care that the world wants them dead or dying, watch them decide that innocence is more important. 

I watch men who have been here too long throw back flasks of god knows what from god knows where, watch them grieve the loss of the future they were promised. Where can they find a picket fence, they wonder, or a corner office? What path should they have gone down? What turn did they miss? Regardless, this road they’re on now is the one to which they’ll stay, for the sake of their one true love: pride. 

I watch the shadows, where young lovers think they are discreet. I watch hair tucked behind ears, hands held, lips bitten, cheeks blushed, and I remember, vaguely, what it was to be terrified of something I wanted so terribly. I watch hearts bleed in this broken wasteland, watch as love blooms in defiance of all else. 

There isn’t always someone to watch, though. I hear sleep is a hot commodity, and so there always comes a point in the night when the only thing to watch is the dying fire, its dancing embers, and the smoke as it rises and mingles with those clouds that leave me no peace. 

It’s a clear, crisp fall day--not a cloud in sight. The sky is blue, the coffee is warm, and a chill breeze convinces the leaves to fall. It shifts ever so slightly, and her perfume, the scent of springtime strawberries, blows my way. I look over, still surprised, somehow, every time I see her there next to me. Her eyes, shining and wise, catch mine, and she quirks a brow as if to ask what I could possibly be so transfixed by, as if it couldn’t just be her. 

Reading something in my expression that I didn’t know was there, she laughs in that way of hers and sips her coffee, and I’ve never wanted anything more than I want to kiss her in this moment.

Before I can, though, the sun winks out like someone threw its switch, and her hand is gone from mine. 

An eternity of silence, of waiting, and then lightning flashes and here we are again. Her, on the ground, her grisly fate met, and I, too far and too late to save her from it. She’s just as she was that night, scraps of her tent melted to her skin, the face that had beamed like a sunrise contorted with agony. Holes the size of raindrops are drilled through to the bone, and her eyes have melted down her bleeding cheeks. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but it can’t compare to the horror of her scream, that sound like the death of every wonderful thing, the last wonderful thing. 

I jolt awake, my chest heaving, but the scream doesn’t stop, and it’s multiplying, layering over and over itself, and I--

Lightning flashes and the world goes white, and in the silence between rumblings of thunder, I hear the fell melody of raindrops. 

I push myself up, out of the tent, into the open air, and it’s the first rain of the season all over again. 

All around me, tents are being packed up or blown away, and terror permeates the atmosphere. 

Lightning strikes and I am stricken with the realization that my brother was right: she had lived like this for years. We all have. And who could blame her for wanting to stop? At any cost? 

I’m slow at first but then I’m running, pushing through the children and the men and the young lovers fighting to live, to run, another day. 

Lighting splinters the air I breathe and before me I see raindrops, black as death, like someone somewhere high above has upset their inkwell. 

She’s not at the edge of the storm this time; I know that. 

But maybe she’ll be at the other end of it.