Chapter 4: So Much Rain
853 Words
Chapter 4: So Much Rain
Nuclear war. I imagined that happening. Nuclear bombs from North Korea, China, and Russia blowing the s**t out of our country. An apocalypse happening right before my own eyes. Terror. Killing. Murder of the human race. Sometimes I thought that would have been better than the life I chose to live.
Bloody babies with missing eyes. Emaciated women with their droopy breasts hanging out, exposed, in search of food. Men missing teeth and shitting blood from their assholes. Cities demolished. A war-torn land that was once called the United States of America. Hair falling out. d***s shriveling up to nothing. Water unfound. Food supply at a minimal.
You can’t eat the animals in the woods—those few that survived the bombs—because they’re poisoned. You’ll starve to death. You’ll bleed to death.
And I could hear the bombs going off in my head. Causing headaches. Mushroom clouds. Soot everywhere. Ash being the new dirt. f**k vegetables. There are no vegetables in the land after the bombs.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
We kill each other every day of our lives as humans.
We will kill again.
The nuclear bombs will fall soon. End of days is near.
I felt that.
I told myself that.
Jesus, if you exist, help us.
* * * *
So much rain. Tons of it falling down from heaven. Biblical rain. Something I called Noah’s Rain.
Lewis and Sander didn’t believe in heaven.
I hadn’t made up my mind as of yet.
Maybe someday soon I would. I still had time to think about it and begin to understand the books of the Bible, which Lewis knew like the back of his hand because of his Bible thumper of a mother when he was a young boy and had his tongue.
* * * *
Some days, I wanted to run away with Lewis and keep him to myself. I thought we could hide in Miami, San Francisco, or Key West. Lewis had loads of money and could move to anywhere he wanted. He was filthy rich and would have shared every penny of his fortune with me.
Lewis loved Sander, though.
Lewis was afraid of Sander.
One of his haiku’s read:
His shadow will hurt,
pain is his contribution,
leaving me behind.
* * * *
One of the wipers was broken on the Caddy. It squealed when flicking to and fro, driving me mad. It sounded like my mother when I was a young boy, before she shipped me to her brother’s house in Philly. The noise sounded horrendous, torturing me. I couldn’t think straight. My mind became a clusterfuck of s**t. There was nothing stable about me and…
I had to get the f*****g thing fixed. Had to. Wanted to. Maybe I could get Lewis to fix it. The guy knew how to fix anything. Good with hands and mind. Brilliant.
Rain. So much goddam rain.
Would it ever stop?
I didn’t think so.
Never.
Motherfucker.
Calm down, Kal. Just calm down. You’re fired up about nothing, my brother told my mind. Pull it together and get the job done.
Life is a tragedy, Paul. This is just a small part of it.
I want to disagree with you.
You do.
I do.
But you can’t.
I can’t. And won’t. Just drive. And try to keep a clear head. Don’t let the rain bother you, Kal. Don’t. Just don’t. You have bigger things to worry about.
* * * *
The night pulsed for me like an erratic heartbeat. I remember that now. Something felt strange, as if it were breathing around me, next to my ears. Thumping.
I blinked a number of times while driving. I thought of the stranger in room three and his big c**k. I wanted to feel sticky next to him, spent; the closest thing to love that I could feel. I wanted to hear from my dead brother, but he didn’t want to speak to me. So I drove in silence through the heavy rain. Northward bound. Driving. Driving. Driving to find a f*****g shovel near dead bodies.
Splish. Splash. Squeak.
Splish. Splash. Squeak.
The wipers were drowning my attention to the road. I almost veered over the double yellow line and into a rut on the opposite side of the road. I thought of Philly, my mother, my brother, and Sander. Sander used to be such a nice young man. Into me. In love with me. Willing to take anything from the world and give it to me. Sander loved my mother, and vice versa. She used to squeeze his cheeks and muss his head of hair with a palm.
She used to say things like, “That Sander is such a fine boy. I wouldn’t be embarrassed to call him my own.” She used to…
That was then. This is now.
Sander became an angel to me. My keeper. My saint. Someone who my heart belonged entirely to. Before and after Candy. Before and after murdering his ex-wife. Sander loved me. Everything about me. My mind. My heart. My sense of humor. My d**k.
No more.
No longer.
And I knew why.
The tragedies of our lives are always complex, aren’t they?
We kill things we love. It’s natural. There’s no religion behind it. Death comes to everything, willed by the hand and heart that adored and craved it. Maybe that’s why we were murderers?
- Writer
