And that's what scares me...
It was about three A.M. when the storm hit.
Frightening winds, and a blast of rain like I have never seen before, hit my house like a freight train, and woke me up. I looked out the window to see what was going on, and I caught sight of one of them, from the corner of my blurred vision.
Not merely standing in the rain, he was made up entirely of the rain.
The lightning flashes just made his outline more distinct, but as my eyes adjusted, I began to make him out more readily, and to see others like him scattered about like chess men on a board, moving in abrupt and jagged jumps.
Never staying put, never walking, nor leaping, just ceasing to be in one place, then, in the
next instant, suddenly being too far away to have made that move by any means I could understand.
The Rain People.
They seemed to only exist in a space that dwells within the falling rain, and the more rain, the harder the downpour, the more of them I could see that night. Maybe they have always been there, perhaps I just never saw them before.
But on that stormy night, I saw them, and more terrifyingly, they saw me, as well.
They don't get wet, how can water become wetter? Looking at them made the skin on my neck tremble, they seemingly searched for eyes that looked upon them, and when they noticed me, they all seemed to focus on my tiny dark unlit window, till I pulled the shades down, and shivering, tried to go back to sleep.
But I knew they were still there. The incessant rains kept falling. The winds blew so hard, and then, the electricity went dead.
In our man made, and contrived world, we feel so safe. And yet...
You can't believe how fragile our existence really is, the puny human mind just refuses to believe how fleeting our pitiful protections are, till you lose them.
But in the dark, as I lay there, I could feel them, not apart from, but a part of, the raging and relentless storm, as they erratically darted and jumped from place to place, their presence never quite confirmed or denied.
But the strange sinking feeling in my heart had already told me they were there, and when I dared to look out the window again, I could see one of them standing right there, looking intensely at me, seemingly only a few feet from my bedroom window.
And just as my mind adjusted to the shock, he transpired, he melted, he evaporated into the rain, and yet he found form again, in a split second, a hundred feet away, staring back at me, through me, from the middle of the street, as the raindrops painted his presence in my view.
I have never been so terrified, and I still don't even know what is was I saw.
Who knows what primitive man was afraid of, when the winds howled, and the rains fell.
But that night changed me, and I must get away, I must flee. I know they exist now, and worse,they know I know. Whatever they want, I couldn't tell you. But a more malevolent and sinisiter sense of evil and foreboding I have never experienced in my long, and until now, uneventful life.
I must get away, immediately. At any price, any cost.
I have found a place in the desert., humble yes, poor, and shabby, but located where it seldom, if ever, rains. I am moving soon. Oh God, I hope I can get packed and out of this place. I fear more and more each day, they will be back, and I could never bear having to see them ever again.
The apprehension rises in my throat like water in a well as I type these words.
Even now, I am throwing all my possessions in boxes like a madman.
I only hope I am not too late.
Tomorrows forecast calls for rain.
I have to go, I have to leave...
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originally published on the Internet April 12, 2008
copyright Brandon Busch 2008
