The Storm

The Storm
By: Accepting Daniel Raven

The tap of raindrops on glass, a rhythmic reminder of the weather outside and of the falling of the liquid of life; they hit the glass and sound off a beat.  The beat is uneven and cannot be captured on paper, like a thought that you can comprehend and understand but never express to another.  It is a beat of a singular note that sounds different from person to person and place to place.  A drop hits the windshield of the car.  Splattering into smaller drops upon impact and cascading across the glass.  The rain is a blend of musical and physical art.  The girl sits in the van listening to the rain patter against the roof of the car.  Her left hand grips the leather steering wheel and her right hand clutches the stick shift.  The leather is aged and feels like finely crinkled paper, a cheap and worn feel.  The shifter is composed of steel and the same leather as the circular object that controls the direction of the automobile.  But it doesn’t have a worn, soft, and warm feeling as the wheel does.  It has a cold, tense, and stoic feeling like that of a new baseball mitt.  The girl tightens her grip around the top of the shifter in attempt to apply the feeling of the wheel to that of the shifter.  Her hand relaxes and still the shifter stays the same.  Why can’t she change it?  What permits it to be different?  It just doesn’t seem to add up in her head.  Sometimes humans can’t change a physical or abstract concept so they themselves must adapt.  When important people leave a human’s life they must learn to adapt.  When random chance interferes with the lives of others the others must learn to adapt.  So much adaptation but so little comprehension.  What caused this specific event?  Was it god, nature, time, or the will of something more or other?  These questions the girl struggles with.  Her head is a messy and murky storm of doubt, confusion, and lack of understanding.  The world in front of her has become something she can barely realize.  It has become something more then just a path from point A to point B.  Her world is now a multitude of points. Everything is a variable.  Like a graph that has been scribbled black because every micrometer on it is a path of her destiny.  Some paths shine with the light of never-ending paradise and some glow with the intensity of eternal damnation.  The paths constantly slip in and out of her mind they are visible at certain points in the day and invisible or even none existent at others.  In the click of a second to the position of a molecule everything can change.  Click, cities become smoldering ruins long forgotten by their people.  Click, peace becomes war.  Click, a man breathes out and then ceases to breath at all.  Click, beautiful death blossoms into overcast life and once again back into sweet and blissful death.  The girl lets her head fall back onto the seat and looks out at the field her broken machine of steal and pollution sleeps on, to never wake from her slumber.  She closes her eyes and all she can see is darkness.  She has always had a fear of the darkness but this darkness is different.  It is like a mother wrapped in a veil the color of midnight.  She is calling.  The girl gets out the metal contraption.  Her skin is kissed by the touch of cool northwestern air and rainfall.  The smell of wet grass and nature assaults her senses.  But the mother is calling and she must move swiftly.  Blindly the girl walks to the center of the field feeling for where the mother’s influence is the strongest.  It is there.  No, now it is over there.  Now it is a mile away. Now it is a foot.  The girl stops she knows she can do it.  The mother is testing her and wants to see if she is truly what ‘they’ say she is.  The girl stands, eyes closed, prodding and interrogating the world around her.  The world holds its breath in the heat of the moment.  The anxiety burns deep within. Where’s the point?  The mother is predictable and has a pattern but the pattern’s intervals are spaced just so that it seems as if her actions are purely random.  But the girl can see past the mother’s illusion and holds her feet.  She becomes one with the trees, ramrod straight and as static as midnight air. The point is not just a where it is a when.  The girl stands stagnant waiting for her perquisite and the mother knows that the girl has passed her test.  Suddenly the point vanishes, it has dissipated into the cool air around her.  The girl opens her eyes.  The world around her glows and time slows.  Click, click, click, the rain begins to descend rather then plummet.  Click…click the rain around her begins to stop and sit motionless in the surrounding air.  Click…, the last second echoes throughout her world and then departs from the motionless life.  It’s gone, it finally gone.  The girl smiles to herself.  She has done it.  Now paths, points, and destiny itself have become cruel jokes that will soon be forgotten.  The drops of water suspended in the timeless abyss are a symbol.  But she must be sure.  She must assure herself this is the real thing and not a wonderful dream that’s met with the dreadful light that burns the illusion to a crisp the second she believes.  Her hand and body shake with excitement as she prepares herself.  She and her own reality have broken from the true dimension and the world around her is her own.  Her word is law and destiny is her slave.  Some might even say she is god but she is only a curious child who will never truly understand what has been created here in front of her.  Slicing through the air and water she cuts the rain with a swipe of her hand.  Quickly and then slowly the world around her begins to move.  It comes to life slowly like a child opening its small fragile and delicate eyes for the first time.  The first time the rain hits the mesh floor of green life and gives itself to the dirt.  A marriage that will ever bound this world at its seams.  All life, ideas, and nations are born from this point, this singular eternal point.  Thunder crashes over her head and all the rain descends upon the field.  They are like hunters coming down upon their prey.  It is a motion that upsets her and discomfort clashes within.  Like gunfire pounding against a bunker containing the innocence of the people, the children and future of good people, good blood.
“STOP!”  She commands of the atmosphere above.  It does not understand the meanings of the English tongue and darkens the world.  Like the shadow of a cereal killer across another victim’s path, she stands features colorless and fearful of the world she has created.
“Dear god what am I to do?” She whispers to herself.  But she is god.  What do we do when not even god can see the fate of time and matter?  Chaos begins to unravel around her, the goddess’s world is accelerating and her path is a downward one with no end.  She blinks and the rain is gone but so is the field, the trees beyond, and the van behind.  She is in a dessert atop a dune of dead dirt.  The wind blows around her and she sees that something’s are different then other things.  Click, click, click, and the wind picks up.  Clickclick, click, the sun beats down on her and she blinks in the fatigue.  The blink triggers another change scenery.  Clickclickclick, a school stands firm in front of her and instantly it is claimed in flames.  One scream is all that is heard and all that she understands.
“Stop!”  She cries tears crawl down her childish cheeks.  They will create scars that even the strong willed would not be able to stare directly upon.  Time listens to her English tongue and halts at her command freezing the fire in its climax.  Her eyes center in on an image that others will miss but she has always had miraculous eyesight, even though she is a god that cannot create miracles.  There in a window on the ground floor is a burning image.  An image of a hand, a child’s hands pressed tight against grimy glass that has been dyed crimson and orange by the blood and the heart of combustion.  My dear combustion you always knew how to reap destruction, not to quick, not to slow, just right no matter your abuser intentions.
“No more, no more.”  The girl voice begs with the hopelessness that prisoners of war mutter under heavy sleep even after the conflict has passed.  “Please make it end.”  Time does not obey the commands of those who dance with death but it does take suggestions.  In the blink of an eye the school disappears and time is sprinting towards “the end”.  She stands in a grey concrete field, dust and smog swirling around.  The stone is cold reflecting the feel of the humans who remain; pain, fear, and war have painted them this color.  The war to end all wars they called it, the final push to destroy the evils of the Earth.  Both sides had been corrupted by evil and they assured the destruction of evil.  Thus they both destroyed each other in the name of their ideal of “good”.  This marked the end of it all the nukes fell and fear spread, so much emotion the humans could no longer take it and returned to nature devolving into the animals they once were.  Suddenly, a light cut through the dust.  The girl looks towards the sky to see the sun slowly waving goodbye.  But the sun wishes to make an impression on its orbiters like humans have done for years to assess their place of dominates.  The ball of fire eats at the sky, growing in size as it looks for a cure to save its eternal fire from time.  Sadly there is no cure for old age only masks and false disguises to try to deceive it.  But now as the sun speeds towards Earth the girl realizes what the cosmic body hasn’t, there is no escape from death, there never will be.  The air around her burned but somehow her fragile exterior survived.  Someone has to see ‘The End’, the beautiful, colorful end nature had always intended.  The Sun now dominates the sky; it is so bright, oh so very bright.  Slowly the red mass descends upon her and comes to rest a foot above her.  The mother is watching over her.  Reaching up she touches the surface and feels a burn like no other, but it is addictive.  She will not live without it.  The mother is testing her.  Crouching she prepare herself.  She jumps.  The world before him is black.
“No,” He beats on the space bar in panic.  “I was so close, so close.”  Reaching over he grabs his charger and hastily hooks it up to his laptop.  Why, why did this have to happen to me?  Why now?”  But in a few minutes he will learn it is to late, maybe he’ll be depressed for a few hours over the loss of his precious story.  But he’ll get over it with time.  Time is a thing we will never be able to escape but we will wish and attempt to control.  Never will we truly understand how it works.  We wrote the book on it but it’s a shame we forgot how to read it.