Raining Color

It was late, so late that it was early, so late that all of the drug dealers, street artists and moonlight philosophers had fallen asleep and the grasshoppers and crickets were all that kept the streets alive.

It was the type of neighborhood where people would speak their final words, breathe their final breaths, and think their final thoughts. It was the side of town where the buildings had fire escapes instead of gardens and the night rolled in with gunshots instead of stardust. It was the type of place where bike locks didn’t matter and books were useless.

It was only then that the children could look out onto the streets only to see a bleak image, subdivided by bars on the windows; but eventually the sun would rise delivering them their only little relief from life.

I lived down the street.

Imagine a house abandoned for thirty years, and what would occur beyond its decaying walls. Everything would be covered with a thick layer of both dust and ivy. The brick walls would crumble, becoming a victim of the elements and victim to gravity. The ceilings would crack and the floor of the attic along with all of the dusty books and boxes would come cascading through the ceiling and onto the ground layered with the dusty ivy—a makeshift black hole spilling through the sky of oblivion.

When winter came, the icicles that lined the weathered and delicate shingles would become so heavy that the damaged roof would give way and the falling snow would be allowed to fall through the roof and then through the ceiling where it would rest upon the dusty ivy, books and boxes. The warm weather would bring melting snow and a flood of bricks, books, boxes and ivy. Wet books would be allowed to dry in the finally prevailing sun and they would develop brittle pages, stuck together so that their words could never be deciphered again.

The process would repeat over and over, forever, and once again if no one ever bothered to stop it. Water marks on the wall would serve as tree rings; each spring flood full of dust and dirt rising higher every year, leaving a mark on the wall every time, each time a little higher and a little darker.

I lived in the basement.

The basement consisted of a hallway and six rooms; three to the left and three to the right. Second to the right was a room of boxes filled with old sketchbooks, photo albums, empty coffee cups and all those other legendary 90s relics. The room had been cultivating catastrophe for years. Almost everything written in ink had become victim to water damage and began to smell like your grandma’s basement.

My bed was lodged into the far corner next to the door.
When it began to rain, the water would seep through both the ceiling tiles and the small window just below them. The window let in the spring floods, but on sunnier days--the only natural light would sneak into the room through the graffiti, muraled on the brittle glass. That was how they did stain glass windows on this side of town.

Usually when it rained, a light cadence could be heard on the air conditioner and condensation would line the apartment walls. The next eight days were different. An incessant drumming began on the air conditioner and stayed in a constant rhythm through out the day and picked up even more during the cricket hours. The rain came so heavily that it began to feel like the sky was caving in on this social disaster.

The children down the street were stuck without relief for the entire week and were trapped by wet walls and slippery floors. Watercourse formed against either side of the street and the graffiti was rinsed from the curbs. The watercolor would wash down into the storm drain at the end of the street where it would continue to flow into the ocean.

Usually when it rained, a preemptory leak in the ceiling would develop, then the water would come dripping through the window. These nights were different. The water began seeping through the window in rouge bursts and then it propelled a waterfall through the vent of the air conditioner. Only then did the murky liquid leak through a lapse in the ceiling tiles and begin to push its way to catastrophe.

Anyone else would have left the house hours before I even thought about it. The ceiling began to crack and the last thing I remember is a wave of floorboards and plaster gravitating strait at my face. The ceiling tiles were forced into my eyes and dusty ivy propelled down my throat under the pressure of the first floor apartments. It all ended right there.