It Began to Rain

Okay, so I wrote this for an assignment in English class; we were shown a painting of a woman in a yellow dress with brown hair facing two houses, one w/ smoke coming from the chimmney & a bunch of birds beside it.  The clouds were grey and it appeared as though it was about to rain--you couldn't see the woman's face, but she had one hand raised before her, one on the ground, and she was sitting "princess style" on a meadow in the backyard. The plants looked like they were dying.  I wasn't allowed to use the words, "woman", "lady", "girl", "field", or "yard".  I had 1 hour, 15 min. to write it.


It Began To Rain

Her clear, blue eyes reflected the silhouette of his lanky body upon the house’s plaster walls.  Her pale, bruised arm was outstretched in his direction, in such a way that it almost seemed to engulf his miniature figure in the distance.  “Don’t!” the words were torn choked and foreign from her swollen throat, but evoked with such passion that if the man walking from her were any other, he would have surely turned to comfort her.  This man, however, continued his brisk trot around the old house, his rigid stance reflecting his refusal to face her.

She made to move forward, stretching in her wheelchair, and suddenly twisted out of her seat, falling to the ground in a single, violent movement.  And there she lay on the withered grass, useless legs folded beneath her weak body, the pale yellow dress hanging loosely about her thin frame.

And so she was alone; for all the Gods--if such beings existed, for she doubted all things now--had deserted her in the most crucial hour.  She wanted to declare again her love for him, standing upright as she had not been able in recent years. 
She wanted to embrace his own hard body without pain engulfing her fragile limbs, to hold his rough, weathered hands without the telltale bruises mere hours after.

She wanted so much, and yet had so little strength to fulfill her own wishes.  As she had grown weaker, friends and finally family had deserted her, unable to keep up with the growing attentions such a body demanded.  And now even he was prepared to leave her.

Up ‘till this time, she hadn’t experienced true loneliness; that which robbed one’s heart of emotion and left a yawning hole in return.  It had been… unfathomable to her in a sense, surrounded as she had always been by those necessary for her survival.

But here, helpless in a meadow of plants dying just as she was, able to sight her love and yet unable to reach him-- him being the only man who had ever displayed affection for one such as herself--as he walked stoically away from the one person who needed his presence in order to ensure her place among the living.

And so here, in this place of former comfort—laying just before the place she had once foolishly called, “home”--and ever-present pain, she felt more alone than any other time in her life.

She screamed, “Don’t leave me alone!” loud as her tight throat would allow, voice breaking in mid-cry.  Her thin fingers gripped the ground tightly, pulling up grass, seeming almost claw-like.  Greasy hair, unkempt fingernails, faded yellow dress, and a nearly skeletal appearance; all were attributed to her dire self-neglect, the self loathing she had fallen into of late… and brought to mind the humiliating failed suicide attempt.

“Too weak to even kill yourself,” he had muttered softly at the time, but when he looked into her face his bloodshot eyes had been streaming with tears--

“I’ll help you wash,” he once had offered generously, knowing she lacked the ability to do it herself any longer.  But she, stubborn to the end, had snarled, “I can do it myself!” and he had withdrawn in respect of her wishes--

The time they had kissed, and her swollen lips the next day, bruises round her side where he had embraced her.  And he offered to leave, for her own good, though she had refused violently--

And now he was leaving.

All her fault, for pushing him away…

For her own good?  She was able to scoff at the idea even sprawled helpless in the grass, toppled wheelchair lying on the ground behind her, a constant reminder of her crippling disability.

Now he turned the keys in his car and pulled out of the driveway, in his beaten-down pick-up, which they had playfully dubbed “The Trash Can” long before the ever-worsening condition of her body deteriorated beyond repair.

And now he was driving down the dirt road cut carelessly through the meadow, his course veering past her pitiful figure.  She cried again, her mouth twisted in a painful grimace.

“Henry!” She could barely hear her own desperate shout over the roar of the engine, and mere seconds after, the click of the truck’s door opening found its way into her frantic mind. 

And all at once the memories of their meeting, their strengthening relationship, and the necessity of their early love engulfed her, sending her into a near trancelike state.

His solemn proclamation, “I love you,” as he clutched a bouquet of daffodils, her favorite flowers—because she said they reminded her of happiness in the greatest extreme—knuckles white in anticipation.  “Yes, yes, I love you as well!”  She had laughed in delight, forgetting for a moment her mussed hair and disheveled clothes—

The first time she had met him, when they were mere children.  “Savannah, this is your new neighbor.  Say ‘hi’, sweetie.”  The young Savannah had hidden bashfully behind her mother’s abundant skirts as Henry grinned crookedly at her, displaying the gap left from his newly lost front tooth—

When he had traced her arm with a slender finger, kissing her delicate shoulder, and discovered the purple bruises patterned across her body.  “What are these?” he had asked, worried.  She averted her eyes, rolled down her checkered sleeves, unwilling to speak.  “Nothing, love—”

“I’m dying,” she had told him, and certainly had looked it.  But it had never been looks he was after, or personality.  It was more the little quirks that made her herself; the way she tucked strands of hair behind her ear when she was nervous, the uneven dimples when she smiled, the manner in which she tilted her head while concentrating, the way she scolded him when he cursed.  “When you die,” he answered, “I’m going with you—”

Through blurred vision she sighted him as he ran towards her. Stray hairs covered his face; brown eyes swam with tears; his leather jacket was nearly falling off his shoulders, his large hands were lifting up her weightless body.  He cradled her in his arms, pushed her slightly against his chest, and faintly touched his forehead against her own.

It began to rain.

The drops of warm water caused her to shiver as they soaked into her gown, and she fancied that perhaps she could feel the soft impacts of such on her paralyzed legs.

“My wheelchair…” Savannah muttered weakly, extending a frail arm in that direction, then continued to speak.  He knelt closer, and caught only the last words; “thought you were gone…”

He kissed her cheek tenderly, and buried his face in her chest, attempting to hide the tears—or perhaps rain—that cascaded down his cheeks.  “It’ll be okay,” he whispered, his warm breath tickling her ear.  “Everything’s going to be alright.”

And there he stood; a disheveled man cradling a painfully thin brunette in his muscled arms, wet hair pasted to his pale face, her dress clinging to her emaciated frame, head thrown back in a semblance of partial sleep, or perhaps even death, and his face distorted in misery.