Thunder's Kiss: beginning (1)

In the city a child peers from her window. Peeking out at a world of water and stone. She watched as the rain fell, as the streets ran with millions of tiny droplets that had fallen from the sky, as the drops outlined figures that shouldn’t have been there, invisible men. Only they weren’t men. Men didn’t have that many arms, or two heads, or horns. No two were exactly the same. She watched as they stalked about, and she thought of how much fun they must be to play with. Extra arms would come in handy when playing she was sure. She knew that her father was sleeping and that it would be so easy to sneak out the door and go and play in the rain.

“Charlotte, come away from the windows.”

Her mother was calling her. But charlotte knew that if she pretended not to here her that she could steal a few more minutes of watching the invisible men as they walked about in the rain. She loved how the water splashed down over them making them visible to anyone who would just look out the window during a storm like this.

“Charlotte, come away from there I said.”

“But mommy the invisible men are out,”

Charlotte pointed out the window at one of the two-headed men, pointing for her mommy to see. she could see them she was sure, mommy was real smart. Mommy looked out at where she was pointing following her finger into the rain beyond.

She saw it, charlotte was sure. Mommy looked right at one of the men who weren’t there and she saw him just like she did. But she looked away hurriedly.

“That’s just the rain honey, and the wind, the wind and the rain making funny shapes, look I can see a dog over there.” She pointed out into the storm at a point that was devoid of anything.

“And over there is a bear” again nothing.

“No mommy there are men out there, ghosts.” She pointed to one of the one with too many arms. “See there, and there” that one had wings that flapped about knocking the water from its path to the ground momentarily.

“No honey it’s just the wind.” Her mother got up and left the room. “I’ll bake you some cookies would you like that?”

“Yeah!” charlotte exclaimed gleefully, dashing from the window to help mommy with the cookies.

Outside in the rain the invisible things scattered before the headlights of a single car, the only car that anyone dared drive in such conditions. Three figured moved about inside preparing to make the mad dash from the car to the hotel that they had pulled in front of. For a brief moment the flick of a lighter illuminated the faces of the two men in the front seat.

“Damn stupid idea, lighting that thing up, it’s just gonna go out once we get into the rain.” Said the younger man.

“Fuck you man. I wanted to light it here,” said the older man gruffly, as he blew a cloud of smoke from his bead.

“Come on you two there are things that need a doing before you can bicker,” said the woman who was sitting behind them.

“I suppose there are,” said the older man. “Everyone ready?”

Quickly in a hurried tangle of limbs the odd trio piled from the car and dashed for what passed for shelter beneath the awning that read simply: the underground hotel.