Droplets

Droplets

A Tribute to Ray Bradbury's "The Long Rain"

"The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men's hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped."

         If rain were to represent rebirth, there was none. Only the downpour that ceased all life, like some purgatorial fire from the heavens, remained. And the scars and the trails, normally scarlet in the world-view, drowned not in the pyres, instead eviscerated into the darkening flow. The world turned wet with rot, like an image of Cocytus, unseeable--for the presence of death's foul misery became absence to those alive. The rain continued. Hard, thundering, a violent piston into the core of the earth. The world has never been hit as often, in such rapid succession, before.

         The people who stepped out into the smog and the raining glass, drowned standing. Their flesh was torn away like paper to a rock; their bones were consumed by the ever-hungry gods, tastier as sand than stone; and their humanity, stripped clean of impurities, was stolen away into the empyreal sky. Beneath the distant, oppressive clouds, all beings were equals. Men, women, salt, or stone; whomever, whatever, moved into the thrashing bedlam between the vainglorious clouds and the sunken pillars of the earth, became the endless, dark, thickening mud that followed.

         The droplets were unrelenting. Though they looked clear as glass, within each static frame, they were black beyond their depths. The droplets were unrelenting. Each possessed shadows, images, visions of hollow creatures, dolls with plastic, soulless eyes, grasping at the mind, reaching their tiny little fingers into my thick skull, grasping, taking, in palms that are too small to hold the world, my world, and my pleasure, and my love, and--everything. They were unrelenting; though ethereal, here they were taking and taking and taking! They're watching me, these dolls, taking pleasure in seeing my writhe. But when I try to capture their souls, I see an abysmal depth, clear as glass. And though I try to grasp them in return, there remains to be nothing there. There remains to be nothing there. At first, they came rapping, upon the windows, upon the walls, with whispers about her, about her. But then they began to pound and scream and yell about her. About her! Violent howls, only about her! It never stopped: the pounding, the distant pounding, as if her ghost was wrought before me, creeping, within my very home. Her cold, gentle call, the desperate thunder in the night. Or was it day? Still, her desire, and the world, were equals, allies, partners in their elicit deviations to submerge me. The house shaked and creaked and tilted, but stood strong to protect its master. Yet the homeliness of home was hollow. Yet, despite her figure wallowing through, I felt alone. And even so, was there reason behind the madness? The furious firestorms that blazed like Agni's fury? The tempest gorging out the souls of men, for we are who we are--is there ever reason? Why plague us, then, with the falling of Atlas's great divisions--so that the mounts of yonder Eden, comes crashing furiously down? Why plague me, then, with these wretched souls, with these wretched wails, so distant, yet in my head, yelling, screaming, pressing against the limitations of my skull, trying to break free to grasp those dolls, those hateful dolls, by the hand, to steal what makes me human, to steal what makes me, me?

         The lights flickered madly, drunk. The tendrils of surging power came like wraiths into these material halls, so I relinquished those demons of their possessions with man-made fire! A fire that burns gently from the bosom, much unlike that of the world's end. Those immaculate beasts were torn and ripped and her--her figure remained resting from whence they had run. And if I had ever seen such a furious, unclaimed beauty, it was never before--for within the crackling of the rain and sound--like sovereign bells--so full of radiant clarity, so demeaning, so, so--so consuming--never before, not now. Why has she come back to haunt me? Why is she the wisps of dawn, come to take me away? Since when has the fire been left burning for so long, an agonizing crackle, searing flesh, searing bone. Since when has my furor been thus--to detest what I once loved? To despise what I once was? The door opened, and I took it by its hinges, and slammed it shut; then all was no more. Then, all was no more.