Rain

Rain

By Matt Barrentine


The rain is still going. It hasn’t slowed up, hasn’t faltered, the clouds haven’t parted in three days. Three days since I have seen the color blue.....

But I get ahead of myself. I am Sgt. Thomas Montgomery of the United States Marine Corps. I was on leave in a small town in Tibet when it started, the rain, you know. Anyway, I was in a small, dank, yellowed bar with a 14 inch, Black and white TV up in the corner above the bar. It was raining heavily outside, and the drops made a sound like marbles in a coffee can on the roof. The news program came on, and though I couldn’t understand it -it was in Tibetan- a dim realization began to creep into my alcohol- dulled mind. On the screen were a series of images, floods, at first I though nothing of it, I wasn’t surprised that there would be flooding with a torrent like this coming down. Then I recognized some of the places the images were from, I recognized one as being San Francisco. I knew that The City (my hometown) could never flood like that! It would run off into the Bay, unless the Bay level rose that much...

More images followed. Tokyo, Miami, even Rome! It was raining in all these places, at the same time. I’m no scientist, but I knew this wasn’t possible, there isn’t enough water in the world to raise the level of the San Francisco Bay like that! for water to get up to that level, all the oceans on the planet would have had to raise and least 500 feet. I had no clue what had happened to the world, and still don’t. I left the bar and saw what could best be described as anarchy. People were running to nowhere, splashing in the mud and screaming like rusty chainsaws.

I made my way, slowly, toward my motel, I then noticed the water. Thousands of gallons of water, rushing down the street like a hungry tiger. There was nowhere to run. It hit me hard, and I hit a tree, I passed out.

I woke up surrounded by jungle, it was still raining. I began to walk just because there was nothing better to do. I had no sense of direction at all and just chose which way to walk at random. It’s funny, I used to like the rain. My friends always thought I was nuts. I loved to stand out in thunderstorms and look into the sky, eyes wide open, and laugh. My friends always joked about me never having sense enough to come in out of the rain, and I would just look at them and say, damn right.

But it gets to you after a while, the rain does. You get headaches. The drops hurt, each one a drum just behind your eyes. One of my Corps buddies told me about this thing they did a long time ago in China, right. It was called Chinese Water Torture and they’d strap you to a wall and let a single drop of water fall onto your head every half hour. The plan was you’d go insane waiting for the next one. This was like that, except you’ll go insane wishing for it to stop. The top of my head is actually bruised now, and there is nothing I can do. Sleeping is next to impossible, and trying to hold leaves and the like over my head works for a few seconds, then the leaf will fall victim to the rain. I haven’t slept more than three or four hours in the past week (this is only an estimate, as it is always dark) and would pass out if I could.

The walking is hard, my clothes sopping, soggy, and heavy. I don’t know where I am, I might be going in circles. The rain shows no sign of letting up either, the sky flashed a brilliant blue a few estimated days back, and I thought it might stop, it didn’t. I’m going to try to sleep again now, and if I do fall asleep, I hope I don’t wake up.

The End

Copyright 1997 by Matt Barrentine

About the writer in his own words: "My name is Matt Barrentine, I'm 15 years old and have lived in Redwood City, CA all my life, although I am moving to Charlotte NC (oh rapture, I'm soooo excited, can you tell? Blech.) on the 28th of September.

My homepage is at: http://members.aol.com/Dstrbd042

My E-mail, of course, is this one: Dstrbd042@aol.com"


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