THE FALL OF A REBEL ANGEL

Blake POV.

It never stops raining in Seattle. Ever.

Especially in November.

Scientists blame it on the influence of the ‘jet stream’, as well as the terrain. They say that the prevailing west-to-east jet stream often channels storms into the Pacific Northwest, and the Cascade Mountains further enhance precipitation by forcing moist air to rise and cool.

Seattle gets very little sunshine on most days, whether it rains or not. The sky is always overcast, dark, and gloomy.

But I have never given a rat’s ass to scientific explanations and theories. I knew why the sun never shined on Seattle. Science has got nothing to do with it.

It was God’s apathy. He wept every time he saw us, and me in particular. His smile evaporated the second His eyes fell on my frail frame, on my deep-set eyes with dark circles around them, and on my modest one-bedroom rooftop apartment.

That’s right. A rooftop apartment. Not a studio or a bachelor’s pad, but a tiny room stuck in one corner of the roof, always the first to receive the first showers of the day, and the last to hope for sunlight to peek in some time.

Those conditions made it the cheapest rented accomodation in the entire block. And therefore, very valuable to me.

That, in a nutshell, was my existence. Always at the mercy of unstoppable forces. Always dreaming and hoping for miracles.

Dreams don’t come true. Miracles don’t happen. But strangers can turn up at your doorstep in the middle of the night, gun in hand, drenched in the torrential downpour, and looking for shelter.

Like it happened on November 7, 2000.

That evening, the frogs were croaking louder than usual.

Maybe it was about to rain. Perhaps it was nothing but mere coincidence. But I distinctly remember the overbearing presence of unease and doom around me that night.

It remains etched in my memory until this day.

I was all of twenty-five.

I was alone in my room, staring out the window at the bright skyline punctuated by intermittent darkness outside. I could see nothing, and could only hear the deafening noise of frogs croaking in the distance.

And the loud ticking of the wall clock in my room.

The TV came alive with a news flash. I remember listening to it for a few seconds.

“This just came in. A manhunt is on in the Greater Seattle area for a fugitive named Carl Hardy. Hardy is said to be a notorious mob enforcer, and is believed to be armed and extremely dangerous. Earlier in the day, he was apprehended by the SPD, but managed to escape, and has been on the run since then. All residents are advised to —”

I switched off the TV. There was nothing remotely interesting about a gangster running from the law. Like the cloudy skies and my damp walls, it had an inevitable dull drudgery written all over it.

I started doing the dishes. It was late, and the skies could open up any moment. I had to get up early the next morning, and the incessant patter of rain might keep me up all night.

The sooner I hit bed, the better.

And just then, all of a sudden, the croaking reached a crescendo.

It felt as if a million frogs were croaking in unison, crying out in fear or screaming in panic, trying to warn me of something.

As though they were alerting me to the presence of a sinister force lurking somewhere in the dark corners of the neighborhood.

It felt as if my ears would burst.

“Fucking frogs! Where did so many of them come from? All this rain is turning the city into an open sewer,” I wondered aloud.

I did this when I was alone, often talking to myself.

It’s better than talking to a pet, though science might differ in its opinion.

Fuck science!

The croaking started feeling unnerving and deeply unsettling after a while. And then the rains came lashing.

A booming thunder, followed by a loud bang, followed by the sound of window panes smashing startled me completely.

I growled softly and went to the kitchen to check.

The window was broken. A gust of wind had smashed the windowpane to smithereens.

Before I could gather my wits, there was a loud knock on the door.

The main door.

Someone knocked once. Twice.

“The fuck!” Frustration laced with surprise escaped from my throat. I got up and walked over to check who it was.

I didn’t get the chance to open the door and peek outside. Someone knocked it down and broke in.

It was a giant of a man, drenched from head to toe, wearing a hoodie and jeans, and brandishing a gun in his hand.

His eyes were glowing in a mysterious flash of yellow and green. His ears were standing upright in tension and some inexplicable anticipation of danger. His nose was quivering, probably trying to sniff out something ominous lurking inside my decrepit apartment.

But it was his imposing height, and the handgun he kept pointing at me, that froze me in my tracks.

He must have been 6 feet six, easily a foot taller than me. And his handgun was a shiny, chrome-plated revolver with eight chambers, which felt more intimidating than an all-black 9 mm semi-automatic would.

I was familiar with firearms, though I didn’t possess any. My workplace was full of them. It was a necessity for the bouncers and security personnel to carry them all the time due to the nature of business. And patrons were rarely seen entering the premises without a handgun on their person, though it was usually confiscated by security at the entrance itself.

But a shiny ‘chrome gun’ with a long barrel and eight chambers staring right in your face was a scary sight. I didn’t move and didn’t yell.

He simply shut the door with one hand and lifted his finger to his lips, signaling me to remain silent.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the kitchen window again. Followed by another noise of glass shattering.

I realized my kitchen window was now bare, its panes lying on the floor, shattered into pieces.

He lowered his gun and walked slowly over to peep into the kitchen. The sight of broken glass somehow seemed to enthrall him.

He kept staring at them without uttering a word.

I hurried to pick up the tiny shards of glass from the floor. These were usually the nastiest — easy to escape detection, and equally easy to penetrate the skin of my feet.

While I was bending over to pick them up, torrential rain lashed the rooftop, entering my kitchen through the glassless windows, and flooding it in seconds.

I got drenched, too.

“Fuck!” I let out a low growl as I struggled to remove the shattered glass and keep myself dry at the same time.

My nightdress, soaked already, clung to my skin like vines on a brick wall. I could feel his stare on my skin as I grappled with the frustrating task of picking up glass from a slippery, wet floor.

It was then I saw him stepping in.

His right hand moved towards his back, keeping the gun at the back of his waistband, and he walked over to the window to block it with his giant frame, shielding me from the rain.

I was stunned.

He stood there right on the window frame, arms hanging on either side, his back acting as a barrier between the heavy downpour outside and me on the inside.

I quickened my pace and decided to sweep everything up — glass shards and water together — and dump them in the trash can.

I kept glancing at him through the corner of my eye, more surprised than scared, as he stood like a mute statue, allowing me enough time and room to remove the broken glass from the wet floor.

Once it was done, I got down to wiping the floor. But he suddenly stepped forward, took the wiper from my hand, and started wiping himself.

Just like that.

No words, no communication, not even a ‘hi’ or ‘please’. Just cold mechanical movements.

But there was something in his eyes that defied his silence. They were glowing, like fireflies in the dark. Cat eyes, long eyelashes, jet-black hair, and a shoulder so big I could sleep on it.

“I … I need to change,” I mumbled softly, expecting a response or a reaction from him. But there were none.

He kept wiping the floor with robotic precision, never turning around, never uttering a word.

I walked out of the kitchen and stepped into my bedroom to change. I closed the door, but something stopped me from locking it from the inside.

He didn’t stop me. He didn’t even bother to glance in my direction. For a second, I toyed with the thought of calling 911 from my phone. My Motorola Razr was lying on the bedside table, silent and idle as usual.

But I never acted on that thought. Why, I didn’t know then. I would find out much later.

Changing into a tee and jeans, I quickly went out of the bedroom to find him walking over to the main door.

He was planning to leave.

“Are you nuts?” I blurted out impulsively. “The cops must be roaming nearby. Wait till the rain stops.”

He turned around and looked into my eyes. That piercing, yellow-green, cat-eyed gaze immediately froze me in my tracks.

He retraced his steps back to the kitchen and sat down on a chair, without opening his mouth even once.

I traipsed over wearily to talk to him.

“Look, you can stay or leave. It’s up to you. But I need to catch some z’s. I have an early start tomorrow. So, I am heading over to my bedroom now. Don’t get any ideas, and don’t try to act funny. Okay?”

He stared at my face but said nothing.

“Alright, you seem to be the strong, silent, old-school type,” I felt a bit emboldened by his silence. “But don’t think for a second that you could barge into my bedroom just because you are carrying a gun. I am not scared easily. And I will chop you up —”

He extended his left arm in my direction, offering the gun to me. I was zapped.

“I … uh … no, I don’t need your gun. I have seen plenty of those. You keep it,” I stuttered in shock. “Just remember, no funny business …”

He withdrew his hand and kept the gun in his sweatshirt pocket without a word.

And that was that.

I went straight to my bedroom, locked the door from the inside, and crashed down on bed.

Neither the door nor the padlock were strong enough to prevent him from entering. He was huge, and he could easily break down the door if he wished to.

But something told me that night that he wouldn’t do it.

Something made me feel safer and more secure with the stranger sitting outside the door with a gun in his pocket.

And I slept like a baby without feeling scared even the tiniest bit.

When I woke up early the next morning, he was gone. There was no sign of him anywhere.

I slept so soundly that I didn’t hear him leave.

He didn’t leave behind a note. Never expressed his gratitude. Never said goodbye. He just left silently when I was not looking.

And that made me crestfallen for a while.

I turned on the TV and a breaking news alert flashed across the screen.

“The hunt is still on for the fugitive gangster, Carl Hardy, in the alleys and bylanes of Seattle. No sighting has been reported since he managed to evade the SPD yesterday —”

A photo of the notorious fugitive’s face flashed on the screen. Clean-shaven, dark hair, cat eyes, insanely broad shoulders …

“It was him!” I muttered under my breath.

I kept waiting for him the next night, and the night after that, hoping for him to barge in again, and sit silently on the chair without uttering a word.

He never showed up.

I would often wonder why he had to break into my apartment that stormy night. There were 350 apartments in the block, and mine was the one he chose to seek refuge in!

I realized later that it was because of those damn frogs. They brought him to me.

A week elapsed before I saw him again. But this time, he turned up at my workplace.