Blood in the Rain
I stared out the window, longingly gazing outward to the puddles slowly filling up. Rain fell quickly from the sky and crowded most of my vision of the park, swing set swaying gently, climbing bars empty and alone. It was Sunday, the last day I would get off from the pressures of school for a long while. I couldn’t believe it, all week long was full of sunshine and warm temperatures, except for, of course, on the weekend’s final day.
I remembered other days full of rain, although the sun warmed each person across it’s path it seemed to skip me on those days. Tears, I remembered, fell from my eyes in much larger drops than the rain. Today, the same tears returned as a few other children finally occupied the playground near me. Their screams and laughter were mostly blocked out by thunder booming across my mind, clattering my head with dark thoughts as night came soon. People always told me I complained to much, but with a life like mine, there was a lot to complain about.
Was there? If I could have anything I would wish for my life how it used to be. I can get through fights and tests and everything else with a normal life, but this, I cannot overcome. “Hello,” His voice is booming now, shattering my spine. My dark and empty surroundings are beginning to seem more and more real.
His eyes are burning into me like lava, his glare worth a thousand drops of rain. I remember when I would cry over the rain that fall in my life, now my eyes are dry and out of tears. I am crying out, but that’s useless, everything now is so useless, life itself a meaningless word. Cowering where damp corners meet, I’m closing my eyes in a fear and panic. His shadow rising over me, I know my fate as it slowly creeps closer.
My breath I can see in the air, my heart I can feel beating out of my chest. I know there is a scar across my head, at least ½ an inch deep and five inches running wide. The pain of it is gone now, though, as if I were only standing in rain, I can feel none of the wounds so desperately calling for a bandage.
“How dare you fill your mind with thoughts of the past. You are thinking, I can see, what, do you miss your family?” He hits me once with a jagged piece of wood, splintered and covered with dried blood, “Your friends?” Twice now, chains carefully locked around my wrists tighten as I try to move away, “Your home?” By the third strike I finally call out, not in pain but in the fear of being hit again.
My eyes are full of water, I won’t say a word. All of my words have been wasted already. Wasted on the pointless, hopeless call and plead, days ago those words had hope but they are now fading to nothing but dreams. I am holding my breath, if I breath I know the air will poison me, if I don’t I know my lungs with give out and let me die.
He’s still here. I know his thoughts all circle around me, what will I do next? He must be thinking those words.
I’m pulling on chains, the same ones that left marks around my hands days ago, the markings have only gotten darker, with no time to heal. I have no time to simply close my eyes and sleep, to dream even for a second. Even in the eerie silence that surrounds me at night, fear screams louder than everything.
He’s leaving, a smile on his face, the smile that tells me I will not go home. I want to wrap myself in warm blankets near a heater that almost gives out every time it turns on, in a home with chipped paint and enough room for nothing. The rain that drips and falls onto a thin roof is much easier to ignore, to be distracted from by all the sun that can surround me. Today, tonight, tomorrow, any warmth is only a memory.
Day has come again, I only know this because of a distant alarm sounding far down a hallway, it seems to mock me, “Another day, you are trapped, another day!” Tears would be running down my face, but the rain is already pouring, I have no need to waste the energy of long sobbs where I gasp for air. Although I have no need for the energy I could waste.
All I’ve known for days is darkness and the fear of being trapped. I’m not sure how many days, but enough to make only want all of this to end. “I want to go home, that’s all I ask.” I’m whispering those things I wish, things I before wanted all but to change.
Not much has changed, not much will. Now here he comes, his heels tapping across the floor and the sound of it echoing back to me. My knotted dirty blond hair falls into my face but I can’t push it away, my hands are held behind my back. His eyes are invisible in the dim light he holds, my eyes though, are blinded by the unusual brightness.
I wait for it, every day, to end, it will, I’m sure of it, but not all so suddenly as it began. There was reason to cry, there was rain in my life, but now, there is blood in the rain.
