Your Frown Is My Umbrella

Many people dismissed the sound of the explosion as nothing more than another bellowing clap of thunder. Damian was one of them. Through the pouring rain and thunderous roar of the seasonal storm that was currently holding Gotham hostage, he rushed down the dark alleyway that led to his home.

It was well after eight o’clock by now, and he couldn’t help but wonder what Reign had been doing all this time. He was usually home by six at the latest, but things weren’t like they used to be. With Ricardo Maroni as the new head of the crime family, Damian hadn’t expected it to be the same.

After Salvatore Maroni had been killed in a car crash the previous month, Ricardo had flown all the way from Chicago to take the place of his little brother. Although the man was good at what he did, he was quickly learning that Gotham was nothing like his previous place of business.

But Damian couldn’t bring himself to complain about the new management style. He had no reason to. Ricardo had taken an instant liking to him, and as a result Damian was slowly but surely climbing rank in the business. As he gradually became more than just a middleman between mob-deals, he took in more money, most of which he’d been saving secretly, believe it or not (it was none of Reign’s business), to buy a better place for themselves.

As Damian reached the front door, he slowed to a walk and dug around in his pockets for the keys. He squinted at the front window as he did this, expecting to see Reign sitting there, waiting for him and watching the rainfall like she always did.

But she wasn’t there. A brilliant flash of lightning briefly illuminated the dark window, and there were no traces of her pretty little face.

That’s weird…

Blinking away the frigid torrents of raindrops cascading down his forehead, he frowned and gripped the doorknob. Just as he was about to finish pulling out his keys to unlock it, something very strange happened.

The knob turned easily in his wet hand. The door opened. It wasn’t locked.

Frowning more deeply, he stepped inside the deathly dark and quiet kitchen.

“What the hell,” he muttered slowly, reaching to the wall beside him and flicking on the lights.

She wasn’t there.

“Rainy?” he called, shutting the door behind him as a loud clap of thunder bellowed outside the building.

No response.

An odd sense of panic gripped his lungs, literally catching his breath in his throat. He’d come to expect the same thing from her, time and time again. The door was always locked. She’d always been right here, waiting for him. And now that she wasn’t…

“Rainy,” he repeated sternly, tugging off his jacket.

Silence.

His panic receded and gradually gave way to annoyance as he tossed his coat onto a nearby chair. If this was her idea of a joke, it sure as hell wasn’t funny.

He stormed towards the living room and stopped in the doorway. The bright light from the kitchen stretched into the adjacent room, creeping around his rain-soaked form and illuminating a portion of the area. He didn’t like what he found.
The only thing sprawled out on the sofa was his dark, misshapen shadow.

Things only got worse from there.

*.*.*.*.*

“Honey, can you come here a minute?” Kimberly Crenshaw murmured from the window, beckoning her husband who was sitting on the sofa, cell phone in hand, as usual.

He wasn’t listening.

“What building? Jesus… The whole damn thing? Did they get anyone out? Who?”

Kim sighed and scanned the dark front yard again, rubbing her arms to ward off the nervous chill that had suddenly swept over the room. She could’ve sworn she’d seen something funny out there a moment ago when the lightning flashed. And it wasn’t the ‘ha ha’ kind of funny, either.

“Ben…”

“Well are they putting it out? Yeah I know that.”

A strange thudding sound rolled against the ceiling from somewhere above the staircase, catching Kim’s attention. It almost sounded as though something (or someone) had fallen down. Although it could have easily been mistaken for the constant grumbling of the storm, she knew better.

She felt the sudden urge to check on her children upstairs, just to be safe. At the very least it would put a rest to the animalistic panic that was only beginning to gnaw away at her attention span. She hadn’t seen the kids since Nanny Alice left after suppertime, and she needed to see them right now.

Leaving Ben to his phone call, she glanced out the blackened window one last time before following her motherly instincts towards the sound that would lead her to the situation she’d been trying so desperately to avoid all along.

*.*.*.*.*

“Reign!”

Nothing.

She must be in bed already.

Damian nodded stiffly to himself and hurried through the room, flicking on the lights on his way to the hall. She had to be there. Otherwise – no. No. There were no ‘ifs’, ‘ands’ or ‘buts’ about this. She had to be there, and that was final. It couldn’t be any other way. It just wasn’t possible. Then again…

His face twitched violently as he considered the possibility that maybe it was possible. Maybe she wasn’t there.

The hallway passed by in a colorless blur, and he soon found himself standing in the doorway of their bedroom with the door wide open. The hall light crept past him, just granting enough of its searing glow to illuminate the silhouette of their bed.

“Reign?” he called in a tone that was both loud and stern enough to wake her.

When he stepped into the room, not so much as an echo responded.

A growing sense of anger and panicky dread dangled above him, just barely hanging in the balance like a pair of chemical vials sitting on opposite ends of a scale. They teetered back and forth and up and down with the slightest change in mood, threatening to topple over onto his head and allow the toxic chemicals to merge in a sloppy explosive mess all around him; a sloppy explosive mess that would turn out to be more than just rhetorical.

*.*.*.*.*

“Ty? Mel?” Kim called, trying to mask her concern with an air of innocent curiosity as she made her way up the stairs.

No response.

Ever so gradually, she felt a fibrous tension begin to run taut in her veins.

“Hey, did you guys drop something?”

She paused and listened closely, holding her breath in anticipation. When nothing but thunder sounded, she resumed trekking up the steps, faster now.

They must have the TV on or something.

“What are you kids up to?”

Her heart stuttered at the empty silence that followed.

But this was ridiculous. She was being ridiculous, and it wouldn’t be the first time. It was no wonder Ben always ignored her when she got like this; telling her she needed to calm down and stop suffocating everyone with her constant supervision. He was right. Just because the kids didn’t answer right away, it didn’t mean something was wrong.

Then again, old habits die hard. She’d been like this for years, ever since that fateful day when she’d found her little Melanie, barely three years old at the time, hovering within death’s grasp; lying limp on the kitchen floor with a plastic shopping bag enclosed around her head like some kind of sickly cocoon. Although it had been an accident, Kim had never gotten over the fact that it was her fault. She’d come this close to losing her daughter all because she hadn’t been watching –

Her focus was abruptly shattered when the sound of sloppy, unfamiliar footsteps echoed loudly from somewhere down the hall. Her breathing hitched and she nearly lost her footing on the stairs as the air around her thickened; throbbing against her ears as though the source of danger was emitting airborne pulses.

“Oh God.”

An invisible wave of urgency struck her from behind then, catapulting her up the remaining carpeted steps. Now she knew something wasn’t right, and her first instinct told her to get in there, fast.

Once her feet finally hit level ground, her frantic eyes landed on the door to the playroom; the only door that was left wide open. The light was off, and she could just make out the gleam of a muted television screen, sending intense flashes of light ricocheting off the walls. She bounded towards the doorway desperately, mumbling prayers under her breath and half expecting (hoping) to find nothing but innocent horseplay occurring. The other half feared nothing but the ever-present worst-case scenario.

The instant she charged through the doorway, her worst-case scenario himself jumped into her path, painted face and all.

The world stopped moving beneath her feet, and she barely had time to scream before her faux mask of composure was sent plummeting into the storming oblivion along with her consciousness.

*.*.*.*.*

Damian gravely made his way towards the lamp on their night table, fearing the worst. But she had to be here in their bedroom. She had to.

And if she’s not? What are you gonna’ do then? Cry?

Damian blocked out the menacing taunts of his subconscious and took another step. Outside the wind continued to scream, whipping torrents of biting rain against the building in an attempt to break inside and drench him once again in its cold and bitter misery.

You’re alone, all alone just like before…

Damian blinked once, twice, grimaced in self-restraint, and reached out blindly (pleadingly) to the lamp. She was here, and he was going to turn on the light and prove it.

Sadly, he never had the chance.

The instant his fingertips touched the cold metal switch, a ferocious explosion of earth and sky pierced his concentration with an intensity likened to a volcanic eruption. The resulting lightning lit up the whole room, and that included the sharp silhouette of his cold, empty bed.

Damian gasped loudly and leapt back in surprise, catching the back of his hand on the lampshade and knocking it over. He nearly stumbled over the chair behind him as the lamp plummeted to the floor and shattered against the carpet with a muffled crash.

The light’s broke. Now you’ll never see her. It’s over. All of it. You’re alone, again, and you deserve it.

“Rainy!”

*.*.*.*.*

On the main floor of the Crenshaw household, Ben stood up from his seat on the couch and raised his voice, gripping his cell phone tighter than before.

“Yes, I heard you. But is he there? Him? Damn it, you know who!”

That’s when the power went out.

Ben eyed the suddenly black room in surprise, awakening from the steely trance of his conversation with a start as more yammering explanations flew from the plastic receiver in his hand.

“I’ll call you back,” Ben muttered and hung up.

“Kim? Where do we keep the flashlights?” he called, taking a wary step forward into the darkness and using his phone to light the way. “Kim?”

He frowned as he became aware of his solitude. Where was everyone?

“Hey, did you guys find some candles or something?”

Ben took several more tentative steps forward, feeling his way around the sofa and solid oak coffee table on his way to the staircase.

“It’s blacker than a –”

He was cut off when a weird clunking sound echoed from somewhere upstairs, just barely audible above the thunder.

“Guys?”

Not sure if he’d actually heard anything, he grumbled in aggravation and kicked some sort of plastic toy out of his path before finally grasping the staircase railing.

“Are you three hiding up here?”

Ben blinked harshly, noticing a faint orange glow flickering softly against the cream colored walls upstairs as his eyes adjusted to the blackness. So they had found some candles after all. He bounded up the steps, intent on joining his family.

Within moments he would be, but not in the way he’d been anticipating.

*.*.*.*.*

Breathing heavily, Damian leapt into the darkness towards the bed. The moment his fingers felt the ruffled comforter, he hurled his rain-soaked body onto the mattress.

“Rainy!”

He reached outwards, frantically patting down the sheets around him and trying to feel the small form of her body that should have been lying beneath them.

Nothing, nothing, nothing…

He scrambled to the foot of the bed until he bumped into the bedposts.

Still nothing.

He yanked the sheets away and banished them to the darkness on the floor, stretching out his arms and patting the bare mattress on his way to the headboard.

By the time his forehead collided with the wooden slab, his fingers still hadn’t come into contact with anything but soggy fabric.

She wasn’t there.

He pounded his fists against the vacant mattress, calling out her name deliriously between blows.

“No no no no, NO!” he bellowed, pulling at his hair as he tumbled off the bed.

He clamored to his knees, pacing back and forth in the darkness and paying no mind to the sheets that were in the process of tangling themselves around his ankles. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be happening. She was always here. Always!

You’re such an embarrassment. Look at you. She was right to leave, just like everyone else. You just couldn’t hold on tight enough, you never could. And now she’s gone. Gone with the rest of ‘em to somewhere you can’t get to.

“SHUT UP!”

The vials containing his anger and panic were fused together in that instant, creating a terrible heated emotion that Damian rarely had the displeasure of experiencing. Heat rushed to his face as the fiery pressure built, filling him with pure molten rage that threatened to burst forth and destroy everything within his reach.

Reign . . . Wasn’t . . . There.