Status: To be updated in micro-segments.
It's Only the Rain
One Run
‘It’s only the rain.’
That was what we told ourselves, after curfew when a sound like hushed thunder rattled our windows in their fragile frames. We had between us no image or memory of the outside world at night. Nobody was foolish enough to leave the house, which sheltered four families, except in the day. When we peered out the window, hands and noses pressed against the cool glass, we only saw our own pale faces, floating in a sea of black. We had no way of knowing what lay mere metres from our home, nor what prowled or growled or lurked.
‘It’s only the rain,’ we would tell ourselves, to assuage our curiosity and terror. We would all repeat this mantra, all but Taylor, who would say, ‘Surely, it’s only the rain, and it’s only the night. What’s to worry about? The night alone can’t hurt you, though she sometimes smuggles hideous things underneath her skirts. Best not to speak too loudly.’
And so we didn’t. Although, when we went to bed, some of us swore we could hear a noise that was less like the constant ebb and flow of the lashing rain and howling wind, and more like the rhythmic pattern of heavy breathing. We children lay on our mattresses side by side and back to back, so that each of us could watch a different paranoid space on the periphery of our vision as we slipped fearfully into sleep.
That was in our sixteenth year of confinement, the year 2012– the year it all began.
That was what we told ourselves, after curfew when a sound like hushed thunder rattled our windows in their fragile frames. We had between us no image or memory of the outside world at night. Nobody was foolish enough to leave the house, which sheltered four families, except in the day. When we peered out the window, hands and noses pressed against the cool glass, we only saw our own pale faces, floating in a sea of black. We had no way of knowing what lay mere metres from our home, nor what prowled or growled or lurked.
‘It’s only the rain,’ we would tell ourselves, to assuage our curiosity and terror. We would all repeat this mantra, all but Taylor, who would say, ‘Surely, it’s only the rain, and it’s only the night. What’s to worry about? The night alone can’t hurt you, though she sometimes smuggles hideous things underneath her skirts. Best not to speak too loudly.’
And so we didn’t. Although, when we went to bed, some of us swore we could hear a noise that was less like the constant ebb and flow of the lashing rain and howling wind, and more like the rhythmic pattern of heavy breathing. We children lay on our mattresses side by side and back to back, so that each of us could watch a different paranoid space on the periphery of our vision as we slipped fearfully into sleep.
That was in our sixteenth year of confinement, the year 2012– the year it all began.