Chance of Rain

“Well we could do with the rain,” the lady behind the counter shrugs and smiles as she hands his credit card back to him. She doesn’t ask if he wants a receipt. At least he saw the amount on the card machine’s display. It annoys him when they don’t show the amount. That feels wrong and it feels rude. There’s no contract then. Only a capitulation to the machinery that is swallowing them all whole.

“Wrong type of rain,” he tells her.

Her face falls into a state of confused ruin. He should have nodded and smiled sweetly. Agreed with her sentiment. You had to put your oar in didn’t you, John? He thinks this to himself but stubbornly stands by his words. This rain is hammering down as though it wants to finish early and get back to the game it was playing. There’s no way it will soak into the ground and help the grass and crops grow. The earth has been cooked hard by a relentless Summer sun that the people on this island don’t know what to do with. Now it seems the rain also shares their ineptitude.

Doesn’t take much to turn things to shit, he thinks to himself as he leaves the fuel station lady in a state of disarray. She’ll remember this interaction, but not him. There is something to be said for the discombobulation of his left of field honesty. It’s as though people can’t wait to see the back of him and this extends to their minds retaining his image. Once he’s out of sight she’ll cease going out of her mind. But she’ll remember how he made her feel.

He read that once. No one remembers your wealth or your deeds. They only remember how you made them feel. He knows this to be true. Reckons everyone knows it to some extent or another.

There’s a gap between the little shop and the roof that covers the fuel pumps. He doesn’t pause to eye the curtain of rain. Walks through it like a magical character entering the enchanted cave concealed by a waterfall. Those characters glisten heroically having traversed the wall of water. He does not have a make-up artist to create this fiction for him.

In the car he is miserable and wet. It’s been a while since he was wet. The car steams up in seconds. He wipes the screen in front of him but doesn’t bother with the blowers. Drives away from the forecourt.

There’s a satisfaction in seeing the fuel gauge pointing to full. An empty fuel tank stresses him out with thoughts of the end of the road. This is not where he wants to end up. His being here is temporary. The car is taking him away from himself. The journey is what counts. He cares not for the starting point or the destination of the journey. He’s a shark. If he stops swimming he will drown in an environment that looks like home but is as dangerous as it gets in its stagnant state.

A few minutes into this part of his journey the car emerges from the brutal rains and a strange calm befalls the landscape. The road is now bone dry and the wipers quickly shriek a protest as they scrape along a windscreen bereft of rain. He does not bother looking in the mirror. The grey ghost haunting his most recent past is an irrelevance to him.

Opening the window a crack lets a hot breath of regret into the car. There is no change here. No relief. He returns to the surreal feeling that he is an egg in a pan boiled dry. It’s only a matter of time before his shell cracks and he explodes from the heat that is continually closing in on him.

Thankfully the drive home is not far and he steps out of the frying pan of his car into the oven of the open world. There is little refuge in the house. The curtains remain closed in an attempt to hide the place from the sun. Furtively he now goes from room to room opening the windows whilst remaining obscured from the outside world.

In the bedroom he strips and lays on the bare bed. The effort of opening the windows and walking through the house and up the stairs is as much as he can take. He would pant if he had the wherewithal to do so. Instead he lays there barely breathing. Feeling the sweat forming on his body and pooling beneath him. The sensation of the sweat cocooning his body shames him. He is defiling his inner sanctum. The matter of his existence depresses him in this moment. There is a shower nearby and a little further up the landing a bath. Solutions to this slimy, slug-like state.

There is no comfort here. He knows he’s a sweater and that this is natural. He envies those who glow. Perspiration would do. There is no respite from the stinking leakage of him. The punishment of his being is too much. The rage that builds within him requires an outlet. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth. Knowing that sleep will not come.

Having lain like this for what feels like an age, he forces himself to a sitting position. Rivulets of sweat run down his back, sack and crack. He would cry, but his tears have been commandeered and repurposed to make of him a sad and loathsome thing.

Thoughts of a shower no longer take precedence as he stands and looks towards the wardrobe. His feelings switch to an arousal of anticipation as he steps forth, opens the wardrobe door and squats to shift the box and open the secret panel. This is his little cave of delights. He dresses and slips the rucksack over his shoulder.

As he slips from his house and enjoins with the swelteringly hot night he is a different animal altogether. The sheen on his body a lubricant. This a labour of lust. He moves silently and with a deceptive grace. It’s almost a shame there is no one to witness this remarkable transformation.

Half a mile later he scans the first property. Sees the open windows on the first floor. Assesses the viability of the place as he moves on. Only five doors down his next prospect sits belligerently in the heat of the night. A ground floor window gapes at him and he smiles at the gormless invitation of it. He’s inside an instant later. Covering ground with an obscene speed that renders him invisible.

Inside, he is careful. Slows his breathing and his movements despite the growing urge to reach the climax of his evening. He knows what awaits him and yet in not having seen it in all it’s obvious glory his excitement is almost brimming over. He is meeting his lover. He knows they are waiting for him. But their exact state is a mystery. Always there is the promise of the grand reveal.

Cautiously, he climbs the stairs. Placing his feet at the edges of each step to avoid the wood creaking as he rises higher and higher towards his objective. He knows the simple layout of these houses. There are only two bedrooms. He peers in the open door of the first and is greeted by a barren, unused space. There was a point when visitors no longer stuck around and the state of the room is the result of that creeping isolation.

All that stands between him and the object of his desire is a closed door. He moves slowly but deliberately towards his goal. His arousal is at its height now. The anticipation is exquisite. He pauses at the door and shrugs his rucksack off. Opens the zipper and reaches in to feel the reassuring softness of the specially adapted heated blanket. This is all it takes. Placing this upon the feeble and vulnerable. Cooking them in the heat of the Summer. He smiles at the thought of what is to come. The notion of a barbeque tickles him and he feels a familiar tickle down below.

He's stroking the blanket absently as he thinks through what is about to occur. The rhythm of what awaits is a dance for him and only him. He cannot recall how he came to be this way but he is grateful to find his calling when so few do.

He is becoming a killer for all seasons. The voice that guides him tells him as much. Winter will be a simple inversion of what he is about to do. The methodology of how he will cull the herd in Autumn and Spring has not yet been provided for him, but he has faith in the voice. The voice gives words to the urge and the urge comes from deep within. He feels it now. A power that fills him and sets him alight.

Delighting in this feeling he opens the door to the bedroom and is presented with an unexpected conundrum sitting in his pyjamas as though he’s been waiting for John. This is the same old bloke John had carefully researched prior to paying this visit. Only he isn’t the same. The weak and frail elderly man he’d watched shuffle from his badly driven but well-looked after car has been taking his vitamin pills and much more besides. If there is Viagra for the spirit then this man has taken more than he should have.

The eyes are what give it all away.

There is something about those eyes. John gawps as he looks into them in an attempt to solve the puzzle before him. An uneasy feeling covering him in a grease that seeps into his muscles and saps him of his strength. The ebbing of his power numbs him, but below that anaesthetic there is a wretched terror which robs him of movement.

“Kind of like looking in a mirror isn’t it?” the old man’s voice isn’t thin and ready. It’s strong and compelling.

He nods for want of an alternative. His brain is sinking into molasses. Thoughts and emotions are pickled. A child’s voice whispers that this is so unfair. The powerful voice has deserted John and without it there isn’t much else. Before the voice he’d lived a life in the wings that was seldom fair. Now he’s been robbed of his moment on the stage. Something about the old man tells him things are going to get even more unfair.

The old timer sits there examining him with a hungry curiosity, “using the heat makes things simple. Targeting the weak and infirm makes it undetectable. The narrative works.” He smiles a cold, predatory smile, “they were going to die anyway. Give em a wee nudge and they’re done for. Turn the heat up in the Summer and dial it down in the Winter.” Now he laughs, “I could be a politician couldn’t I!? Rob the poor elderly of their heating allowance and address the lack of housing with that change in policy. I’m Santa’s little helper!” He’s rubbing his dry hands in glee revealing teeth that are not quite right but match the dark eyes somehow.

John wants to protest. Mostly he wants to step forward and end the bastard who is ruining his night. Wouldn’t take much. Only. He’s never been violent towards another human being in his life. Doesn’t know how he can close the distance between himself and the old man. And if he can, his what next is hidden behind a wall that has no door. He wills the voice to return and is met with an ominous silence.

He realises he should be careful what he wishes for when the voice comes out of the old man’s mouth. The shock of it heightened as the wrinkled lips part into a hideous approximation of a yawn and the voice is burped out in one go. There is no movement of lips or tongue as the words are violently vomited towards him. Soaking him in fear, “come into the parlour said the spider to the shit eating fly. The Season Killer! You think that was your idea? What a joke! We’re far more than that. This isn’t amateur hour. You’re merely a tiny, inconsequential cog in our wheel.”

The old man stands up and seemingly without movement he’s there face to face. Those eyes bore into him, “tell me,” says the voice, “how did it feel?”

He can say nothing. Understands far more than he wants to. Feels the blanket slip from his fingers. Misses the comfort of it as his fingers nervously rub against each other as though trying to start a fire.

The old man grins and a black sludge oozes out between his teeth. Some dribbles from the corners of his mouth. The stench of it is nauseating. Bad eggs masking something far worse, “there’s nothing like that feeling. The thrill of the kill. I have become death! To take a life is the very pinnacle of pleasure. And I thought I was past all of that. Then the darkness came and I surrendered myself to it. They all drown in me!” The voice has a liquid quality to it now. The old man cocks his head to one side as though he’s viewing a painting or museum piece. Then he moves forward.

“Aw! You didn’t think you were the only one did you? Ah diddums!”

The kiss is unlike anything John’s felt before. He’s violated by something that enters him and yet empties him. He’s aware that he’s wetting himself, but that’s the least of his problems because as the kiss ends the elderly and seemingly frail man grabs his neck in one scrawny hand and lifts him far too easily. Propelling him backwards, out of the bedroom and along the landing.

“Most fatal accidents occur within the home. Bones snap like sun baked tinder!” the old man cackles and more of the foul liquid spills out over his lower lip and coats his chin, “with a little imagination you would have lasted longer. But you’re a one hit wonder. La-da-dee! La-dee-da! Time to retire.”

There’s a strange empty feeling as John hangs helplessly in the air over the stairs. The lost child’s voice is telling him this isn’t happening. Begging him to wake up. But he’s already falling. Falling into those twin pools of darkness. He feels a momentary flutter from his wet crotch and a tingling along his spine all the way up to his neck. As though this is a signal to the old man that holds his life in his hands.

John feels the crack. Curious as to why his vision has canted sideways. And then he is falling. Falling into the hungry darkness before him. Falling before the old man lets go of his broken neck and leaves John at the bottom of the stairs as he walks to the bathroom and vomits a pool of what looks like crude oil but smells a lot like death into the bowl of the toilet. He washes his craggy face before calling the police to inform them of a burglary gone wrong.

When the police arrive twenty minutes later, they encounter a frail and confused old man. Later they will tell him he is very lucky to be alive. That his regular visit to the loo thanks to a faulty and enlarged prostate surprised the Season Killer and led to him falling backwards down the stairs and breaking his neck. A freaky and fortuitous accident. Shit happens!

The attending officers doubt the old guy really gets it. Dementia is a cruel thief. In a way a burglary has already occurred. Robbing the poor pensioner of memories and his faculties. They leave the harmless oldie to it.

“Be careful in this heat sir,” says one of the officers, “it can be fatal for some.”

The old man smiles and winks at that, and for a moment as he tells them he’s made of sterner stuff, he looks far younger than his years. Both officers feel a chill go down their spine. They could swear they heard a voice whisper And I’m made of darkness! But neither of them say a word. Instead they make it a priority to leave that house. They will always give that place a wide berth and before the next Summer comes around one will have moved back North to be closer to his family and the other will leave the police altogether.

Some things are felt, and it is best never to name that feeling.