The Rain Man

„The Rain Man is coming.“ My grandma’s finger desperately clamp around my wrists, her rough hands trembling with the last strength she has left. Her eyes dart feverishly arond the small hospital room, her head rocking in small, frantic motions. „Beware of the Rain Man.“ Only when her eyes close and her body goes still, her hands slipping from my arms, do I understand that these were her last words.

It takes me three days to find out what she meant. After the last two, which I desperately needed off from work, being back at my place in the laboratory feels like starting a new project and being unable to begin. Sitting at my desk, my eyes just wander around, the open folder on the table. Maybe being a chemistry operator for years is still not enough for my brain to automatize the work. So the day goes on with me staring out of the only window, watching the tree move with the wind. It may be summer, but that does not stop London from being relentlessly rainy. I can clearly hear how the heavy drops drumming on the roof, striking the window and splatter the glass. But wait. There are no drops visible on the glass. It seems like it didn’t even rain. Which can’t be right, since I can clearly hear it. It’s just the sound you notice when you forgot to turn off the faucet and now hear it dripping while already lying in bed and just wanting to drift off to sleep. Only that the sound is way more intense. Must be me going mad. I need to go home.

The next morning I drink two cups of coffee, gulp them down standing next to the sink, not even bothering to sit down. I grasp an energy drink as well and head off to work. And wow, I actually make it, being able to concentrate just fine. Afternoon, I grab my bag and head to the tube. Pressed between strangers, I read my google news feed. A single headline punches through the noise: chemical contamination in our local river. My breath catches. This better not be our factory.

But the next day it turns out, it actually was our factory. A leak in one of our tubes has been seeping liquid into the nearby fields, drifting all the way to the local river. Some people whisper that the leak has been here for a few months, brushed off as „not dangerous enough“. If that’s true, blame is on me. I should have seen something, but I haven’t. And no leak just comes out of the blue.

As I’m home by afternoon, I feel not ready to relax. What should I do anyway alone with my thoughts? So I do something, I’ve probably never done in an eternity: I ask random dudes on my dating app if they are down to meet up. Surprisingly, almost all of them are.

It’s almost two o’clock as I make my way home. Wan’t easy to ditch the offer of staying the night, but I just couldn’t. Jack was gentle and all, but I couldn’t bear waking up next to someone else right now. I’m walking beside the pitch-black forest, where I can’t even make out where one tree ends and the next one starts. It’s all just a blur, but even worse the moment it starts raining. Not that it starts slowly, no. It begins pouring, from one second to the next. My hair is soaked already and I can even hear thunder rumbling. So quickly, I decide to just run. It’s only the lightning, that’s stopping me. Right in the forest, it hits a tree, illuminating the black void for just a second. But this is enough for me to see him.

Greyish fog is twirling around a statue, tall and slender, probably male, standing just a few meters before me. As if consisting of water, his body seems to flow, seems to lightly fall down, just like rain. And his face, oh spirits. It consists of a kind of vapor, depicting facial features: two holes for eyes and a giant mouth, opened as if in a mute scream.

So I run again, faster than before. A kind of power is forming in my breast, but I promise myself I will not scream. I won’t do anything. Just go home and fall in my bed. Hopefully, I’m there already, just captured in a wicked dream.

Withou really looking where I’m going, I make it home, my sweater soaked wet and my hair a real mess, sticking to my forehead. Even my hands are so wet, that when I take my keys, they just slip out of my palm and fall to the ground, so I have to pick them up.

Getting up from that position, he’s there. Closer than before, his hole-eyes fixate on me. Vapor is coming towards me, blowing in my face, feeling icy cold. And before I get it, I’m two streets down, running for my life. What the hell? Now I get what granny told me. I’m pretty sure I’ve just met the Rain Man.

Speaking of granny, I realise I’m standing right in front of her house. At some point the rain must have stopped, though I can’t remember when. The street is eerily quiet and the air feels strangely hollow. Either way, I’m not going home now. Not after everything that has happened. Rain Man knows where I live.

I may not have the key to this house, but that doesn’t matter, since grandma was a smart one yet a clumsy one, so she kept a spare key under the flower pot next to the door, which is still there. Ifinally find myself inside, locking the door twice and being able to breathe normally again. First things first, I close all the curtains, making all outside light disappear so that only the dim kitchen light illuminates the room. I undress and throw my clothes in the bathtub, dry my hair with a damp towel and, having no idea what to do, I go to the kitchen, sit down and try to think.

Being in this house alone is so unusual. In,outlying went here when my mom needed someone to look after me. And since mom was quite careful with me, she sent me to granny until I was nearly fifteen. My grandma became my childhood hero, the one person I always had fun with, the one who never made me feel judged. Looking at the small kitchen table, where all papers lay scattered, brings back memories about drawing pictures together with her. All the peppers here are filled with her scrawny handwriting and one of them even has the headline „Rain Man“. Oh god, time to seek answers. And so I indulge in all my grandma wrote over time, probably the last days of her life, since her handwriting seemed to get worse over time, but I can still follow.

It started when she was a child, in the middle of the second world war. My great-grandfather was working in the same chemistry lab I work at now, only back then it wasn’t a respectable workplace. It was a sealed-off corner of the regime, a place people pretended not to see. People in town whispered about disappearances. Children who never came home. Others were sure that new chemical weapons were fabricated to serve in the war. But when the second world war ended, no one found anything suspicious there and slowly, production was going back to normal, with the rumours even increasing the factory’s prestige. Still, people talked behind their backs, mentioning a figure stalking around. Every time it rains, this entity calls for justice. For a repairment of all the things the factory has done. Recently, my grandma claimed to have seen him, stalking her through the bedroom window. Then the deaths began. Women all over the town, mostly older ones, the age of my grandma, were found dead in their bed by morning. All of them suffocated, but no cause in sight. Trees began to get dry and crumble, even though autumn is due many months. At night, you could hear birds scream as they fall down the sky, unable to fly, dropping on roofs and windows.

In my dreams, the Rain Man is chasing me over a road where a black car is racing next to me. Green drops of rain are falling from the sky. I can’t decide if I want the car to kill me or the Rain Man, but the latter is quicker and sends an icy chill through my bones, strong enough to make me shatter in pieces. This is the moment I wake up.

I don’t know why I’m lying o the sofa. Neither do I remember turning the TV on. The local news is on and the reporter’s voice cuts through the room. A small explosion at my workplace, she says. A few cattle dead on the neighbouring farm.

No way, that’s not right. This can’t be right. They my face appears behind me. They are looking for me. Of course they are. A leak, they say. Negligence. And therefore my fault. Only that it can’t be. I’m not new to the job.

I’m already on my feet before the show ends. My thoughts rattle as I try on some of my grandma’s dresses. Nobody looking for a guy like me would search between the people wearing a dress. I decide on a pink one with dandelions. Quite forgettable. In the bathroom I dig through what’s left of her makeup. Powder, mascara, her whole satchel smells a little too much like her. The reflection staring back at me is unrecognisable. Good. That’s the plan.

The supermarket is too bright. Too open. Every sound feels amplified—the wheels of my cart, voices, footsteps behind me that may or may not be following. I fill the cart anyway. Cans. As many as I can stack. Then vegetables, chilled food—anything that might last. I try not to rush. Rushing gets noticed.

The garden market is worse. Longer distances. Fewer people. Nowhere to disappear. I keep my head down and gather what I need: a shovel, a poker, a knife, a small heater. Since I have no car, the whole trip drags on. My arms ache with every new item I carry. By the time I reach my grandma’s house, it’s already getting dark. I don’t turn on the lights.

Everything goes into the basement. It’s so much that night must have settled already as I finally shut the door behind me. Silence hangs in the air as I stay there for a moment, hand still on the handle and then I lock it. This is where I’ll stay. For now.

The first night passes without incident. I spent most of the time chatting with Jack, whom I tell I came home safely (ha-ha), but have to do a lot of work now and can’t meet up. I would like to tell him not to check the news, but that would be too suspicious. He seems not to recognise the guy he’s texting as the wanted chemistry operator. Afterwards, I tried to make a spear out of the shovel’s stick. Unlucky that I don’t know how to carve and even unluckier that the knife I bought is rather for children. I had one when I was five and on a class trip to the woods, but even then I was too clumsy to really carve anything. Still, I managed to produce something at least similar to a spear down here. There will be no space to throw it in this basement, but we’ll, I can still poke somebody with it. Whoever is looking for me. My plan A is not to be found anyway. This is the reason I tun off my phone and finally Ifeel so isolated that I am sure nobody will find me.

Apparently, I was delusional. It takes the Rain Man two days to find me. Rain is the first thing my ears sense. Louder than I should be able to hear it from my basement position. The sound wakes me up from my unsteady sleep, so my first action is to grab the shovel. Empty cans of chili sin carne clatter as they fall over, harmonising with the metallic sounds of the rain’s echo. With the shovel in my hands, I move to the door, ready to fight. Drops of rain are leaking out of the door, dripping in the basement. More and more of them come and finally I get that what I‘ve done was maybe not the very best of ideas, encapturing myself in this tiny room without any way to flee, Rain Man just has to wait until the room is full of water to drown me. So I better be quick.

With the shovel still in my hand, I turn the key and open the door, letting a whole waterfall into the cellar, flooding my shoes. The stairs are slippery as hell, but I make it up to the living room. Light brightens my eyes, which are so adjusted to darkness that I need a moment of orientation And there he is. Puddles of water surround the living room, all dropping from the figure standing in the centre. Steam huddled together to form a human-like shape. The face looking as if in great pain, deep black eyes fixating on my face. Before Rain Man can stretch out his arms, the shovel hits his head. But then just moves through it without a single restraint. The shovel clatters down on the floor and the only option I have left is to flee, again. Only this time Rain Man is faster. His hand evaporates, gets longer and catches my leg, just like a chameleon’s long tongue. I fall down on my knees, scraping on the floor. Then the steam surrounds me. I’m gasping for air, as it fills my lungs, giving me a feeling of suffocating. The world goes pitch-black.

My vision starts to blur. I’m lying on the floor and he looms above me. The hallow eyes of Rain Man stare right down at me, his vapor curling in my direction. His hand is reaching out and before I can really think about it, I hold out my own. Our palms meet for a moment and what I feel is nothing cold or deadly, but instead a row of feelings: anger, regret, resentment. Images flash through my mind, faster than I can grasp. An abandoned laboratory, fish floating deadly in a green river, older women grasping for air, while trying to pass down their acient knowledge. All of this pushes me toward the choice I already know I’m going to make.

I tighten my grip. And then. I. Become. HIM.

Heat blooms across my skin, as if I’m being boiled alive. My whole body seems to melt, dripping from its flesh and dissolving while shedding ist old shape. It does not even hurt, but rather feels like a liberation long dreaded for. My blood is boiling in my head, my thoughts evaporating as I rise with them and turn into vapor.

So this is me. Rain Man. A force ready to seek revenge for all the industry has taken from grandmother nature.