He slapped him.
He had reached down with his white, skeletal, electrical hand and slapped him, the concluding, cataclysmic clap cracking the sky, his ear drums, and his heart, the flash blinding him with revolting revelation, freezing him in fear. He wasn't able to do anything and he still couldn't. He could only stand there and stare into the blinding plight of light that was lighting his world on fire, listening to His roaring wrath. That's all. Even if there was something he could've done now, he wouldn't have done it. He wouldn't have wanted to--wouldn't have wanted to do anything. Not even breathe. He just wanted to stand there and stare into the air. Until something happened. Anything. Whatever.
He looked out the window and saw the world wearily fading away into the dark chasm of someone's unconsciousness, its color being washed away to the gray of a dead day by the wind of some reaper who swept over the land, bowing trees and stealing their leaves. It made him wonder if he was fainting or if the world was passing him by, or if it was even both, because the sounds of his world were shrinking into the silence of the nothingness that assaulted him until he heard nothing--nothing but the roar and the clap. Some darkness ate his eyes and swallowed them into its acidic, black hole of a stomach so he saw nothing, either, and nibbled on his nerves like spaghetti so he felt nothing, and so he was consumed in the chasm until it was all nothing.
Even himself.
"Pete."
The call had reached him and resurrected him from his reclusive decline and he looked at him. He didn't know how long he must've been like however he was but everything burned his eyes. He almost squinted. Or glared.
"Did you hear anything I just said?"
Pete's throat made a sound--the dry, hollow sound of a gargling sink with laryngitis. He thought he forgot how to speak.
He frowned, shook his head, and looked back at her. "Well," he hiked his bookbag, "I'm going now."
"Damn right you are," she said and looked out the window. "It's about to freakin' pour out there."
He smiled and looked longingly at the darkness of the world like a long-lost lover. "And I wanna be out there just in time for that to happen."
She shot a blank look at him and, while she kept looking, he kept smiling. "You're crazy."
"Damn right I am," he said and started walking off. She just kept looking until, a few seconds later, the incessant sound of a downpour pulled her face to the window, and his face, too, where they saw it together:
The rain.
The drops dropped like bombs blotching away the scanty color left in the world, washing it away into the sewers, until the world was a colorless, murky marsh. The rain had erased the world to the misty abyss before them--all but the very floor they were standing on, and the walls and ceiling around them. The rain wanted them, though. That persistent pitter patting of the pellet-like raindrops popping on the window--the fog swallowing the world--that roar of voracious hunger and raw wrath.
He wanted them.
She glared and started to run away. Pete didn’t, though. He just watched. He watched the rain erase the world, he watched the fog feast on it, and he watched the intermittent flashes of some ethereal clash beyond the clouds. He watched it all beyond the introductory darkness that had devoured his soul and it all made him think:
He wanted to stand in there.
He just wanted to stand. That’s all. Just stand. His feet wouldn’t go anywhere because he‘d have no where to go. He’d just stand and drown himself in the rain, letting it erase him, head thrown up and mouth open, drinking it to let it erase his soul. That’s all he’d do.
But, his feet followed her, with what meager magnetism remained in his automated anatomy, having been demagnetized with shock. He followed her down a hallway and down some stairs, feeling as if he was just trudging through a dry desert of darkness where there was no sound, let alone water, because, as he walked, saw and heard nothing again. Dark clouds crawled across his consciousness and what remained of it automated his feet until they stopped at a locker, where he simply stared further into nothingness.
He felt something hit his shoulder so he looked at where the hit came from. Him. With a blank face. "You're off, man."
He just looked at him. He looked at her, too, before he looked away from the both of them, at another locker.
"You don't look good," he said, holding an open book bag and some books.
He read the locker number--A1029--and looked at something else.
She stared at Pete and then looked at the other boy. "Uh--Joe?"
Joe just looked at him a bit more before resuming his packing. She looked away from the both of them, her eyebrows hopping in indifference, and stared at something, and so the awkward silence stilled the air to an impaling staleness that smelled similar to the rain until Joe closed and locked his locker and walked away. That's when she followed him again, Pete still staring and thinking until that magnetic attraction pulled him toward them. So, he followed them, the girl jeering to Joe's passionately sung sonnets to the rain, interrupting it with quips about her hair, until they reached a dim room, illuminated only by the grayness of the world, with a door at the bottom of a staircase leading outside. Others they knew were there, standing randomly on a step or by the door, all looking outside. The sight soothed his soul with some philosophical placidity that suggested they were worms. It almost made him smile. He wondered if this wasn't a dim room with stairs and a door, inside a school, but a cave, and he wondered if they all weren't people, but animals--animals seeking shelter from the wrath of nature, with meek eyes seeking mercy.
He thought it might as well have been.
Joe planted his face upon the Plexiglas of the door and exhaled a field of fog upon it, looking longingly through the prison-like sheet. Everyone laughed.
“Well, since you’re so eager to go, let’s go,” somebody said.
Pete had only heard the sound of the door being shoved open and the wail of the wind rush in and invade the room before he, or probably anyone, could look to see Joe marching valiantly into the turbulent torrent and against the relentless wind, clothes flapping and becoming increasingly soaked, being smothered by the fog until he disappeared. A girl near the door shrieked and backed away and others laughed again.
“He’s friggin’ crazy!” somebody said.
“Not really,” someone else said, walking toward the door. “The bus is coming.”
“Shit!” the same person had said, watching the other person leave. Then, after a pause, as if to take a deep breath before a plunge, the person charged into the storm.
One by one, people just kept leaving, but some paused and looked when someone had asked the girl that followed Joe: “You coming, Kim?”
She gave a troubled glare. “You crazy? I’m getting a ride.”
The person gave a slight smile and shrugged. “Alright.”
“It’s stopping!” someone said, looking outside.
They exchanged a quick goodbye and, soon, the door closed, severing the wind and any stray rain that had forced its way in, and only Kim and Pete were left. Pete hadn’t moved the entire time, though. He stayed on the stairs, staring out, and said nothing, but she decided not to say anything about that and just sat down on a step, looking outside. She looked outside so long, that awkward aura had enveloped the room like the fog, and she couldn’t stand it.
“It hardly ever rains like this,” she said.
He took a few seconds to say, “Yeah.”
Short silence for some short thoughts. "You like this, too, don't you?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah. I figured."
She stared into the fog and what little of the world she could discern in it: a tree, a person smothered in cloaks like a ghost, or the pale eyes of a car, gleaming with a ghastly light.
"I hate it," she said.
"Hmm."
Silence. She frowned but didn't turn around. She just asked: "What do you like about it?"
He looked at the back of her head and then outside again, his eyes parting the fog like foliage for an answer. "It's beautiful."
She turned around at him with a gawking glare, which kept his eyes outside. "Are you serious?"
He nodded.
"What--" she looked outside, "what's so--beautiful about all that? You see what these things do down in places like Florida an' stuff? On the news?" She looked back at him, hand gesturing to the door. "Houses ripped apart, people homeless, roads flooded?"
"I see it."
"So?"
He took a few seconds to let out a slight smile. "Beauty can be found in the worst things."
She looked at that slight smile, causing a faint flicker in his clouded eyes, and she looked back at the door to see what could catch his heart in that fog.
She sighed. "I see nothing."
"Heh."
She stared a bit longer before she gave up and fiddled with her phone. He kept staring, though, and took a rehabilitating breath.
"Just allow yourself to stand in it."
She kept fiddling. "What?"
"In the rain." His head rose from its languid limpness and he could almost feel it. "Screw your clothes getting wet and your parents getting angry or that you might get a cold or pneumonia an' just close your eyes and let yourself stand in it, letting the rain pelt your skin an' wash away your pain into the fog."
Her head rose from her phone and she looked at him, but with no gawking glare--or not much of one. It was more--thoughtful. Contemplative. Understanding, even. He thought maybe she could almost feel it, too.
"And, screw your hair, too."
But, then, a wave of blankness shot across her face. "You're kidding, right?"
He laughed a little.
She pointed at her hair. "You see this hair? You see all the hard work and money that went into it?"
He shrugged.
She shook her head and looked at the door again. "Uh-uh."
His lips cocked at her humor and he just sighed, staring out the door again, imagining standing as solid as a pillar in those whipping winds and pelting drops yet as flaccid as some peaceful pond, growing deeper with every drop. The thought brought forth a surge of warmth throughout him that almost made this cave comfortable.
"So--" she said, "you really liked her, huh?"
He looked at her. "What?"
"Helen."
His heart stopped and his eyes froze on her, just staring for a few seconds. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, you like her."
He kept staring and staring--and staring--until he saw he was staring into nothing but the darkness again, even when he raised his eyes to the rain, and even when he looked at the wall.
Even when he mentally looked himself.
He tried fighting it, though: "How--" His voice lost itself in his thoughts, so he blinked. "How would you know if I did?"
"It's obvious."
"How?"
"It just is."
He kept looking at the wall--through the wall. At something beyond it and the darkness. Something probably even darker than it. Probably.
"Don't worry." Pause. "It'll be fine."
He just kept looking through the wall, not bothering to frown, hand clutching the rail. Suddenly, the cave felt cramped and cold and he felt as if he'd faint again. He looked at the rain, though, and watched it, not thinking about anything anymore.
He stayed like that until she stood up a while later. "I gotta go. My mom's here"
A few seconds. "Alright."
She looked at him. "Don't worry."
He didn't know how to answer but he knew he didn't wanna not answer, so he just said, "Yeah."
She opened the door, the wind rushing in once more, and looked at him. "How're you getting home?"
He let the chill cool his skin for a moment before saying, "Ride."
"And it's not here yet?"
"I gotta call first."
"Oh." She pointed at his pocket. "Then call then."
"I will."
"Alright." She waved. "Bye."
He said bye back and she closed the door but stood underneath the marquee to open her umbrella before she ran. He watched her run through the rain into another pair of pale eyes in the distance until the fog ate her and the eyes swept her away. When he couldn't see them anymore, his aura ate the cave like the fog had eaten her and the world, to fill it with nothing but emptiness and loneliness, accompanied by the never ending pitter patter of the rain and the rumble of the thunder. It all engulfed him. It felt like he was suffocating. Choking, even. It made him walk up to the door, plant his hands on the panel, lean his head forward onto it, closing his eyes, and think on things. Joe. Kim. Helen. Himself, even. What they all said and did and what he said and did. It helped to calm him down and when he was calm enough, he looked up longingly through the prison-like sheet like a long-lost lover, and he took a deep breath.
He opened the door and went outside.