The Day It Did Not Rain (again!)

THIS VERSION CONTAINS:

1. Twice as many words!
2. Vague references to MacBeth.
3. Bees.

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He had been there for he did not know how long, bathing in the heat so thick it twisted the landscape up like a stained napkin crumpled on an empty plate. The land was flat here, and he could see forever, if forever ended in a hazy blue-beige line.

At his back he thought maybe there were rocks or pebbles or grains of sand, something pressing up against his shirt, starched by the salt of dried sweat. He thought his hat had fallen somewhere over there, just out of sight along with the newly painted sign for a town hidden behind the forever-blue-beige line. He thought maybe his feet were bleeding, but how could that be, when the sun baked everything lifeless, slowed everything thing down to such a sluggish pace that not even blood would flow?

He had sand in his throat. Or maybe his throat had turned into sand– sand oozing from the walls of his windpipe like water condensing on the side of a summertime glass. Maybe the air was sand, and he was breathing it in with every ragged breath, but it got trapped in his chest and all he puffed out was stale carbon dioxide that could barely stir the breezeless afternoon.

He didn’t think he still had his arms. He could feel something scratching at them, but he could not move them. Maybe he had forgotten them, left them behind at the last sign he had seen for the town that was so close, so close like black clouds so heavy one could taste the thunder in the air.

He told himself he was almost there. He told himself he only had a little further to go, just a bit, like he had told himself at the sign before and the sign before that. But his legs were over there, and his feet were back there, and his face was squinting at itself far over there, and the rest of him was here, melting away into the hungry ground. His skin sizzled like a good, hardy breakfast, and he could hear his wife putting water on to boil, plip plip plip. He was shaving right now, letting the water run free from the faucet, all shimmering and cold and completely wasted, all of it, what the hell was he doing?

He shut off the faucet and finished up and went into the kitchen. He greeted Sylvie with a kiss and she giggled and ran her fingers over his newly shaved jaw, eyed his lips like they were candied almonds, and handed him a plate with three strips of fat bacon and a boiled egg, cut neatly in half. For herself she made the smallest bowl of cereal and another egg, and they sat down and they feasted.

“Has the paper came yet?” he asked.

And she said, “No, it’s Tuesday.”

“And the mail?”

“It’s Tuesday, sweetest.”

So he took her arm and pulled her naked body down onto the bed with him, eggshell white and clammy, and he held her so close like she was the only piece of the earth left. She smiled with her snowflake teeth and he kissed her eyes and she took a bite of his shoulder, crunching it like fresh watermelon.

“It’s a bit stringy,” Sylvie said to his mother.

“It’s can’t be helped, the meat just comes like this,” his mother replied. “Here, try this.”

His mother cut the top of a lemon off and passed it across the table to Sylvie. Sylvie squeezed it, juice flitting over her fingers and dripping all over his thigh, cut to tiny pieces on her plate. His mother was working his hand with a knife, and wet red pieces fell from the bone like rain slipping down a bus window while a girl in his third grade class stared out at her house, so far up the driveway, and the weather beat at the roof and she wouldn’t go, she didn’t have an umbrella, her art project would be ruined.

It was raining and he walked home with nothing but an extra shirt over his head. It was thin and blue and water seeped through and dribbled down his face, down his back, like Sylvie massaging away all those tense knots, but he was thirteen and his mother scolded him and drew up a warm bath, and he lowered himself into it.

He towel-dried his hair and it was messy, and Sylvie laughed at him but it sounded like wind chimes in the sea breeze, and they walked down the beach holding hands because they were young and they were in love. There were white shells and he picked them up to give to Sylvie, but she was gone so he piled them up like office papers.

“Working late again?” Carla asked, coat over her arm and car keys already in hand.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I have a few more papers to get through. Just a few more.”

Carla leaned over and picked the top paper off the pile and flickered her eyes over it like a viper licking the air. She shook her head. Her plastic-sapphire earrings clinked. They were almost the color of Sylvie’s eyes, which were clouded over with tears and he could hear her crying and her finger nails were scattered across his desk like broken bits of seashells.

“Why don’t you love me?” she screamed, her face filled with creases and grief and blood from where her fingers had bled on her cheeks. She squatted hunched over in the corner of their bedroom, the bed sheets wrapped around her like a miserable blue robe. He tried to hand her a tissue, but it was a seashell and she threw it back at him.

“The bed is cold!” she yelled, her blue eyes spilling over and out like burning sugar. “It has been cold since Tuesday!”

Tuesday was their first anniversary so he bought her violets because he knew they were her favorite. She took the bouquet, plastic wrap crinkling and snapping, and she plucked the petals off one by one, running them over her bare chest, collar bone defined and skin like whipped cream. They left chalky blue trails on her skin, swirling and twirling and whirling, like bees or birds or a hundred one-winged butterflies slowly falling. He reached out and traced one blue path with his thumb and it smeared over her smooth skin like water spilled across the floor.

He kneeled with a handful of paper towels, trying to soak it all up before his mother found out, but there was too much and the paper towels melted into a soggy mess, unable to pick up anymore, simply moving the water around as he scrubbed away. He tried to sop up the spill with his hands, but they transformed themselves into a wet mush as well, and then his arms, and then his legs up to his knees.

His mother found him curled up on the floor, crying and limbless. She made an impatient tic noise like Sylvie’s clock that ran too fast.

“Can’t get up more, can you?” she asked. He whimpered. “Go on, try. It’s a mess in here.”

And there was only a little puddle left, just a tiny one, but he couldn’t clean it up, he’d already lost too much of himself, like the dregs of coffee sinking to the bottom of the mug.

Sylvie was terrible at making coffee. It was always too weak or too strong, so bitter it made his gums tense up. When he complained she watered it down with milk and the coffee faded into an ugly beige color in his blue mug. It still tasted awful, but he only had a little bit left, so he squeezed his eyes shut and tipped it down his throat.

He opened his eyes to look at the bare stage. He sat in an uncomfortable chair in the high school auditorium, the rest of his sixth grade class buzzing around him and quivering like yellow jackets. Then the lights went down and they fell quiet and three witches appeared in a nightmare on stage. He understood the words but not the meaning, so he tighten his jaw and pretended he was somewhere else.

“Look at the sky!” said Sylvie and they looked up, and it was all around them. It wrapped around them and they were floating, laughing and holding each other. The sky flowed and gushed and surged and buffeted them around and they clung to each other, too transfixed with one another to notice that her hair was tangled and his shadow of a beard was scratchy and itched her lips as they kissed.

“Until death do us part,” Sylvie purred in his ear and the best man slapped his back in congratulations and his mother was crying.

His mother was still crying when they got home from his graduation. He tossed his royal blue cap and gown onto the easy chair and they tumbled off the side in a river of synthetic fibers.

“Oh, Mom,” he groaned and she bent to pick up the discarded gown, tears dripping from her chin and hands shaking with grief as she folded it, smoothing out the wrinkles she could not remove from her face.

“You’re a man now,” she said. “And soon you won’t need me– you won’t need anyone.” And she bawled and bawled and he cradled her head to his chest and thought that yes, she was right, he could be whatever sort of man he wanted, he just needed a little experience, a little time.

Her tears began to sting his skin so he pushed her away. But the burning sensation continued, somewhere deep in his bones, so he dipped his fingers into the skin of his arm and pulled it back, and then pulled away all the muscle and veins, and there were bees nesting in the honeycomb of his marrow.

The bees buzzed and swarmed and stung the remains of his skin, so he swatted at them and flailed and ripped away more skin and sinew. When he tore apart his chest, the queen sat humble and bulbous on his sternum. He pounded at her with an open fist and when she burst venom slid over his ribs and stung his heart and lungs and he collapsed onto the bed.

“Up?” Sylvie asked groggily as he switched off the alarm.

“Yeah,” he grunted and rubbed sleep from his eyes. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”

“So early,” Sylvie whined and rolled over to look at him. The blankets tangled around her form like something majestic trapped in a fishing net and her hair splayed across the pillow like sea foam. “You said you didn’t have to do this anymore.”

He stood and stretched and padded toward the bathroom. “I said I only had a few more,” he clarified. “Everything else is taken care of. Just a few more. Then we can do whatever we want.”

Sylvie sighed dreamily and sank into the bed like flowers putting down roots. “Good.”

He let the water run as he shaved. Through the window he could see the first sliver of the sunrise, like the dying embers of a man’s final cigarette.

He smoked a pack a week for six months when he was nineteen, and his voice hadn’t been the same since. But he was still in good health, he still had a job, Sylvie loved him, his parents loved him, Duncan was dead and he was trying hard but Sylvie loved him. When he got to the town behind the forever-blue-beige line, he would call Sylvie, tell her he was alright, he was fine, he could make it, just a bit more.

He kept walking.

When he sat down to take a break, he remembered he was lying in pieces in the sun and his eyes felt like dried figs even when they were closed. Forever was a blue-beige line he could never reach, and behind that was the town that was so close, and he could call Sylvie but he couldn’t.

The sky was above him, was blue like the ocean, like so much water splashing around him. His pores sucked it up, he was a sponge, unfit to move but still living until he was in someone’s shower, and he would still suck up water but he would be dead. The sky was so beautiful, like Sylvie’s eyes, like the screen before the movie plays, like new sheets, like the plastic wrap around a bouquet of violets, like the sky.

As he lay dying, he tried to swallow the sky with his eyes, one bit at a time, for it was all he had left.

“Ah,” he thought, marveling at this one last gift to him, just for him. “It’s a good thing it did not rain.”

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Pointing out typos would be good, yes?