Summer Showers
Mark Coleman
I watched on in disbelief. Women like these don't own rape whistles. They ignorantly think that nothing of the kind could ever happen to them. They believe that God will protect them. They are wrong.
God still lives in the Old Testament. Wrathful. Murderous. Willing to commit filicide. Unrepentant. Lying under oath. All the stenographer has to do is type it all out, and throw New in front of the Word.
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We made love with Serge Gainsbourg singing low in the background. The music of sex. The needle comes down. Finds the vein ready and willing. Concupiscent in fact. The barrel fills with blood, and the phonograph becomes sugary.
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Listening to the hail do car damage and drinking margaritas. An all nude strip club. An all you can eat buffet with pubic hair in the food. A touch lap dance.
Buying strippers cognac. Stumbling home drunk. Pissed. Pelted. The cloud formations look like cauliflower. The women all want diamonds mined for by children with missing hands.
Looking very much like a luna moth in her green and blue getup. One of those nice girls for sure. You smell of sweaty, gyrated pussy and cigarette smoke.
Your wallet empty. Tapped. Couldn't afford to buy another woman a drink, take her to a movie, dinner. Any of it.
Some men use a clip with the large bills on top in a cock of the walk bid. You wished you had one of those now. Filled to the brim. Full of whiskey confidence, you decide to approach her, anyway.
Soaked through, you stumble over and slur a few words at her rather than to her. Inquiring about her relationship status and so forth in the chopped bass growl that comes after a night like this.
She doesn't answer any of this but to your surprise, she shares her umbrella with you. Both of you under that tortoiseshell, turquoise sky. Her hand accidentally brushes yours. You want to hold it more than anything in the world, right now.
Sweet is the adjective that comes to mind. Not a girl throwing herself all over a stage, and nearly breaking what's left of her hymen with your limp dick, dildo, Jew nose.
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Chalk art kids run over to the Van Gogh, and start dotting in their own stars. Throw rocks bigger than their hands up there. Taking away the rain.
You notice that the underside of her umbrella is a simulated depiction of the heavens. It's what you'd expect to see lighted above a baby's crib or hanging in a museum. It seems to create a separate cosmos in every strand of her hair.
It's dazzling. As stunning as any of the rest of this slim girl's natural radiance. You see that its just a light posse of fireflies. When you were a child, you used to catch them in mason jars, and watch them for hours on end.
She walks. Looking straight ahead. Oblivious to all of this. It could be the Garden of Eden, and she wouldn't even notice the apple or the serpent proffering it.
You're at peace with yourself for the first time in your life. All the atrocities being committed at this moment, the world over, couldn't take any of this away.
The second hand has seized to tick. The minutes die away. The clock falls to pieces in the loss of its conception of time. It falls into the ocean of forgetfulness that steals loved ones locked away in nursing homes.
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She speaks for the first time. "It looks like rain." You can't understand why she hasn't noticed what has essentially become a flash flood. You're walking through rivers. No garters. But no gators either.
Noah could be waving mankind away, and this girl wouldn't notice. She would just keep up the clip clop stride or splash away until the whole of this macrocosm parted like the Red Sea.
Then you see she means something completely different. What that is you haven't the slightest clue. She seems to know but her head is somewhere between a coma and the wall that divides the people.
You begin to become conscious of what is going on here. This girl can't possibly have a boyfriend or a girlfriend for that matter.
She is nothing but a child dressed up in a woman's body. Blissfully ignorant to the point of stupidity. It's almost a certainty that she is as virginal as a Madonna.
She has yet to look at you. Has only spoken four words. It's doubtful she will speak anymore. Her greeting took the form of a gesture. A kind one but an unspoken one still.
What she might be thinking is anyone's guess. But she must be thinking. Right? You begin to doubt even this. There's a nirvana like quality to her. Certainly, transient.
You pass a man sleeping on a bus bench. Or are you in a park, now. The street has seemed to fallen into the same ocean as the clock. But instead of forgetting something intangible it has instead forgotten itself.
You would like to offer the man money. But in the absence of that luxury at least a kind word. But it would seem an affront to her own kindness. Somehow.
Besides, you're afraid this whole land that seems wholly nonexistent would complete its dissolution and she would dissolve with it.
The man dissolves once out of sight. The deluged brown paper bagged bottle held tightly to his chest.
A newspaper boat floats by. You read a headline that you instantly forget. You're sure it's war.
It is not a painful process but a slow and arduous one. He can only ascertain that certain parts of himself have begun to costively dematerialize.
You realize how attached you've become to this woman/girl/child in such a short amount of time. She's existed in a mercurial state within your heart, forever. Before you were born or even conceived, she was there swimming within you. A mermaid with precious gems for eyes.
Thinking of mermaids you once again look at her hair. It flows as do these tributaries along this strange but wondrous path. It has a Medusa-like quality to it. Even in the absence of fireflies. It lives. It flames.
But there is nothing there hungry for a mouse. There is probably nothing there hungry for you either. With this awakening, almost rebirth, you begin to take in the rest of her. In pieces.
Starting with her face you work your way down until you reach her unseen/seen toes. There is certainly an almost timeless bond. But does this bond attach in any true sense?
Is this all just a fantasy? A drunken delusion? Very unlike those delusions of the DT variety.
You now do take her hand. Press it. She does not squeeze yours knowingly or in acknowledgement. She unmistakably exists. Her flesh is as soft and warm as you would imagine. To your astonishment she speaks again.
"There is a place beyond this." Again, she does not elaborate but you somehow know that she is not speaking of an afterlife.
Is the place even a place? Does the path that you are traversing lead there? You doubt and do not doubt this, simultaneously.
You had begun to think you were walking her home. Now, you know that this is not the case. She is walking you. There is a reason she lent you shelter beneath this umbrella.
Perhaps, someone or some force outside of herself had commanded this of her. You rationalize that this place must be an idea. Either hers or yours. You could have not foreseen its actualization. Then you again think of the place as a place.
There is such a confusion here. Nothing is logically sound. Nothing is as it seems. Ideas cannot be walked to with a beautiful woman who will not take your arm or even your hand.
They are possessions that not even a prison guard or solitary confinement can take away. Are these new ideas? Sentient ideas? Revolutionary? Political? Romantic? Terrifying?
Well, certainly not the latter. Why would such a resplendent guide lead you to them if such were the case? And besides, you are not terrified.
You have never had feelings quite like these. They seem as new as the ideas may prove to be. Feelings of tenderness. Akin to love but not love. Well, maybe that's not quite true. What else could one label your feelings for her?
Albeit, very rudimentary you do feel that flutter of the heart the poets speak of. Your breath catches in your throat. You try to swallow it and find you cannot.
This could be the love of your life. The one you have been waiting for so patiently. Wanting to love. To have that exuberant feeling for yourself. Selfish, sure. And you know that love should be unselfish.
Love should be able to be willing to die for someone else. Would you die for her? Someone that you don't even know. Well, you do seem to know her. After a brief moment of contemplation, you decide definitely that yes, you would.
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In the morning, a friend stops by. He's brought by a bottle and was going to see if you were up. It's not morning exactly but just a little before noon. He knows that you wake up around nine, and usually need a drink.
It's as much a kindness as an act of sociability. He'll have one too, sure. But he doesn't need one. Especially, so early in the day when the sun, though it should be wide awake, is still dragging its feet into day.
He knocks on your door repeatedly, knowing you should be home. He calls your phone. Tries your door. Your door is unlocked. He finds you in bed. Smiling in your sleep.
He's never seen you smile like this. Never seen anyone smile like this before. Never seen anyone sleep like this before in fact. It dawns on him to check your pulse.
The paramedics pronounce you DOA. After the coroner's inquest, it is revealed that you died in your sleep. Reasons unknown.
