The Rain

Its coming.

The dreaded storm. The rain. Its coming.

We’re huddled up in our shelters, watching the acid lace the windows in tiny vile droplets. The barren land outside stares back at us emptily. The grass is burnt to a crisp and the trees once hanging low with fruit and clustered with pastel flowers stand lonely and bare. The swings have turned maroon with rust, creaking every now and then with the occasional gust of sour wind.

Poor Gus mumbles something under his breath. I turn around to see him talking in his sleep, his face a wrinkled canvas painted with worry. He lost his ability to form proper words due to the tragedy of June 2023.

It was a hot summer day and I was playing with Sienna and Cara in the garden when the sky suddenly turned dark and rain started to pitter patter on the pavement. But as soon as the very first droplets hit the nape of my neck, I felt a scorching burn, as if the water were eating its way into my skin. The girls started wailing and rubbing at their reddened arms so I ushered them into the house. That was when I saw Gus dozing off in his lawn chair out in the open. We had screamed our lungs sore but he wouldn’t budge. At long last, I found a plastic sheet in the shed wrapped it around myself and ran to rescue him. But it was too late. The damage had been done. All I could see was red. There were blisters on his tongue, thick blood dribbling down his chin staining his white cotton shirt as it made its way down. I had to refrain from retching and dragged his heavy form to the house, shutting the doors close behind me and placing towels at the ends to stop the water from entering the house. Ever since that day we’ve kept Gus with us in our shelter every monsoon season, thankful for the roof that keeps us sheltered from the bursting, thundering clouds above.