Jealous of the Rain

To say it hated its job would be inaccurate. It was never a matter of love and hate, but rather the inevitability and necessity of the position called for lack of choice. Others have the simple options of "do or do not". For it, there was only "do".

There was a list—a never-ending list. The task repetitious in its monotony; a quagmire through which it must trudge minute after endless minute of every cursed hour of its eternal life.

It was born to the job—a slave to its mastery. The only existence it had ever known. Would it ever dare hope to know another? If the job never ceased, would its miserable existence be doomed to perpetuity?

In the shadows between the warm glow of dripping streetlights, it waited. It watched. It wondered. As the warm autumn raindrops dashed themselves against the pavement, liquid glitter alive in the electric glow, it considered. A raindrop's life was so fleeting, always changing. Born on high, they fell to their inevitable doom against the barren ground below. Then, swallowed by the Earth, she used the decimated bodies to nurture the young and old alike, only to meet yet another demise in evaporation, sucked into the vacuum of the sky and return to the heavens only to fall once more when the weight of it all became too much to bear.

Metamorphosis. Change. Transcend.

It envied the rain.

Movement. Its eyes darted from the silky slick streets and flickered to assess a bulky man as he was heaved haphazardly from the den of iniquity beyond the glistening pavement.

"Get the fuck out of here, Harry! Stop drinking away your winnings! Take your money and go home to that poor wife of yours, we don't want you 'round here no more!"

A second man, burlier than the first, domineering in his rage, tipped Harry into the running gutter with disdain. Harry, clearly inebriated and seemingly unsure how he had come to find himself face first in a shallow river of city filth, muttered curses into his musty beard, his protests largely unheard by his aggressor.

It watched. It waited. It lifted its hand, the sleek black cover of The Book glistened in the low light with benign malevolence. Innocuous in size and design it may be, but its pages held an eternity of endings in their grasp.

A pale finger twitched aside the cover's hollow darkness and observed the name emblazoned across the paper within.

Harry Francis Tuttle. Age, 43. Friday the 16th of September.

It sighed as it smoothed The Book closed.

The burly man shook his head, as Harry Tuttle struggled to upright himself, and returned to the dusky gloom behind the swinging door.

Harry Tuttle, unaware of his voyeur, scrabbled his meaty hands against the asphalt and rolled his heavy body to its side. With a rusty heave, he righted himself, his blunt fingers groping for his skull beneath the dank, oily hair dripping rivulets down disgracefully ageing cheeks.

"Fuck you, Paul!" Harry Tuttle sputtered at the solid oak door of The Raven's Roost which remained sullen and uninviting against his curses. "It's my money, dammit! That pony won me twenty grand I'll do whatever the fuck I want with it! Bastard thinks he can tell me what to do, that self-righteous prick," Harry Tuttle grumbled at the toes of his worn steel caps where they jutted from his ankles, pointing to the sky at the end of his worn and sagging jeans. "Where're my fucking smokes?" Harry Tuttle patted his pockets in search of his favourite vice.

It watched. It waited. The time would come. It was patient. Harry Tuttle was not an unusual being to observe. It had seen many like him before. If it could feel, it imagined it would be sad to witness such a pathetic display of the dregs of humanity.

Harry Tuttle swore, his ire rising as his search proved fruitless. Finally, a victory cry as he unearthed his quarry from the inner workings of his puffy jacket's sleeve. Seemingly impervious to the rain, or merely unaware of it in his intoxicated state, Harry Tuttle inelegantly tapped a cigarette from its crinkled packet and sucked it between his dry lips. A clink and a dry snick followed as a flower of fire bloomed between his hands. A jewel of heat engulfed the end of his cigarette. With a whiff and a click, the flame blinked into death. A satisfied grunt was followed by a deep inhale. The glow of the cigarette swelled briefly. Harry Tuttle coughed wetly and drew on the cigarette again, giving life to the embers.

It wondered, not for the first time, why the creature would willingly imbibe the smoke that stole the oxygen from its blood, dying a little death with every breath. It wondered if it would ever get the chance to know how that felt.

Minutes passed as Harry Tuttle’s pants collected water from his gutter. Footsteps passed him by, mouths muttered their distaste at his presence, but he was immune to them all as his blank eyes stared into the darkness of the night. If it didn't know better, it would think that Harry Tuttle knew it was there. Sometimes it wondered if they did sense its presence before it approached like they claimed, or whether the human mind was just terribly adept at fooling itself when they finally came face to face.

As the soaking rain abated to a misty drizzle, it drew aside the fold of its garment and tucked The Book inside. It was time.

Harry Tuttle flicked the decimated butt of his cigarette into the swirling currents of the drain and rolled to his side, pushing his beefy frame to its knees. Huffing a laboured sigh, he staggered to his feet, shoved his clammy palms deep inside his pockets and trundled his way up the lonely street.

It followed.

It watched.

Harry Tuttle weaved across the pavement, bouncing from the glistening windows of the dim shops he passed to the sharp drop of the road on his other side. Once, he stepped off the gutter, and the shrill blast of a car horn ripped into his fugue and caused him to blunder backwards into a signpost. He chuckled uneasily, his brush with mortality made him uneasy.

Still, it followed.

Harry Tuttle blinked owlishly to the sign over his head. Slowly, he deciphered the names of the streets he was adjacent to and swivelled his meaty head side to side, casting a surreptitious glance over his shoulder. Harry Tuttle set his right boot in front of his left and continued his trek into the emptying streets past the end of the sleepy town. He didn't see it there in the shadows, watching. It followed.

Would Harry Tuttle wonder what had happened? Would Harry Tuttle care? Did anyone care for Harry Tuttle? Its thoughts circled with unanswerable questions as Harry Tuttle trudged on.

It began slowly, but it finished in no time at all.

Harry Tuttle reached a street on his quest that had a hill. A hill he climbed every night he waddled home from his best-loved haunt. It was a day like any other. He puffed heavily as he rose, his aching knees protesting at the effort of steadying his bulk on the incline. The drizzle had passed, though a misty fog remained, slipping eerily across the tarmac, swirling under the glow of the street lamps and crawling through the shadows. Harry Tuttle powered on. A twinge in his shoulder made him pause. His heart stuttered in his chest. Out of breath, he coughed roughly and leaned against the wall to take a moment to collect himself.

It waited. It wouldn't be long now.

A gasp of pain brought Harry Tuttle's hand to his breast, pressing hard against the grip and tug he felt inside. He blinked, beady eyes gritty as his focus waned. Another gasp of air brought a more profound pain to his heart. His arm throbbed, and his legs gave way beneath him. The ribs of his jacket snatched, tearing on rough brickwork at his back as he descended.

"Help me," he whimpered to no-one through a shuddering breath. There was only the night to hear his plea.

From the tricky shadows and the dancing fog, it finally walked towards him. Harry Tuttle's small, dull eyes fixed on it with sudden clarity.

"No," he whispered, the pudge of his fingers gripped his chest in vain. "Oh, please, God, no."

"My apologies, Harry Tuttle," its voice was placid, unfeeling, as it looked down upon the last moments of a feeble man. "Alas, this will be the first and last time we meet. Your expiration is imminent, and I must take what remains of you with me."

Fear, unmistakable, was stark on Harry Tuttle's face as he cried in pain once more, his breath seized in his lungs in a final exhalation as his heart beat's final cadence fell.

Its world fell silent as the somatic remnants of all that had been Harry Francis Tuttle, age 43, slithered into the mud at one minute to midnight on Friday the 16th of September.

It watched for a moment, considering what it would be like to die. Would it ever know the blissful terror of the end? One day, it hoped.

A fluid motion brought The Book once more into its hands. It opened the sleek cover again. A shiver ran across the page, and Harry Tuttle was erased. Not a moment later, Edna Jean Pankhurst, age 87, Saturday the 17th of September took his place.

With a sigh, it closed The Book and gripped it tightly. A rumble of thunder growled in the belly of the sky. It looked towards the clouds as the rains surrendered to their fate once more. The streetlights flickered, and it was gone.