The Coming Rain

The air is sticky. This is always the first sign that the crisp coldness of the forest will soon give way to a warm, incessant downpour that characterizes the shift of seasons. It has always perplexed me how a desperate landscape such as the one I traipse currently manages to maintain such a consistent schedule. As if time were the only thing it has left to nurse. It is easy for me to pass judgement upon the desolate trees and dried moss, but in reality, we have quite a bit in common. I too only have the hours of the sun to sustain me and the tally marks on the trees to tend to. Perhaps I am worse than the forest. These marks of passage fade from me quickly, and the seasons begin to blend, rendering their revolutions useless to me. But not this year. This year I am tracking every moment.

On the path that leads from the cabin, there are four landmarks that prevent me from getting lost. I no longer need them, though, I now know the trail like a sailor knows the stars. The first is the frame of a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette whose bright red has been replaced by a rusty brown that fills the air with the tinge of blood. The second is a little bridge meant to provide a safe crossing over the stream but currently provides only an occupation for the eyes. The stream dries up, like everything else, in this season. The forest sighs down into a low dip, revealing the third landmark: a graceless array of several bone structures. I like to speculate on this one. When these bones stood together, what did they move for? Did they have a name? A family? Were they like me?

These questions serve no purpose, obviously, they will never have answers. But it is nice to think of someone inquiring about me in the same way, likely as it is that I should end up a fifth landmark. The fourth and final landmark, quite a distance from the third, spans as far as I have ever managed to reach. It looms over me like the rising sun; a stone wall that displays an immeasurable age, and yet no signs of giving into the tugs of senescence. Except for one singular brick. The brick lays between an adolescent spruce tree, and the stream. This brick that shows an ever so promising crack along its center guards the passage through which the stream (the assumed culprit of such defacement) usually would flow relentlessly. How this beam of hope has gone unquenched by my captor is nothing short of a miracle. At the least it is a sign that the time has come to chip away at the stone cage that has held me for far too long. Although I have spent the last hour slowly putting distance between myself and my escape route, the dizzying idea of it is never pushed out of the periphery of my mind. Unfortunately, my daydreams do cower in its corners as I near the worn wooden cabin. The energy around it is never quite clear, although this is a quality that I have only recently had the ability to pin down. It is not that there is anything intrinsically dark or heavy about its smelly cedar walls; the darkness is rather something that hangs on them like a decoration or a painting that has long lost its sentimental value. It dangles desperately because that is all that it has left to do. All he has left to do.

Every night after the sun leaves the forest behind, he lights a fire in the living room, and I try not to be illuminated by it. After all this time I still believe that if I am silent enough, or stealthy enough, or hide in the shadows enough, maybe he will simply forget that I am here. And though that is never the case, I have gained the ability to be so still, that sometimes I forget that I am here. As I lay in my bed, I feel it. Hot, hot rain that melds with my skin, and cool, hard stone that scratches against my fingertips. All the times that I have thought about what lies beyond its strong, soundless walls accumulate. Occasionally when I dream too fervently about it, I think that I remember things that were real. A little ship embarked on the never-ending ocean with a captain who sang to me. Lights out on the waves that were interrupted by streams of heavy rain. I have always loved the rain, even when it scared me. But that is as much as I ever get: drips and drops of what may or may not have been my life years and seasons before. Then I wake up. And I am still, oh so still, and yet I am still here.

Even so, the rain is coming.

As the sun rises and sets, and he holds me in his tight grip, I watch silently and steel myself while whispers of moisture slowly permeate through the ground and the leaves. Although he is not very smart, he is very detail oriented, so any advancements on fabricating my escape are made only inches at a time. There is not much room for error, and always a lack of time. I have begun my attempt on multiple occasions but have never managed to match my movements with the moments of the forest. Now, I take extra care to stride with times tide. I make the maple tree bleed for my sake, and yet she loyally reads to me: 20, 25, 30 days. Once the blue birds begin their earnest songs, I have 30 days.

I have 30 days.

I hardly have the peace to sleep anymore, the taste of liberation rolls around my tongue at all hours, day and night. I have secured the tools I should need: the useful end of a shovel I not so unintentionally managed to break in order to justify its absence; torn pieces of sheet to wrap my wrists so that I may bear through the splinters and an old lantern to guide me through the engulfing darkness of the nighttime shadows. I count them and recall where they reside over and over again… 1, 2, 3 under the bed, in the shed and the lantern is by his head. 1, 2 ,3… I lull to myself in a sleepy song.

But now, I am so awake, in fact every nerve on my fingers and every bristle in my ear seem to stand at full attention. I can almost feel my pupils dilate while every ounce of air is pushed from my lungs slowly. My muscles are filled with energy, they are the water behind a dam, each step I take over the screechy floorboards pushing them that much closer to pouring out. He sleeps outside on nights like these (moonless and warm), which I was banking on for this to work. The lantern will already be lit, all I need is to grasp it. With the sheets tight around my fist, my blood pulses hard against the fabric in protest of my actions, but I persist. With the shovel in my left hand, I feel as though I am a machine, rigid and rusty, my bones creaking with each closing motion. And then I have it. And then, before I even realize it, I am running, faster than I ever have, my feet making the path for me, my brain ten steps behind, but I am moving. My heart is beating out of my chest, so loud it sounds like thunder. Boom… boom…

Then I am frozen. Stuck to the forest floor my heart still beating but never having made a sound. In horror, I recount in my head: 30 days! It has only been 30 days! Boom… boom…

I snap my head around to face the starless array above me, understanding now that the sky I had seen previously was not moonless at all. Its creeping crescent stares at me directly through the heavy clouds it now reveals. The rain is coming. I should go back, but I can’t. I can’t spend one more day in agonizing anticipation of freedom, not after its enticing tendrils have wrapped themselves around my mind. So, against my better judgement, my feet once again start pounding into the mossy carpet of the forest floor. My running is now fueled by a familiar tingling sensation that is slithering up my spine: fear. But the storm moves faster than me; each clap of thunder shakes my ribcage, and thick steamy drops of rain are slowly striking my head, my feet, my arms, and legs until there is a continual blanket of warm, slippery rain coating my every step. With a fizzle, my lantern is extinguished. All I can do is push forward. Seconds pass in slow motion, but I am moving quickly. I am convinced the slickness from the rain is allowing me to glide through the trees like the blue birds who fortunately knew better than I. Over the canopy, beneath the clouds, even through the torrential rain, I can see it, my final battle has dawned upon me. I collide with its unforgiving walls and begin to desperately grope at each individual brick. The rain is in my eyes, my ears, I cannot distinguish each rock from the ones next to it. I cannot breathe, but a gasp of air escapes me once my fingers finally dip into its Achille’s heel. With a quickness only few things can inspire, I slam my shovel into its brick repeatedly. Stone to steel, stone to steel. The pattering of the rain combined with the buzzing of my head at the thought of bringing the wall to its knees is enough to sustain myself. The sheets meant to protect me are now sopping, adding to the burning sensation and abrasion against the wooden stem of the shovel. Blood from my hands mixes with the rain. Hot, sticky, pain, it is all the same and makes no difference. With each crack, my body is repeatedly lit on fire and doused by the rain, like a phoenix in its rebirth. Steel to stone, steel to stone. The stones above the stream entrance crumble and fall to the ground with a muggy thud. It is barely enough, but I have no other choice, even if I were to turn back now, I would never find my way back unnoticed. I am dedicating everything to this moment.

I drop myself to the muddy earth, acquiescing with the forest more now than ever before; we share blood and tears and sweat despite all the ways in which my body objects. I crawl, stomach scraping through the dense mud, and begin to dig my way through the constricted egress. With each dragging motion, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that this passage is meant for the ebb and flow of water, and not the solid shape of me. My flesh tears against the walls and fills with murky water. My hands are grasping at nothing that holds, my feet pushing what cannot be moved; I am going nowhere. The fire inside me burns, while the water around me rises. The stone shifts above me while the mud gulps below me. In between all these sensations, burning my nostrils, filling my lungs, is the suffocating realization that freedom has become my captor.