Chapter 6

So we've completed a round and I have to say this is harder then I expected. That said, I'm definitely pleased with how it's gone so far. Obviously there are kinks, and I wouldn't say we are quite firing on all cylinders. There are certainly places where we didn't line up in voice, tone, or pace, but that's the nature of this very peculiar beast. I think moving forward we will only get stronger and more cohesive, which hopefully will lead to some pretty awesome work.

For Chapter 6 I tried to pull back the reins a little bit and take stock of where we were and maybe set up where we are going. Trying to match up with everything that came before was tough but I did my best. I can't say too much about my motivations as that would be a violation of the book club rules. Enjoy.

dale

Chapter 6: Operation Umbrella, or All Is Not Lost

It’s stopped raining

My phones display reads 91, my finger poised over that final digit.

What would I tell them? This story is so insane. “So I was walking around casually minding my own business, when this mysterious woman told me to get into her car at gunpoint, then she told me to get out and we were at the park where my fiancée Adeline was murdered, so that was eerie, but this time there were no pigeons around, well I mean there were pigeons at my store a few days ago, and I guess that’s an odd coincidence and I might be interested in reading something into it, but it’s not really all that relevant to now, when she was about to shoot me, but then she hesitated for some reason and got shot by this other guy with a gun and then he told me to tase her, and so I picked up the taser – oh yeah there was a taser – and then I tased her and then the other guy put her in the back of his car and drove off.”

Just listening to this rambling mess, even I think I may just be going crazy.



Outside the Mercury Zephyr the rain is weakly protesting the day’s events. Misting. The worst kind of rain.

In the back seat of the unidentified man’s car Rain, blindfolded, gagged, and bound, has regained consciousness, but has yet to move. This isn’t the first time she’s been captured. She knows it won’t be the last. Her thoughts are on the man, Jerry Marston. He’s the first person she’s ever failed to kill. She knows she should feel something – anger, frustration, disappointment, anything really – but she’s numb. She wonders if that’s an effect of the taser.

The man picks up his phone. Dials.

Operation Umbrella is proceeding as planned sir. You’ll have her in less than a week.

I could deliver faster, but I don’t want to. I get my time. That was the deal.

Don’t worry. I have no intention of hurting her.

Her thoughts go to Driftwood as she formulates her escape plan.



I look away from the phone for a minute. A cat is sitting in my lap. Driftwood, is stitched into his emerald green collar. His presence is calming.

“How do you factor into this little buddy?”

He doesn’t answer. It’s odd to admit that I was kind of expecting him to. After everything that’s happened these past few days, why shouldn’t cats talk?

Am I actually going crazy?

I look around the park, trying to get my bearings. The sun is back out, and excluding my own disheveled appearance the park accurately reflects South Haverbrook opulence. The shed, once dilapidated was restored within a week of Adeline’s murder. Another example of the world moving on without me. Ignoring me.

My phone’s backlight has gone off and through the glare I can barely make out the two digits I’ve entered. Calling the police is the right thing to do, even if they’ll never find my abductor, or my savior.

I push the 1.



Moments after hatching the escape plan Rain’s hands are already free of their constrictions. She keeps them behind her back to prevent the unidentified man from noticing.

She envisions the break out in her mind. She’ll wait for a bump in the road when he won’t be attuned to slight movements of her body. Then, she will wrap the rope that had been used to tie her hands around his neck. She thought there was something poetic about that – as the hunted become the hunter, the bounds would become the weapon. She would grab both ends of the rope with her left hand and with her right she would constrict both of his arms.

Her mind shifts gears. She dwells on Jerry once more. And the poem. The poem that had been lodged in her brain, the poem that seemed so important to her, the poem that he choose to say a part of before he died. She realizes that as soon as she gets out of this situation she needs to get back to Jerry Marston.

The car starts slowing, then stops. The unidentified man gets out of the driver’s seat. Rain can hear his footsteps crunching the loose gravel of the shoulder as he walks to the trunk. The trunk opens, something is lifted out, and then it is closed. The door at her feet is opened.

I know you untied my knots. Show me your hands slowly. Good. Now remove your blindfold.

The man is pointing a gun – her gun – at her.



I’m holding the phone to my ear, but I don’t hear anything. I look at the display, 9-1-1. Right, I always forget that you need to push send. I waver once more.

What are the police going to do? There are no witnesses. More importantly, there is no crime. I stare at the screen.

The phone is ringing. Driftwood looks at it and then at me. I answer it.

“Hello”

nothing

“Hello”

A faint scratching and flapping noise.

“Seriously? This again? What are there pigeons in my apartment now?”

“No Mr. Marston. There are no pigeons in your apartment. The pigeons were a warning. I suggest you heed it.”

“Are you serious right now? The pigeons were a warning? Why didn’t you just call me and say hey, Jerry the crazy bitch that killed Adeline is coming to kill you? That would have been a much more effective warning asshole”

“She didn’t kill Adeline, and that’s not what the warning was. I can’t explain it all to you now, but things are in motion and you are a part of it. The pigeons were a heads up.”

“Oh great! Things are in motion! That’s an eye opening revelation. What the fuck does that even mean? What is this, Lost?”

“I assure you this is no TV show. You are not in purgatory, or hell or the afterlife. You have not been transported in time or place. You are in South Haverbrook CT, and things are in motion. What those things are, Jerry, is up to you.”

The phone clicks dead. I look at Driftwood. “So. Where do we go from here?”

Chapter 5

Capping off the first round is the Man from Minnesota who single handedly (technically he used both hands because typing with one hand is not efficient, but the phrase does not turn as nicely that way) got me through my first year writing courses in college. Once again I apologize for the spacing. Enjoy.

Chapter Five: The Sun that Parts the Clouds

“Pigeons,” I mutter as I clean the last of the feathers out of my store, three days after it was vandalized. “Nothing good comes from pigeons.” The store was set to open again and I was excited. I had taken the opportunity to repaint and remodel a touch. The bleak maroon walls had been repainted a blue pastel, Adeline’s favorite color, and the old mahogany shelving was replaced with sleeker cedar shelves. The place was clean, but I still scrubbed away at the floor on my hands and knees as if haunted by the pests that had nearly destroyed my store. “I hate pigeons.”



It was pouring. Type #2 rain, unrelenting, pounding rain, one mf my favorites. It gets my blood pumping, my adrenaline flowing. The only time I get to feel the sheer power of type #2 rain is on kill days. I summon Driftwood and pull my Honda into traffic bound northwards from Arlington, VA. I’ll be in Connecticut soon.



100MPH…105MPH…110MPH, I gotta keep pace with the clouds. I swerve and honk my way through the cars; gripping the wheel tight as each time I make a tight pass. I promise myself that even if I don’t scratch the car she deserves new paint and tires after this is over. Its dark up ahead, looks like a big storm. My body is racked with pain, but I know I am close. The pain, the chase, they end today.



Jerry Marston flips the sign on the door from “Closed” to “Open” and settles in for the morning with his coffee and the paper. Instinctively he flips first to the weather section. “Damnit, 72 and sunny again. At least its good for business.” He sips the scalding coffee and swallows deep allowing it burn his trachea and stomach. He loves the burn. He does not look behind him; he does not see the clouds.



The Rainmaker nears South Haverbrook and consults the map she stole from the last gas station. She knows her victim owns a bookstore on Gavin Dr. and knows he is working today because she called to inquire whether the latest Dan Brown novel was in. She knew what she was going to do, she was just looking at the map to figure out the best way out of town.



Keep one-step ahead, you don’t want to arrive in time to see another corpse. She never kills in a house or an alley, always in public. She embraces death and wants others to as well. Jesus this looks familiar. That church with the slightly tilted spire, I was just here, I know it. I pull over and wrestle my laptop out of my bag. S-O-U-T-H H-A-V-E-R-B-R-O-O-K. Jesus, I knew this looked familiar. The pigeons. What the hell was that? I know it was her, but why the pigeons? No matter, the Rainmaker loved comfort. I’ll take my chances with the park.



I flip the sign from “Open” to “Closed,” its lunchtime and I forgot my lunch on the counter this morning. Guess I’ll go grab a quick sandwich and shake from Delia’s. As I close the door behind me I realize for the first time this morning that it its raining. I don’t have a coat or umbrella and I don’t care. I missed the rain and embrace each cooling drop.

I’ll let him get his final meal. I pet Driftwood and check my gun. The rain, type #22, is steady, but not overbearing, it is patient rain.



I pull out my flask and take a big gulp. This is it, I can’t do this much longer. It ends today, in this park, or I’m done. I screw a silencer onto my USP .45 and wait. Its going to hurt, but I need her alive. I hope I can still make the shot.

Maybe I should “forget” my lunch more often. Damn that raspberry shake was good. Its still raining, I’ve never been happier to see the rain. It helps wash away the deep pain of my loss. Wash away the blood in the grass at the park. Wash away the pigeon crap on the sidewalk in front of my store. “Get in,” I hear a woman in the red Honda that pulled up alongside me say. She is pointing a gun right between my eyes. I can’t run. My legs have betrayed me. The raspberry shake and BLT weighing down my stomach have betrayed me. I get in.



This one is often quiet I think to myself. Usually they are begging at this point. No matter. I hardly hear them now. The rain has intensified. It is type #2 again.



I drag myself up the jungle gym and perch myself next to the slide facing the shed. I lie down and get into shooters position. This is my chance. The pain is incredible, but I need to ignore it. She has one shot and I have one shot. For my sake and this poor soul’s sake I need to shoot first.



I’ve stopped thinking. I am about to be executed like my Adeline. I suppose it is fitting, but I can’t say I understand it. I didn’t know I had any enemies. Neither did she I suppose. I close my eyes and think of clouds, ducks and Milky Way.



“Get out and walk to shed,” said the Rainmaker to Jerry.

Jerry does, not even feigning interest in taking off.

“On your knees and look into my eyes. I want you to watch me kill you.”

I look up and see the Rainmaker draw the Anaconda and cock the hammer back slowly and deliberately. She was obviously enjoying this. I suppose if I am going to die I will at least get to die in same park as my Adeline. A wave of happiness overtakes me. “The pain will end and good will conquer evil. The rain will end and the sun will part the clouds. Adrift in a sea of apathy, I wait for rescue,” I mutter to myself as the gun is leveled between my eyes.

“What did you just say,” shrieks the Rainmaker.

Before he could repeat it the Rainmaker’s slender body crumpled over as a bullet tore through her right knee. The Anaconda and a Taser she had in her pocket went flying out. “TASE HER BEFORE SHE GETS UP,” I hear a voice yell from the jungle gym. Still shocked, I stumble for the Taser and deliver 40,000 volts of electricity into her back and watch as she crumples into a quivering heap.

“I am sorry about your loss,” said the older gentleman who had made his way down from the swing set. I watched, dumbfounded, as he tied up the bloody lady and gagged her with a weather beaten tennis ball he found. He pulled his pristine looking Mercury Zephyr and placed her bloody body in back seat that he had covered with a tarp and what looked like 20 towels. He collected her gun and Taser and threw them into the passenger seat of the car. Finally, he walked up to the Honda she was driving and removed the small travel bag she had in there.

“Forget you ever saw this,” he said to me as he sped off into the parting clouds.

I sat down next to the shed unable to move, staring at a pristine Mercury Zephyr race off. Besides me a grey cat did the same.

Chapter 4

The fourth entry was written by Combo. He isn't half as fucked up as the events in this chapter might have you believe. As far as I know he has never... well, I won't ruin it for you. Enjoy

CHAPTER FOUR: PIGEON FEED

A part of me wishes I had a chance to visit the scene of the crime. Maybe then my mind could be at rest. Rest from the haunting visions of her naked body in the playground of Madahorn park before daybreak. Two Investigators described the scene to me, alternating between pieces of description.

“She was just lying there" a short stocky trench coated man with a lisp explained "on her back, naked. One bullet hole in each scchoulder and one on each schhin.

"The fucker wanted her alive," his partner wearing a tan slacks and a blue tweed jacket added. "Her body was covered with mixture of blood and pigeon shit. Apparently, she was coated with bird feed and the pigeons ate away at most of her skin and fucking shat it out all over her.”

"Her clothes and bag were nowhere to be found" spat the first one.

The news hit me like a malignant tumor. At first, I was in denial. I had spoken to her the night before. We had dinner plans that evening. Her death was too much like a twisted murder novel to feel the pain at first. I was just waiting to get furious with them when they would tell me that they were joking.

They were not. She was killed. Bullets, entrance wounds, exit wounds, her faint heart pumping blood outside of her body. Birdseed. Birdseed. Eaten to death by pigeons.

The tumor slowly grew. The pain became more excruciating by the day. It increasingly dominated over any healthy part of my brain.

I counted. 14 times I missed my bus stop thinking about the mess in the playground that was once my fiancé.

Everyday I visit that scene. On some days her humors looks more red than white, others, more white than pink. Some days she lay there unscathed and I watch the whole scene from the beginning.

Her murderer has a number of faces as well. Sometimes it's a delirious homeless man, black and abnormally tall – hunched over with a limp. He wears a heavy black winter jacket with feathers jutting out of the lining. He watched her jogging through the park every morning. He wakes up in a drunken haze one day and waits for her. As she runs by he aims five feet in front of her hesitates a second to allow her to run into the line of fire. The bullets smacks her in her in the right leg , piercing her leggings. Her momentum carries her another step and she stumbles and falls like a hunted a dear. He limps over satisfies with his aim and starts to laugh.

“How dat feel, Bitch?” I try my hardest to stop myself from conjuring up how he removed her clothes, what he did with her helpless body. Usually I am unsuccessful.

Did she try to fight him? She was always fighter. Where'd the homeless man get the gun?

Other times, the murderer is this Russian mafia man. He is fat and has white hair earlier than normal. He wears a gray suit and a oddly colored bluish-green shirt, convexed from his gut. He was sent by someone, who was sent by someone to kill her in the most gruesome way possible.

"You don't fuck vis us Adelene," he mispronounces her name, the last time she will ever hear it.

“Thees is vut happens ven you fuck vis us." Each sentence begins and ends with the gunpowder explosion in the glock's stainless steel barrel. He rips off her running suit then takes out a plastic shopping bag filled with bird seeds. He doesn't bother untying the double knot and just rips it open, carefully making sure the seeds fall evenly along her torso and thighs.

But what could the mafia ever want from her. She had no real money. I have no real money. What the fuck could anyone ever want from her?

The pigeons always look the same. They come instantly in a cloud of fluttering gray and purple and green and fight for a spot on her flesh. Twenty or so minutes later, they begin to fly away.

And dawn breaks.

Chapter 3

The third chapter in the reverse book club (or book club, but not in the way you'd expect) was written by a friend, who at this time will remain nameless, but I will tell you that he writes for a popular sports related magazine. Enjoy.

CHAPTER THREE: He, The Chaser

Calmly caressing the worn steering wheel, he turned into the packed parking lot, narrowly avoiding a sedan speeding in the opposite direction towards the lot's exit.

Unfazed by the near accident, he continued on for another 30 feet before expertly backing into a spot. It wasn't the first open one he saw, but it was the one that would make for the quickest exit. He knew that probably wouldn't be needed, but you always have to be ready for the unexpected. That's something he'd learned years ago. Experience is the best teacher -- that's what his commanding officer had taught him in corps -- and experience had taught him that "better safe than sorry" was more than just a cliché.

Leaving his lambskin leather driving gloves on, he unfolded his lanky frame, gave his arthritic knee a tough knead and opened the door. He stopped. He contemplated grabbing his umbrella from under the passenger seat; it had been raining since late last night. His knee hurt too much for him to bend over. Plus, it had stopped raining sometime in the last minute or two. He decided to leave the umbrella where it was.

He got out of the car, and eased the door silently shut.

Walking quickly around his ancient yet remarkably unscratched car, he eyed it for any signs of damage. He didn't think his car had been kissed a few moments before, but he loved his old Mercury Zephyr -- it had been with him for over 175,000 miles and 20-plus years -- and had to be sure.

"Fuck," he muttered.

He took two steps and knelt down to get a closer look.

He felt a dull pain in his knee. The recently departed rain had amplified the pain.

He hated getting old.

He gave his knee a thorough rub, promised himself that he'd pick up some scentless Icy Hot later in the day, and refocused.

On the driver side, above the gas tank, a hint of foreign paint was visible, marring the otherwise unblemished two-year-old coat of white he'd polished before he'd embarked on this trip.

He studied the scratch. Paint must have gotten transferred when that other car had sped by, in a rush to who knows where. He wished the damn car had been less generic. He wished he'd seen the license plate. He wished his fucking knee hadn't started betraying him. He knew wishing did nobody any good. So, again, he refocused.

Gloves still on, he ran his hand along the scar. It couldn't have been more than two inches in length, but it bothered him. Like his body, the Zephyr was old, and scars take more time (and money) to heal now than they once did. For the first time in a while, he wished he hadn't said OK to this job. He wished -- no, he knew -- that he would retire after this. He wished the damn paint didn't have to be so red. It really stuck out, like a single rose growing on a white picket fence.

"Fuck," he whispered again, turning away from the scratch and towards the Motel 6’s entrance.



He'd been studying her ways for some time. He'd come close to catching her before, in Nebraska, but he was a little late, and she stalked and pounced her prey -- an elderly couple, seemingly harmless corn farmers -- before he could get there.

Since then, a lot had changed. She still had the advantage, but he was catching up. He had picked up on her predictably unpredictable routine. The motels, the cat, the Anaconda, and the rain. Oh yes, the rain.

Before he had taken on the job, he had heard rumor of a rain maker living in the United States. It was probably a farce, but he prayed it was true. If there was a rain maker, maybe there was a rain unmaker. And he needed to find that celestial being.

The guarantee of no rain was a pleasing one. Rain did things to his well-being that no man could imagine -- intolerable pain in his knee is just the start -- so who could argue with him for wanting to live in a rainless world? Who could argue with him for assuming the existence of a rain maker ensured the existence of rain unmaker? Who could? They could.

They – a collection of loved ones and friends -- they tried to argue. They told him that these beings didn’t really exist, and that even if a rain maker and unmaker existed, why would he assume that one would know the whereabouts of the other? They made a lot of sense, he admitted. So he had forgotten about the whole thing, the rain maker, unmaker and all. He embraced Advil, Icy Hot and the occasional Cortisone shot. Pharmaceuticals were his religion.

Until he found out that she was the One. Not the unmaker, but the Maker. At that point, he was still hunting her for his clients, but he was also after her for him. They needed her hunted to soothe their souls. He needed her to soothe his pain. Of course, chasing her meant constant agony. The closer he got, the greater the rain, the greater the pain.

As close as he had come recently, as much as intel as he had gathered, he still didn't know the W or the H: the Why or the How. Why did she kill? How did she choose her targets?

Even without this knowledge, he knew enough by now to realize that she was good. Very good. And at such a young age, too. If she wasn't already the best, she had the potential to be the best he'd ever seen. But he was good, too. Or, at least he used to be.

In his day, he was actually better than good; he was the best. After years in the corps and on the job, he never failed. Never let a client down. Never let himself down.

But now he was just an old man on his last legs. And one with a damaged body at that. The job had taken a toll on him. But for his sake, for the sake of his client, he hoped he could see this case through to its finish. See this Rain Bitch caught. Or killed.

But not before she pointed him towards the Unmaker.



With his adequate height currently draped in a black polo shirt and too-tight jeans, snow white hair massaging his scalp and barely a hint of a paunch, he was still handsome. Handsome enough that the young lady manning the front desk nervously toyed with her hair as he approached.

His voice was low and had a unique cadence to it. He spoke in short, clipped bursts, like a man on a mission. Not many men like him – distinguished men – came through the motel’s doors. So between giggles and flips of her auburn hair, she answered all his questions. He started to head towards the elevators. She called after him, noticing the limp in his gait as he swiveled around. She said something cute; a nervous shake was audible in her voice. He offered up a wrinkle-free smile, and promised to say bye before he left.

Heart fluttering, she brushed her hair back behind her ear and picked up the magazine she had knocked over earlier. By the time she looked back up, he was gone.



For a man who just charmed a girl many years his junior, he was not especially happy. He did not like to be noticed. He did not want anyone to remember his visit here. Still, her interest in him silenced some of his earlier worries. Maybe he wasn’t as old as he made himself out to be.

“That’s a comforting thought,” he mouthed. “And an absurd one.” Reflexively, he touched his knee and winced.

He walked to the end of the hall and stopped. The room was near the emergency exit. If she had been here – and based on his experience, and the weather, he was fairly certain she had been – this would have been her room.

He held his breath as he jimmied the lock. Unlike most things, he’d gotten better at this as he got older.

Click.

The knob went limp, inviting him into the room.

He took a few steps into the room.

The darkness inside enveloped him. He embraced it. And it returned the embrace.

He ventured further inside.

Gray cat hair was all over. The mirror in the bathroom still showed slight signs of steam. The towel folded near the bed was wet.

She had been here. And recently.

He was on closing in on her.

Chapter 2

Hello adoring fans! It's been a while, I know, but here I am again, back and ready to rumble. Following up on Dale's post, here is the second installment in the Reverse Book Club (I'm not sure what is 'reverse' about it. It is more like Book Club: But Not in the Way You'd Think) written by yours truly.

Hope you enjoy,
Wes

Chapter 2: The Question

The joke was an attempt to regain her footing. A failed attempt, but an attempt nonetheless. Before Driftwood brought the card to her, before she even saw the name, she heard the voice asking her again: “Do you enjoy killing people?” This threw her off. Residual memories from her last kill were not something that she was used to. Residual memories from just about everything else – faces, snippets of conversation, lines from old movies and books – were quite frequent. But those were from before. A line from an assignment was a first. Once it was finished, once she left the site, it was done. If anything, it provided a sense of closure.

Still, the girl’s words – her voice calm and collected and her piercing blue eyes staring unflinchingly into The Rainmaker’s – were something that for whatever reason, she could not shake right now. This was a question that she has never once asked herself since she first killed a man at age twelve. It’s not that she was avoiding the question, but enjoying something would require certain emotions and she lost those emotions a long time ago. Besides, it wasn’t about enjoyment. It was what about what she needed to do.

This wasn’t the first time that a target said something to her before she pulled the trigger. Hell, this wasn’t the first time that one of them asked her a question. But usually they would ask things like “Why me?” or “Who would want to do this to me?” These were questions that The Rainmaker never thought twice about, because their understanding didn’t really matter. All that matters is that she does what she needs to do. Does the only thing she knows. And what she knows is this: she waits in the motel for the card, tracks down her target, dispatches them, and waits for the next card.

The motels had been her idea. Before she leaves for a job, she reserves room 17 in the closest Motel 6 to the target. 6 for the rain that falls in fat drops that feel like spit, 17 for those warm sun showers that are frequent in the month of May. They have provided her with an apartment, but she can’t remember the last time she was there. She likes the idea of staying in a place that will be turned over and reused by countless people once she is gone. She likes that there is no trace of her presence left behind. Especially when she has seen what the alternative can mean.

She tries to recall the girl’s name, but she knows it is useless. For some reason, the eyes and voice linger in her memory, but the name is long gone. What possessed the girl to ask her that question? She was going to die in a matter of seconds. Rain is puzzled by this. Trying to focus on something else, she flexes the card absentmindedly between her thumb and her index finger. Reaching for the drawer with her free hand, she extracts the gun by the well worn wooden handle. Her fingers run along the barrel, tracing the letters along the side: C-O-L-T A-N-A-C-O-N-D-A. She flips open the cylinder and checks the bullets. She knows that there are five bullets in there, because she knows that she loaded all of the chambers before her last kill, and she only used one bullet. She always only uses one bullet. Still, she welcomes the diversion.

She places the gun back in the drawer and gets out of bed. As she stretches her arms over her head, she catches a glimpse of the scar that runs under her left breast. Rain used to stare at this scar for hours, letting the memories rush in like a flood, but once she began to develop, the scar began to disappear from sight, and shortly thereafter, from mind. She enters the bathroom and turns the hot water in the shower on as high as it goes. Satisfied with the temperature, she steps into the tub and lets the steaming water envelop her.

Water coming from the showerhead doesn’t remind her of any type of rain. The stream falling down on her head is both the most easily controlled and the one she least cares for. Because it is not the same. It is cheating, really. A matter of reservoirs, water tanks, and plumbing. What she does to the skies is a different matter altogether. She can’t explain it any better than anyone else, but she does know that it hasn’t always been this way. The rain started falling around the same time that she got the scar. The legend began to grow soon thereafter, but as is the case with most legends, hers is more fiction than fact.

Stories went around about her being born during the worst storm in decades, of her mother dying in childbirth after being struck by a lightning bolt, her father being a direct descendant of Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain. Of course none of these stories were true, but she rather liked the name they had given her: The Rainmaker, so she let them believe what they wanted to and that was that. There was nothing left of her old life, so she was more than happy to become the person that they made her out to be.

But the girl saw something else. She wasn’t intimidated by “The Rainmaker” or the gigantic, menacing gun pointed squarely between her eyes. She was calm and collected, and she treated Rain like she was the one who had something to answer for. Or did she? Rain wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe she was imagining things, or misremembering. And why did she care so much in any case? Their paths converged because her name was on the card and this meant that Rain needed get rid of her. Nothing more, nothing less.

She forces her eyes shut even tighter, trying to recall the name, trying to make some sense of what she was going on in her head, even though every fiber of her body was willing her mind in the opposite direction. The water scalds her body, searing white-hot pain with each bead that splashes against her pale skin. She reaches forward, turning the hot water off and the cold water all the way on. The frigid water assaults her body and mind – an attempt to jog loose the long deleted memory – but nothing comes.

She hears a scratching on the bathroom door. Driftwood clawing at the wood. Rain snaps out of her rumination and turns the water off. She steps out of the tub and takes down one of the neatly folded white towels from the rack above the toilet. She dries herself off, moving the towel slowly over every inch of her body before wrapping it around herself and pulling her dark hair into a tight bun. When she steps back into the bedroom, her cat is perched on the night table pawing at the chain hanging down from the lamp. Driftwood looks up from his new toy and watches as his owner makes her way to the folded clothing on the chair.

Once dressed, Rain proceeds to her morning workout routine. As she begins doing pushups on the worn out carpet, she listens for the rain and is surprised to hear #55; the intermittent heavy rain that fools you into thinking it has stopped before picking up again right as you put your umbrella away. She finishes her set and lies back on the bed, breathing heavily. Driftwood glides over to her and sits on her chest, rising and falling with each of her breaths. This is one of his favorite activities, and Rain is more than happy to oblige. As she tries to catch her breath, the girl’s question creeps in again, forcing her to sit up. Driftwood is none too pleased, but Rain begins to scratch his belly absentmindedly, and he purrs his gratitude.

Rain picks the card up again, and studies the details. Jerry Marston. South Haverbrook. Connecticut. These are things she can focus on. Concrete things. Things that are in front of her. She takes a deep breath and pushes the voice out of her head. It is time to go. She sits up and walks to the night table where she opens the drawer and extracts the gun, leaving the bible behind for someone who still has a chance to be saved. Putting the gun underneath the waistband of her jeans, she heads for the door and steps out into the downpour. She pulls the door shut, careful not to close it on the cat’s tail.

As she walks through the parking lot, the water drips down her face, splitting down the sides of her aquiline nose. In the rain, it is evident that she is beautiful. Fragilely so, tall and fair with a large forehead and deep-set, almost black eyes. Through those eyes, she sees the car that will get her out of here. It is an unassuming car. A red Honda Accord, maybe four years old, but she knows that the door is unlocked and that the car is well maintained, so she walks over to it and gets in. She fiddles with the wires underneath the steering harness and the engine quickly roars to life. She rolls down the passenger window and Driftwood jumps in. Putting the car in gear, she heads out onto the busy street where the traffic is making its way through rain #22, calculating her options of how to best get to Connecticut.

Reverse book club & Chapter 1

So three friends, Wes, and I decided to write a book together, but not in the usual way. The notion is this: One person writes the first chapter and then passes it along with no other explanation to the second. The second reads the first chapter, imagines what a full book would be, and then writes the second chapter and gives it to the third. The third then to the fourth. The fourth then to the fifth. And then the fifth back to the first and the cycle begins anew. At no point do the five of us discuss where the book is going. The only guidance we can give is what we put in the actual chapter. The book has no title yet, but this is the opening chapter, written by me (I apologize in advance for the disastrous spacing, it's some sort of blogspot quirk).

Chapter one: A phone full of pigeons

Ring.

Damn phone. I’d been dreaming, and it was pleasant. It was one of those dreams that are almost entirely memories, but have one or two fantastical elements. Adeline and I were at the park describing cloud shapes, trying, not to be accurate, but to be as ridiculous as possible – the Milky Way! Octopus giving birth! Duck! (Whereupon she threw a handful of grass at my head) – except in the dream the clouds were near perfect representations of our absurd designations.

Ring.

I’m tempted to let it ring and just go back to sleep, but I won’t get that dream back. It’s gone, just like Adeline. I’m also curious who would be calling me at 7:25 in the morning.

“Lo?”
Nothing.
“Hello?”
Still nothing.
“Hello? Is there anyone there?” I say slowly, trying to enunciate as clearly as possible, not that it’s likely someone didn’t understand the way I said hello, but you never know.

Not quite nothing. Within the almost-nothing I faintly hear something. It kind of sounds like scratching, but softer. The noise makes me a bit uneasy so I don’t want to hang up without figuring out what it is.

“Hello? Is everything ok?”

The soft scratching from the other end has picked up it’s pace a little bit, but I still can’t tell exactly what it is. Fluttering?

“Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”

The sound is becoming more distinct though it is still barely audible. There is something oddly familiar about it, something compelling as well. I feel myself drawn to the sound.

Fwoosh, fwoosh, fwoosh.

I feel like I should recognize the sound. I sit up in bed, press the phone hard to my ear and put my finger in the other one. I fix my face into an almost cartoonishly exaggerated focus expression. The sound is still there, quiet, constant, almost relaxing. Calling out, reaching out to me. Trying to send me a message, perhaps. But what message?

Fwoosh fwoosh fwoosh.

It kind of sounds like one of those tapes people buy to help themselves get to sleep. Calming ocean sounds or the like. Could it just be one of those? No. Who would wake me up just to play me music that’s supposed to help me go to sleep? Besides, it’s too discordant. It sounds like it should be relaxing but it’s actually unnerving. The fwooshes are too close together, too out of rhythm, too on top of each other.

I close my eyes. Trying to picture what the sound could be. The fwooshing fills my head, flying circles around my brain. Flying? Could it be birds? It does kind of sound like wings pushing against air. I try to focus even more intently on the sound and let it fill my brain.

I see myself now in the middle of a room filled with pigeons. I’m in a bookstore – my bookstore – and the pigeons are everywhere. Dozens of them perched on shelves and ladders, while a few more pace back and forth on the counter next to the register. The air above this scene is a blur of gray as the pigeons fly in a figure eight pattern overhead, their feathers occasionally catching the light and glinting purple or green. I’m taking this all in when then the room abruptly clicks out of existence. I am now just sitting up in bed with my eyes closed.

The line has gone dead. I lie back down since I don’t need to open the store for three and a half hours. What an odd phone call.



It’s 4:30 in the morning in an unidentified town on the west coast of the United States. It’s raining, and has been for several days. The current rain is the type that doesn’t seem hard when you look at it, but if you spend half a minute out in it you find yourself soaked to the bone. This is the 267th type of rain and she thinks it’s one of the worst, right up there with heavy misting – the 134th type – which can’t be blocked by a hood or umbrella.

It’s still dark and none of the lights in the motel are on. The woman is lying naked on the bed, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Her breasts rise and fall with her breathing, the rest of her long lithe body motionless on top of the covers. A gray cat with white feet is nestled up against her, unperturbed by her sleeplessness or the rain. The cat is sleeping, it’s breathing, slow and regular as the tide outside the window. The cat’s collar, green with silver lettering – Driftwood – is on the bedside table next to a clock blinking 12:00 in bright red numerals.

She isn’t sure when she fell asleep, but she doesn’t feel tired now. She knows she laid down slightly before eleven with the lights off and the rain – then a heaving, threatening thing, #11 – pounding away outside. At some point she must have slipped into sleep, but the line between asleep and awake is so blurry for her she can’t tell when exactly it happened.

The sound of the rain, like television fuzz at low volume, is almost tangible around her, and it fills the room. She is trying to remember the lines of a poem, but she can only remember the end - adrift in a sea of apathy, I wait for rescue – recalling the rest seems important for some reason, but nothing comes to her. Unable to remember the lines she tries to think who wrote it, but once more draws a blank. It bothers her to have this one line stuck in her head, taunting her, reminding her that there is so much she doesn’t remember or understand about what’s going on.



It’s past ten when I finally get out of bed, my sleeping head filled with pigeons. I look outside, hoping to finally see a sky burdened with dark gray clouds like an occupying army, a clear indication of a massive and dangerous storm on the way, but it’s another perfect day – 72, sunny, blue sky highlighted by bright white clouds. Adeline’s been gone for twenty-nine days and Mother Nature refuses to acknowledge it; every day has been a shining example of South Haverbrook’s finest spring weather – the best Connecticut has to offer.

I decide to bike to the store – I may not like that the weather has been so nice, but I’m not too dumb to take advantage of it. There’s something uniquely calming about biking along the shore, watching the waves brush against the rocks below me. I can almost feel the tranquility wash over me. I bike slowly and get to the store with about an hour to get things ready for opening. When I open the door, a pigeon walks out and I realize I’m going to need a lot more time. The store is covered with feathers and pigeon mess.

I go into the back office to call the police.

“Onatonga County, Sheriffs department, this is Marcy, how can I help you?”
“Hi. My name is Jerry Marston, I own the bookstore out on Gavin drive, and hmm… let’s see… I don’t really know exactly how to explain this, but it seems that in the middle of the night my store was filled with pigeons and you know how pigeons are, so now my store is filled with feathers and pigeon mess”
“Hold on. I’ll connect you to pest and wildlife control.”
“No-“
“Pest and Wildlife control, this is Dennis how can I help you?”
“I don’t think you can. I called the police because I feel like a crime has taken place in my store.”
“Then why did they connect you to us?”
“Because the crime involved pigeons”
“Hmm. I see, are the pigeons still at the scene of the crime, because if they are we could send someone out to control them for you?”
“No there, all gone. All I have now is feathers and pigeon mess.”
“Hold on, I’ll transfer you to the sanitation department.”
“No-“
“Sanitation, this is Bill, whatcha’ need”
"I’m sorry Bill, I’m going to hang up on you. Have a good day.”

Deciding that the police probably couldn’t get to the bottom of this anyway I set out cleaning the store.



It’s 8:00 am in the unidentified western coast town and still raining. The sun is blanketed in a thick swath of cloud, and doesn’t seem to be putting much effort into breaking past. The rain has shifted to a spastic driving rain – #36 – where it falls heavy then light, heavy then light on and on.

Inside the motel the woman still lies naked and awake on the bed, Driftwood calmly sleeping at her side. Her clothes are folded neatly and stacked on a chair. She only has one outfit and no suitcase. She has only six other possessions: a Colt Anaconda .44 Magnum revolver and the five bullets within it. At present the gun’s eight-inch barrel is resting alongside the bible in the bedside drawer. Thinking about that makes her smile.

There are footsteps in the hall outside, heavy, purposeful steps. Each footfall bringing the person closer to her door. From the sound of it she can tell that the man is big – between 250 and 280 pounds – and evenly distributed. His walk is stiff so she can tell that he is wearing a suit. She didn’t need to hear that though, they always wear suits. The steps stop in front of her room, toes pointing towards the door. A crinkle of fabric, like the sound of a hand in a pocket is followed by the sound of a man in a suit bending over. A card slides under the door. The feet turn and walk away.

A few minutes pass, the rain changes subtly – #37 now – and Driftwood, gets up, walks over to the door and picks up the card in his mouth without any difficulty, as if he’s done this a hundred times before. He slinks back on to the bed and drops the card on the woman’s chest, purring lightly. The woman absently strokes his head, paying special attention to his ears, without looking at him, her eyes still on the ceiling. His purring lowers into a gentle rumbling of content. She lets out a sigh and picks up the card.

Jerry Marston,
South Haverbrook, Connecticut

“Well Driftwood, I guess we’re heading east. I wonder if it’s raining there.” She say’s with a laugh.



-dale

Envelopes

This isn't really a story, but I am working on something bigger an unfortunate side effect of which is that I really haven't had time to work on short stories. What I am about to post basically just happened in a chat between me and Wes a little while ago and I decided it was fun enough to post. Especially since no one reads this.

Envelopes

You're in the office late stuffing envelopes with holiday cards.
Thousands of holiday cards.
The dust, like clouds, forms vague images as it floats through the air.
A duck, a hammer, a hand putting a letter in an envelope.
You're being mocked by dust.
You stuff envelopes.
Your lamp is on and the moon is beaming full through the window.
A trapezoid of pale light is splayed across your desk, spilling over the edges and onto the floor.
The only sounds are paper crinkling in your hands

cards fwooshing into the envelopes

your dry tongue sliding across and priming the glue.

Occasionally there is a muted honk from outside
maybe a yell - someone hailing a cab.

You stuff envelopes.

There is a ringing sound.
It sounds like a phone from the 1950's.

You try and ignore it.

ring
You stuff envelopes.
ring
crinkle.

 ring

fwoosh.

 ring

lick.

ring

crinkle.

 riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

Was that ring longer than the others?

It certainly seemed longer.
riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

Definitely longer.
You stop stuffing envelopes.
You get up to investigate
the carpet muffling your footsteps
the office quieter now than before

 riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

except for the ear splitting 1950's phone ring.



You locate the phone in an office at the end of the hall.

Why is there a phone from the 1950's in your office?

You ponder the phone as the dust dances around it.
A grandfather clock, a smile, the letter R

 riiiiiiiii-

You pick it up.

On the other end of the line a man speaks

his voice is monotone, unending

you dont recognize the language

it's not gibberish, you can detect the rhythms that indicate language.


It almost sounds like English
but you've never heard this language before.


It seems like he’s been talking for a while

there are strange echoes and warbles in the sound

he doesnt seem to breathe

thinking about it now you realize you haven't breathed in a while either

the whole time you've been listening you haven't taken one breath

something about that doesn't feel right

you inhale

water fills your nostrils

that doesn't feel right either

panic

looking around your entire office is submerged
that’s definitely not right
panic

you swim back to your desk

your panic subsiding because obviously you should already be dead and your not

now you're just confused

a fish swims by wearing a porkpie hat
NOW you're just confused

you stuff a few envelopes
you're not even sure their is a post office under the sea so you stop

you look at the envelope box

warning: licking envelopes may cause hallucinations