Raindrops
Andy was nervous and excited. He was also bored out of his mind, but the boredom was a surface level reality, whereas in the future, Andy knew that great things awaited him, and this made Andy both nervous and excited.
Andy had always felt secure in the fact that he was extraordinary; that he was destined to do great things. A powerful energy pulsed inside of him as he completed even the most mundane of tasks, but the energy never waned, and so throughout his lifetime, Andy had consistently felt both nervous and excited by his own energy.
The only problem Andy had with his indefatigable energy was that the energy did not come with an instruction manual or any guidelines for how and when best to use his energy. Andy was approaching his forties and he had never used his energy to accomplish anything great by his own standards, and he was beginning to feel bored more and more often these days.
Andy was reflecting on his attitude, when he realized that his boredom was beginning to wage a war against his powerful energy, and this was beginning to make him feel uneasy about a possible lack of purpose to his life.
He chewed the inside of his cheek, gnawing at a loose end of skin, working at carefully removing the annoyance with the expertise and skill of a surgeon removing a cyst. He was unconscious of how this may look to someone watching him, but this was mostly because he was walking alone on a street. These days, most people stayed in doors as often as possible.
Andy stopped to look at the front page of the newspaper displayed in a metal box on the street. The newspaper featured three headlines; two reported news about a different war, each in a different region; and each with different religious and spiritual groups fighting over their varying version of appropriate social conduct. The third headline was about the Earth’s gradual deceleration of spinning on its own axis.
Andy looked up. The sky was a dark gray. It looked like it should be raining, the air was damp and cool, but the ground was very dry; the clouds were thwarting the raindrops’ goals of leaping towards the Earth.
The skies had been gray yet rain free for nearly half a year now, yet this disastrous phenomenon had failed to override the momentum of mankind’s religious warmongering.
The Schwizenstein doctrine had attributed the motionless sky phenomenon to a sudden lack in winds, which in turn had been caused by the Earth’s decreasing velocity in its own daily spin. The Earth was like a washing machine; for eons, it had been involved in a steady spin cycle, traveling in one direction. But now, that spin cycle was ending, and within days, scientists had predicted that the Earth was going to stop spinning altogether.
Days were no longer actually twenty-four hours long, and no one knew for certain why this was happening. Where Andy lived, there was now daylight for twenty two hours of every day. Andy mused that this was all very logical; the Earth’s own energy, just like a human’s, was finite, and now it needed to rest.
What goes up must come down, but evidently, the sun doesn’t always rise and set; “the sun doesn’t always come up tomorrow.” At least Andy could still depend on death, taxes, and war. All had not become chaotic.
Andy lit a cigarette and took a small delight in watching the smoke casually rise into the air as though Andy were sitting in a poorly ventilated room. The smoke twirled and danced about as it slowly rose towards the overcast sky. Heat still rose.
Andy was on his way to the zoo. Why not? He loved animals, he had the day off, and he had no friends.
Why make friends when you can read a book instead? When a book becomes monotonous, you can put it down, and since it’s inanimate, it has no feelings, so you don’t risk offending it when you are bored or done with it. Andy had never made a friend who could reciprocate the style of friendship that was so well provided by a book.
When Andy was feeling overly isolated, and worried that his self-prescribed state of isolation may be causing insanity, he would go to a bar, have a few drinks, and shoot pool with a human, to make sure that they didn’t think he was crazy.
By the end of a few hours of this sort of thing, Andy would wish his pool partner were a book, and he’d usually throw the last game, pay his tab, and return home to sleep off the alcohol.
Andy looked away from the ascending train of cigarette smoke, and towards the cement beneath his feet. Everywhere he looked the natural ground was buried by cement. The air felt heavy, yet it was also dry and hot – it was not arid, like a desert, because when you stood outside, you felt smothered by the air’s odd heaviness.
It was as if someone had stuffed into a blender one-part Sahara Desert with one-part Buffalo, New York, on a muggy, summer day. And since the air was so stagnant, wherever you were outside it smelled like a poorly kept New York City Subway stop. This was why most people were choosing to stay indoors.
A stream of cars jetted down the boulevard and broke the still silence that Andy had been enjoying. Andy subconsciously switched his cigarette into the hand on the opposite side of the cars, a habit he’d developed from when he was a teenager, when he used to smoke on side streets near his home and have to hide his habit from cars, in case one of the cars belonged to his parents or their neighbors.
The cars passed, and Andy grew excited as he realized that the zoo was only about five minutes away. Another car passed Andy, and as it did, someone in the backseat leaned out the window and yelled, “faggot” at Andy. Andy looked at the boy’s face, and was pretty sure that he didn’t know him, but not as sure as he was that he was not a faggot. Andy retorted to the accusation with a lone middle finger thrust towards the rainless sky.
The car didn’t slow down, and Andy was pretty sure that his gesture hadn’t taught the kids in the car anything about why it’s wrong to call a stranger derogatory names. Andy saw another newspaper box, with a different newspaper, and all three of the headlines were different phrases conveying the same three ideas as the other newspaper. This paper, however, had more charts, bigger pictures, and bolder fonts on its front page.
Andy decided to buy it. He reached into his pocket, only to discover that he didn’t have his wallet on him.
Andy quickly felt a flash of anger, for this meant that he couldn’t pay the zoo’s entry fee. He then became entrenched by a feeling of failure, which blossomed into a full fit of self-loathing anger. His cheeks were flushed and he wished he could kick something really, really hard.
Now he had to turn around, walk all the way home in this stinking stuffy weather, and by the time he got home, it would be too late, the zoo would be closing so they could raise the newly constructed nocturnal roof over the compound, inducing an artificial nighttime for the animals.
Without any care or thought, Andy began to kick the newspaper box as hard as he could. He kicked the box with the full weight of his body, and the full force of the anger that was pulsing through his mind. He felt a sense of primal rage as he channeled every iota of personal anger and intensity into the task of maiming the newspaper box.
It was a blind rage, barren of thought. After a lengthy lapse in consciousness, Andy returned to reality upon feeling two stiff hands that were pinning his shoulders into the ground. The back of his head was pulsing like a swollen, saggy drum head, and a police officer with a menacing glare was standing over him and holding a taser.
Andy had never seen a photograph of a taser, let alone a real one, but somehow, he was positive that the weapon in the police officer’s hand was a taser.
He’d read about tasers in the news, and he knew that the protocol that enabled an officer to use one was pretty lenient these days.
Andy’s eyes grew wide as he reflected on the public’s “chill” attitude towards police enforcement vis-à-vis tasers.
“Hold still or I will be forced to make you hold still.” The officer screamed.
Andy wriggled his head left and right; in an attempt to see what the other man looked like, the one who was pinning him down.
“I am ORDERING you to HOLD STILL!” The officer’s eyes connoted a sincere sense of sadism.
Andy tried to speak, but the officer was now holding the taser only an inch away from his chest and this caused Andy to suffer from a panic attack. He wanted to speak, he wanted to apologize and to set things straight, but he couldn’t summon his body to perform the task.
Andy was no longer bored. Now he was only very nervous and very excited, but he was missing his focus and energy, which rendered him as helpless as an infant.
Andy heard the officer click the taser on, and then he heard a small hum. He wanted to speak, but he couldn’t even find the self control to shut his own eyes.
Andy was bracing himself for electrocution when he felt his arms become unpinned, and heard the officer’s taser click off.
What Andy next experienced was an event like no other: Andy distinctly felt the Earth lurch to a complete halt, and then it suddenly began to rotate in a counter motion from its former spin. This action only took about one minute, and right after it occurred, for the first time in many months, Andy felt a cool wind ruffle against his skin, and he could hear the distinct sound of pellets of rain beginning to hit the sidewalk.
The start-stop motion of the Earth was extremely disorienting. It felt like a yo-yo switching from down to up; it was like a clock that had suddenly been wound; only now the clock was running backwards, and Andy could feel his sense of equilibrium adjusting to the flummox of motion. The sky darkened, and the ruffling winds increased in their intensity.
Andy stood up. A second police officer was standing next to the officer with the taser, and both of them were staring, dumbfounded, at the sky.
Andy looked up to see what they were staring at, and as he did so, he felt a massive drop of rain smack his cheek like a water balloon. It stung his face, but before he could reflect on the magnitude of the raindrop, a chunk of rain, roughly the size of a watermelon, slammed into the taser carrying officer’s head, and Andy could hear the man’s neck snap from the force of the collision.
Andy instinctively ran towards the nearest shelter from the rain. He reached a metal-framed awning that was about ten feet away, and turned around to assess his situation.
The frame above his head was clapping like thunder as enormous balls of rain hurtled into it. One globe shaped drop, the size of a wrecking ball, flew right into the second police officer’s head, at a forty-five degree angle, killing him as well. The officer had been caught off guard, as he stood over his dead partner, stunned with disbelief; he had never even seen the damned thing coming.
At first, the raindrops were few and far between, and Andy could actually marvel at the meteorites as they descended upon the Earth, but as they began to gain in frequency and size, Andy realized that his metal shelter was not going to last for much longer.
All around him Andy heard the sound of sirens and horns, as well as the metallic crunch that accompanies high-speed traffic accidents. The paranoia was palpable.
Andy noticed that the enormous raindrops were pulverizing almost every car on the boulevard, and most of these cars’ windows were being smashed clean through.
But not every car was pulverized. The police car, which was parked in front of him, with the driver’s side door wide open, was still intact, and Andy assumed this was because its windshields were composed of thicker, bulletproof glass.
Andy wasn’t sure how strong the car’s glass was, but he figured his odds of survival were higher in that car than under the weak metal awning.
Andy sprinted towards the police car, and hopped into the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition, and the lights on top were still spinning. Andy heard a loud crash, and turned his head in time to witness the metal awning falling to the ground.
Andy turned the ignition on and slammed his foot into the gas pedal – hard. The car took off – fast. Real fast.
The boulevard was one-way, and traveling in the opposite direction of Andy’s apartment. As he raced along it, he had to weave the powerful car between many smashed and ruined cars. He looked inside each of the cars as he passed them, only to see the mutilated bodies of the cars’ drivers and passengers. One of the cars was the car with the teenagers who had called him a faggot.
The raindrops were beginning to decrease in size, but the downpour was increasing, making it very hard to see out of the windshield.
With little warning, Andy had to slam hard on the brakes to prevent himself from flying head on into an overturned red hummer taking up both lanes of the boulevard. Despite the tremendous din of the rain, Andy could hear the voice of a child crying out from the inside of the Hummer.
Without any concern for his own life, Andy leapt out of the police car and ran towards the overturned Hummer. He hoisted himself onto the side of the car and peering through the window, which was miraculously still intact, he could see a small boy fastened to a child safety seat.
Andy shoved his left elbow as hard as he could into the glass, but it wouldn’t break. He yelled to the child that everything was going to be okay, and then ran back to the police car, squeezing his bruised elbow with his right hand.
The raindrops were now coming down at a rate that would be considered normal during a hurricane or a monsoon, but they were no longer large enough to kill someone upon impact. Andy made it back to the police car, and once inside, he grabbed a billy club from the center console, and ran back to the Hummer.
Andy once again hoisted himself onto the side of the car, and then struck the backseat window with the club, using all of his might. The window shattered to pieces, but none of the glass shards seemed to injure the small boy in the car.
Andy dove head first into the car, and unfastened the child from his safety seat. He then pinned the boy into his armpit, like a football, and pulled them up through the smashed window, and onto the side of the car.
Andy leapt from the car, smirking at his own heroism. He strapped the child into the passenger seat of the police car, and then gave the boy a stern look of confidence, in order to convey the fact that everything would be okay now, because Andy was in charge! He then flung the car into reverse, turned the car around, and began to travel in the wrong direction down the one-way boulevard.
Andy briefly studied the car’s console, and discovered the switch that turned the sirens from “lights” to “sirens and lights”. He flicked the switch, and accelerated the car.
In every direction that he looked, Andy saw one catastrophe after another. Cars and buildings looked as though they had been bombed, and the sky was full of rain and dark smoke that was smoldering from various electrical fires.
Andy looked at the child and could see that he was terrified. The child stuck his thumb into his mouth and allowed some drool to spill along his thumb and onto his wrist. Andy reached over and wiped some tears from the poor kid’s eyes.
Andy had always felt that he was destined for greatness – he had only been unsure of what great thing he would someday accomplish. For now, saving a child’s life, and surviving the deadly parade of gargantuan raindrops was a pretty good reward for his lifelong dedication to the apathetic pursuit of greatness.
Andy reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. Then he remembered the child, and realized that great men lead by example. He took the cigarette, and the pack from which it had come from, and unrolled the window and threw them both out the window and onto the street. Then he realized that littering was probably not a great example either. Well, you had to take things one-step at a time, and this was Andy’s first day as an emergency-rescuer-type-person.
Andy looked back at the child and saw that the child was now crying uncontrollably. But there were certain things you couldn’t rescue someone from, things like seeing your own mother’s decapitated head lying on the floor of the car in front of your face, for example. Andy thought about the expression on the child’s mother face, and he longed for one of the cigarettes that he had just thrown out the window.
