Rain

• Julie-anne Matheson, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2008

Leaves turn and twist, thrown by the wind into the expanse of the unknown, rustling against building corners and glowing street lights. Golden pools of lights from street lamps spill in isolated ditches along the abandoned street, as curiously forbidden eyes peer from hidden corners, frightened to come out and expose their owners. A mother’s lullaby whispers hauntingly in harmony with the wind’s refrain, disturbed only by a baby’s cry as it rings out and echoes in the silence. There is the desperate scuffling of feet across dusty wooden floors. “Hush my child,” the woman says, and she lifts her baby from her makeshift crib and cradles her on her hip. “Hush now, don’t cry... Everything’s going to be okay...”

The flimsy, torn curtains flutter, and the stars glitter, hidden behind miles of smog. Her feet are cold on the concrete of her balcony, and she cuddles the babe a little closer. “See, Isabella? See that moon? It’s okay...”

But the child’s cries continue, and she rests her emaciated frame against the broken door.

Below, a teenage boy tilts his head for a moment and hears the baby’s cries, giving a slight shudder as the only indication of his sorrow. Sighing, he shifts his bag and pulls the strap over his shoulder, glancing both ways down the street, wondering which way he should go. He would have to find a place to sleep tonight, or else remain awake and jump at tiny shadows. He sees phantom eyes glitter and hides his fear, crossing the deserted street among pieces of litter tossed by the wind, hoping to huddle in the shadows of the bus stop across the way.

An elderly woman glances at the boy warily, then looks up at a deep, chugging rumble coming from the distant corner. She stands and hails the bus, and climbs aboard, paying for her ticket in the flickering fluorescent bus lights and taking a seat behind the driver with a weary sigh. The driver says nothing, but frowns a little at the complaining rumbles of the bus and dimly notices that the moon has been covered by rain clouds.

A pair of wild, green eyes glint and wink as they watch the bus trundle away on its path, and their owner, a cat, slips like a ghost through a hole in a garden fence. It waltzes its way hauntingly down the middle of the road, dipping its paws into rippling pools of light and holding its tail high.

Overhead, the woman has quieted her child and put her back in her crib, an old, decrepit teddy bear clutched deep within the babe’s chubby fingers. The teenage boy has long since fallen asleep in the shelter of the bus stop, the cat curled up at his feet, the two of them suddenly sound friends in their common loneliness. Thus, the street sleeps on in silence as the clouds let down their burden, and flowers bow to the rising sun under the weight of the rain.