“Insane Rain” by Johnny Ostentatious

Sam Spruce rolled out of bed. The digital clock on the nightstand read 9:33, the colon between the 9 and the 3 blinking irritably.

“All right, all right.”

Sam dragged his mid-size body out of bed. The sheet, which he had used as a blanket last night, slipped off his broad shoulders.

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Sam glanced down at his front yard in Glenside, Pennsylvania. Down there, under a cloudy sky, his wife, Amy, tended to the azaleas around the 100-year-old maple tree in the middle of the yard.

Twenty minutes later, after drinking his morning coffee and reading his news online, Sam was in the front yard, rake in hand. He leaned down and kissed Amy. She tasted salty. “How long you been up?” he asked.

“Since six.”

“One of these Saturdays you’re gonna sleep in.”

“Sorry, no can do. You can’t fix the Nair internal clock.”

“One of these days your family’s gonna confess that they’re in on that Nair lotion empire.”

“Dream on,” Amy joked back, “you’re going to have to keep drawing a paycheck like the rest of us working slobs.”

“Boo-fucking-hoo,” Sam said, quoting a song from his punkish youth: Minor Threat’s “Sob Story”.

“Language!”

Their son, Joe, rounded the oak tree by the end of the driveway. He held two Transformers, one as a sports car, the other in full Transformer mode. He ran around the tree, making laser and crashing sounds. After circling the tree a couple times, he’d stop and run around it in the opposite direction.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Sam looked down the street they lived on, Elm Street. Every front yard owned at least one tall tree, making it almost impossible to see the sky from this angle.

More thunder. Sam clutched his rake handle. Did he just hear. . . ?

“Hey, Sammy.”

Sam snapped out of his reverie and returned the greeting to Carl Kramer, his next-door neighbor. Carl began to wash his car, his NRA cap covering his balding head.

Amy started gagging. She threw off her garden gloves. “Oh my God,” she said through a hand covering her nose and mouth. “What is that smell?”

Sam didn’t smell it at first, then it him like a slap on the cheek. He nearly lost balance. That was the most potent sulfur he had ever smelled.

At the end of the block, Sam heard shouting and screaming. At least three people said the word God.

“Sam.” Amy stood by his side.

“Get Joe.”

The Spruce family backed up to their enclosed front porch. Sam ran a hand through his hair.

“Daddy, what’s happening, Daddy?” Joe clung to Amy’s waist.

“I don’t know, buddy.”

It thundered again, so loud it vibrated the ground. On their enclosed front porch, a picture on the top of the refrigerator smashed to the wooden floor. Joe whimpered.

“Did you hear that?” Sam asked.

“Hear what?” Amy asked.

“The thunder. It almost sounded like . . . like a voice.” As soon as Sam said it, he realized how stupid it sounded. But the thunder did sound like a low, rumbling, bassy voice. He couldn’t make out any words, but they definitely weren’t English. They almost sounded Klingon. Christ, now you’re going from stupid to idiotic, comparing it to some shitty sci-fi show.

Tommy Wilson, who lived at the end of the block, ran down the middle of the one-way Elm Street. His twenty-something legs moved with the speed of a sprinter. His Phillies T-shirt was shredded, barely hanging onto his body.

“Sam,” Amy asked, “why is he covered in blue?”

“I—I don’t know.”

A blue liquid covered most of Tommy. It looked like somebody had splashed a can of blue paint at him.

“A, B, C, D, E, F, G . . .” Tommy sang the ABC song the way you’re taught in kindergarten.

“Sam.”

Sam turned his attention to Amy. Her eyes motioned at their feet. A puddle was forming on the porch floor. Instinctively, he stepped back. Joe had wet his pants. He shivered, his shoulders refusing to stay still.

Tires screeching.

Sam pressed his face against the screen door. Tommy ran into an SUV on the two-way street that ran perpendicular to Elm Street. The SUV finally came to a stop. The driver got out. Sam heard the keys dinging in the ignition (or was that his imagination?). Steam billowed from the SUV’s grille. The driver gawked at the lifeless Tommy on the asphalt, his torso face up, his waist and legs twisted around—knees kissing the ground.

“Holy shit,” Sam whispered.

“I’m going to change Joe,” Amy said.

“OK.” Sam didn’t turn around. He couldn’t take his eyes off the street.

A dark cloud moved towards Sam’s section of the block. It came from the direction that Tommy had run from. But this wasn’t your normal storm cloud. No, this cloud was navy blue. It was true. Sam’s eyes weren’t fooling him; last week he got new contacts.

From the navy-blue cloud descended light blue rain. It turned everything it came in contact with to a bright blue.

Sam coughed. The blue rain brought with it an increased stench of sulfur.

Across the street, blue rain covered Wes Phillips and his Labrador, Precious. The two were in the Phillips’ front yard. Precious whimpered. Wes was performing bestiality on the Lab. “Take that, you filthy mutt!”

A couple houses down the block, Mrs. Koninski did wheelies on her sidewalk in her wheelchair. She chuckled, opening her mouth to swallow some of the blue rain. Her wheelchair rolled forward; a streetlight pole stopped it. She mumbled and began climbing the pole. Sam gawked. Her legs had been lifeless for twenty years. Were her eighty-eight-year-old arms strong enough to scale the pole? Apparently so. She reached the top, the pole warping slightly from her weight. Cackling, she pulled out a noose from one of her muumuu pockets. In seconds, she hung herself until it gripped the cackles out of her. Blue rain dripped off of her.

“You get back here!”

Sam’s attention shot to the house across the street from his. Tony Marlino stalked around the back of his house, shouting after his sixteen-year-old daughter. “You get back here right now, you fuckin’ slut!”

Gina Marlino ran across the lawn, tripping over a turned-off sprinkler. “Daddy, no!” She didn’t have too much blue rain on her.

“You will worship your father.”

“Daddy. . . .” Gina didn’t finish her plea. She was too busy crying.

Tony stood over his kneeling daughter, hands on his belt. So much blue rain covered him, it dripped off his body in buckets.

Tony planted his hands over Gina’s ears. She started to squirm. He then strangled her. She fought to escape, but he overpowered her.

Carl Kramer jumped in Sam’s line of vision. “SAMMY!”

Sam’s heart ricocheted inside his rib cage. He stumbled backwards.

Carl stood outside of the Spruce home on the top step. Through the closed porch door, Sam saw his neighbor not only cradled his beloved twelve-gauge shotgun, but he also was drenched in blue rain.

“Yipee-chumbumwambah-ee-hah!” Carl said.

Sam backed into his living room. He slammed shut the inside porch door. That sound barrier wasn’t enough to block out Carl gibbering and Tony screaming at his dead daughter, “That’ll teach you to save yourself for marriage.”

In the living room, Amy and Joe rushed for Sam. He hugged them, kissing his wife’s forehead and rubbing his son’s hair. Joe wore a new pair of shorts. Dry.

“Sam, what’s going on?”

“I—I don’t know.” Sam considered telling Amy what he had witnessed, but he didn’t know where to begin.

BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!

“OhmyGod,” Amy said after she and Joe jerked in unison. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.” Sam eyed the front porch, where the sound came from.

Carl crashed through the porch doors, both the outside and inside ones. He was drenched in blue rain. “Yipee-chumbumwambah-ee-hah!” He reeked of sulfur. Sam covered his nose and mouth with his arm.

Outside, the thunder rumbled again in that guttural voice.

“Did you hear that?” Sam asked Amy. She nodded and hugged Joe, who was crying. Tears raced down her cheeks.

“Hey, huh, hee-hee.” Carl stroked his shotgun.

“Carl,” Sam said, “I want you out of my house, right now.”

Carl licked his lips. He giggled in a wheezy manner, his forty years of smoking oh-so apparent.

Carl stepped forward. Sam, Amy and Joe backed up. They passed the table next to their couch. A shadow fell over their current Netflix DVD rental: An Inconvenient Truth.

“Carl,” Sam said, “I want you to think of what you’re doing.”

Carl smiled, showing off blue teeth.

All four of them were now in the kitchen. Sam leapt for the counter, picked up a dirty pot and chucked it at Carl. Carl bunted it with the shotgun’s eyesight. The pot crashed on the kitchen table, smashing the salt-and-pepper shaker.

“Keep moving,” Carl said, giddy.

Sam and his family pressed their shoulders against the back door. Joe wailed, saying, “Mommy, I’m scared.” Amy told him to shush and that she felt the same way.

Carl pointed the shotgun. “Outside.”

In the backyard, the blue rain fell in a torrential downpour. Sam scrambled for something to do. Hard to think when there’s a twelve-gauge shotgun pointed at your heart.

Carl pressed the shotgun barrel against Sam’s sternum. “Out.”

“OK, OK.” Sam reached between Amy and Joe to unlock the door.

“Sam,” Amy muttered, “you’re supposed to protect us. We’re your family.”

“Don’t worry,” Sam lied, “it’ll be all right.”

The door was open a few inches. Carl grabbed it by the top corner and opened it all the way until it hit the doorstop.

“¡Ándale!” Carl tapped the shotgun barrel against Sam’s chest. Sam contemplated grabbing the gun, but where would that leave his wife and son.

Sam and his family stepped onto their back porch. The blue rain colored their sneaks.

Sam sensed his skin tingle as the blue drops hit his legs and arms. He tried to remain in control, but he was getting an erection. Before he knew it, laughter erupted from the atavistic part of his soul.

[[END]]

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