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Waning Rain

Early Rise

By Elan VissPublished 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago 3 min read
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He didn’t know who owned it, but the property was abandoned like you might imagine abandoned to look in an old time movie. A caricature of itself. Tall, dry weeds season after season had grown through old tires and rolls of fence wire and bent metal posts along the edge of the dirt road. A giant fuse waiting to be lit. The road led up and around a bend where the old apple orchard ended. It must have been dead for a decade at least, maybe longer. Everything was dead here in the last light of the day. The sunset off in the low Western hills reminded him of his serious time problems. He was running out of it.

He could smell in the evening, a faint threat of summer rain coming in the South wind. It was his favorite as a kid, he remembered. He remembered the musty walm of strange air that came before it, and the sense that the day darkened on the wrong side of the world for a moment before the first fusilade of big slapping drops landed on his face. He ran wild in the street with his tongue out and his hair trailing, laughing. He rode his bike with his friends through the short-lived puddles that formed at all of the street corners and beckoned at all of the storm drains.

He wasn’t a boy now. And he hadn’t a fancy for those summer rains like he did back then. Now he felt chilled by the situation he was in despite the summer heat and the heavy air. His bones felt tired, his heart felt tired. He was an old book full of sad things. Cracked leather cover with stitches failing at the spine, and for all of his missing pages and stories, he just needed a place to close his eyes.

He could see it around the corner in the deepening dark. The barn was weatherbeaten. The slatted walls shivered in the storming air. It was dusty inside, the dirt floor stirred and the blown soil found purchase everywhere within the barn as he squinted and entered through the warped maw of its front. The panels had shrunk through the years, and lime green moss built up over time to a scaly hide. There was an old metal pail laying on its side in the dirt. He turned it upside down and sat upon it slowly and ran his fingers through his hair and began to think. He spat in the dust and wondered in the clatter of the waning rain.

He needed a plan, a good one. He stood and walked to the feeding gates along the interior of the barn and watched a sheet of dirty water slow in the foundary light of the sunset. Tomorrow was coming. He knew it and there was nothing he could do to stop it. This mess he’d got himself into was one for the ages, and he’d seen some messes. He’d made it out of most of them, but this was out of hand entirely. Between the money he owed, and the people who were trying to collect it, there was nothing to do but run and run. He was on foot. It had its advantages but he needed to cover ground faster than that. He should travel in the dark, he thought, but he was tired. Perhaps he’d sleep now for a short while, and rise before the sun to make it to the next town, or the next barn. Whichever came first.

He laid down against the back wall and rolled his flannel shirt beneath his head. He laughed thinking of how he looked like a deadman. His eyes closed slowly as he peered his last sight of the day through the big slivers and knotholes of moonlight against the back wall. A lonely memory in the dank cathedral. He’d figure what to do tomorrow. His lean frame heaved with deep breath as he fell to vital sleep in the dust alone among the nothingness.

Adventure
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About the Creator

Elan Viss

Thank you for reading. If you like what you see, there is more just like it at glaringcontinuity.com

you can also visit my Substack here

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