The Rain Man

Her mother told her to lock all the doors, close all the curtains, go to the basement, and stay quiet. Lisa thought it was because of the tornado but her mother was more afraid of the man in the night than any storm. As the rain poured down, the thunder made its big booming presence known. Lisa sat in the small corner of the dimly lit basement mindlessly scrolling through her phone, cursing the god's every time the internet went out; causing her Instagram feed to refresh. About an hour or so later, Lisa got bored, put down her phone picked up her book, and continued reading where she had left off in the storybook oh so long ago. Just as she seemed to be drifting off into the fantasy world of fictional characters and insane missions, she heard the back door open with that familiar "click" of the lock. Slowly, lifting her gaze up and away from the book, she furrowed her brow as her mind processed what she had heard, with a release of breath she hadn't realized she was holding, she called out for her mother but stopped mid-way through as she remembered her mother said to stay quiet and as she listened to the footsteps a sudden and terrifying realization hit her; that wasn't her mother walking and she had just made a noise.

Suddenly, she heard a terrifying growl and fast footsteps searching the kitchen for the source of the noise. Lisa knew from the stories that there was no escaping the rain man once he had heard you. She tried to quickly but quietly turn off her flashlight as the rain man tore through the kitchen and made its way into the living room. Lisa was so scared of what would happen and the lightning-fast pace she heard the monster move at was making her heartbeat at an alarmingly fast place. And as if it heard her beating heart, the monster stopped rummaging through the middle room of the house and stood still, listening and waiting. Lisa held her breath, not knowing if the monster had given up or was taking a break, but either way she knew she needed to get to her room where she could crawl into the tiny space behind her closet wall and wait for her mother or some sort of help to arrive. With that thought in mind, Lisa searched her brain for the information she compiled some years ago about what steps made the most noise and which steps made none. Before this information was just to insure, she could successfully sneak in and out of the house, but now it was crucial in her survival of the night.

Lisa devised a plan it wasn’t a very good plan, but it was better than waiting down in the basement for the monster to discover her. There were two doors at the top of the basement stairs, one on the left that led to the kitchen and living room and one on the right. The one on the right led to an open space the connected to the living room, but the stairs that led upstairs to safety were right next to the door. The only problem, she didn’t know which side the monster was on and by the sounds of its swaying feet, it didn’t know which side she was on either. Without further thought Lisa dashed up the stairs as quietly as she could trying desperately to not make a sound. When she got to the doors, she paused. She could see the monster’s feet at the bottom of the door and what looked like tentacles on each side of it. She took a deep breath and pushed the door open with all her strength, trying to trap the monster between the door and the wall behind it. She heard it shriek when it made impact and as she dashed up the stairs, Lisa heard the fowl smelling beast charging up the stairs behind her. She closed her bedroom door the moment her foot was across the thresh hold and locked it. Lisa pushed her chair in front of it and grabbed the gun from beneath her bed as the monster tried to open the door by putting its full weight against it. It was shrieking and growling and it scared Lisa so bad, but she moved to the farthest corner of the room and waited. The monster burst through the door and Lisa fired a shot.

When Lisa’s mother Diane got home the house was a mess, she called out for her daughter and looked everywhere for her, but she couldn’t find her. She went to check behind Lisa’s closet last, but she couldn’t because of the horrible smell. She called the cops and when they arrived, that was the first placed they checked. There, they found her half-eaten body slumped behind the dresser with a petrified look on her face. Lisa had fired the gun and yes, she wounded the monster, but it was too late. The rain man had ripped her to shreds and fed on her veins. There was nothing anyone could do, there was certainly nothing Lisa could do. And from then on, the rain man was no longer seen as a silly story that was told to scare children, but a warning of the horrors to come. Lisa’s story was told, and no one ever made the mistake of making noise on nights when it rained.