• Don’t Shun the Rain


    From the midst of the familiar yet unpredictable gray; comes rain like an old friend. It washes away the pain of yesterday and clears palette for tomorrow. Under the half tree, its roots intertwined with rock and earth; forming the ledge protruding out over the mirroring gray of the river, is the sound of soft yet convincing dialogue. The rain converses with the water in a quiet argument, explaining with exult how it had seen the heavens. Why should I have to leave this place? I feel sad that I will not be able to admire the luminescent green of wet leaves in contrast of dark skies. The pure calm of falling white. The orange glow of a setting sun. Will the place I’m heading have sun? They look so large now that they’re about to go down my throat. Sleep then nothing, that’s my future. Here it go’s, wish me luck… no one’s there, I almost forgot. Cold, it really doses have feeling, death…is cold. I can see something in the distance, like a welcoming light. The scene around me is melting, but not away, more like, into existence. I’m standing in a huge field, the sun is reflecting off the wheat making fire light. From across the field I can see an old barn, no, house? I have to get closer to see. All the windows are busted out, revealing the interior to the elements. I crack open the front door, it hanging carelessly from the hinges. Inside of the abandon house I can see stripped walls and baron floors; it seemed to be the remnant of a house rather than a house all together. The old seventies wallpaper was slipping from the walls and graffiti covered where the wallpaper didn’t. In the back room on a desk there is a jar, why is that here? Is there something in it? Something alive, it’s a Monarch butterfly, why is it locked up in a jar? I twist of the cap, the lid is unnaturally rusted, how long has it been trapped? “Donnie, you need to wake up now. See what you did? You have to live with it now…” who, I look back to see a silhouette, no face, no anything just a body, with some sort of pattern or… grey, but like a butterflies wing, I can see black eyes, but they aren’t eyes, just pattern. With a loud braking, the floor was gone, the angel was gone, sucked down into nothing, and so was I…where now?

    In a hospital room, no figure; of course I dint succeed in dying, but then where was I just now? “Donnie can you wake up for me, I need you to wake up. Donnie can you hear my voice? Donnie, open your eyes.” My eyes aren’t open? I struggle to pull my eyelids back, they feel so heavy. “Okay, okay that’s okay, can you just say something for me, can you do that Donnie?” my nurse had red hair which she kept in curls. Her green eyes were sad, why? Was it for me, no one should feel for me…just a waste of time. “Donnie can you say your name? Try really hard for me.” I…I can’t. I can’t talk. Now that I think of it I can’t move either. “Mrs. De Luché your son might have what we call Quadriplegia, or the loss of movement in the arms and legs. In some cases, like in the case of your son, Sleeping pills, or Eszopiclone commonly known as Lunesta can cause, in overdose, a drug induced coma; This can last for up to two or three days. We’ll be monitoring him to see if he wakes.”

    “Will he be able to hear me?”

    “We don’t know.” Yes I can hear you. Not that I really want to right now, you’ll probably go off and start saying; why did you do it, I love you, bla bla bla. Can’t I just sit here in peace for five minutes? “Donnie, why…why would you, what’s wrong, why didn’t you tell…me…why…” o god, she’s crying, man! It’s not like I meant to hurt you or anything, I just, I couldn’t deal. No one should have been sad. I thought no one cared enough. The door opened, another doctor, why does everyone have to see me like this? No wait, Shay? “Um…Mrs. De Luché… I heard about Donnie, I came as fast as I could, is he okay?”

    Why would you care, after cheating on me and leaving me for that darn guy on the football team, so what if I’m not as buff or cool as that guy, he’s probably gay, anyways most football players are. “They say he could be in a coma for two to three days, I don’t know why he did it…you knew him well, what was wrong?”

    “I…I don’t know…” Sure, of course you don’t know, no one knows, no one cared enough to find out. “I know this will sound bad but would you mind if I talked to him alone?”

    “Yes…well…” what does she want now, come to make me feel even more like I should have died? “Donnie, why would you do this? Your mom loves you, I love you. You’re so smart and this is the dumbest thing you have ever done. I’m…I’m sorry for what I did to you, I just…I don’t like you in that way anymore, I still love you but…I_” I wish I could just walk out of here and… be outside. Just walk right down to the double doors and be gone, not have to hear their stories of; I love you this, I love you that. It’s all crap. I wish I could just be standing…out…side? Wow I forgot how much I love the rain. It feels so good hitting my face, silently washing away all the wrong and worry in my life. There’s that butterfly again, how does it fly in the rain? It looks like light, like an orange glow. Where is it going? The streets look empty, they are empty, where is everyone? Where are you leading me? The buildings are as grey as the sky. Here? This place looks abandoned? What was this like a hospital or something? I don’t know if I can get through the door, it looks so old and rusted. I push my way trough, the steel doors scream out as I do. This place looks like hell. Literally, the walls grey, the ceiling; gray and falling apart, even the yellow tile that crawls half way up the walls seems to be grey with age. There are torn sheets and dilapidated news papers filling the space on the floor. Graffiti masks the rest of the buildings skin. The lobby is lined with doors that look part of the wall. One is open though, is this the room I should go in? Where did that butterfly go? It’s not a room at all, but the stairs. As I walk up them, making sure I check my footing, the sound of my shoes hitting the rusted metal fills the well with a constant ring. When I reach the top, the hallway is littered with wheelchairs and operation tables; they seem to be pushed back, so as to block entrance from a large double door. Every door I check seems to be locked. “234” locked; “235” locked; “236” locked. The last door at the end of the hallway said; “240” the door was open. The room had a huge bed with a gold bare mattress. Mangled and decrepit sheets were dangling helplessly from wires connected to a metal track on the ceiling; they fell silently to the shattered tile floor. The large windows that aligned the opposite wall are tinted with a grey dust. Outside of them the city of Seattle looked old, broken and lifeless. The buildings were diluted in color and the streets were motionless, the only thing noticeable was the changing traffic lights spilling color onto the barren streets and intersections. The room had a familiar personality. Had I been here before? The monarch was lying in the middle of the bed, it was grey; death. I step back and feel crunching under my feet. I look down to see the floor now covered in grey dead butterflies. Their wings transparent and there grey body’s turning black. I look back up to see the reclusive middle-of-the-bed insect that was as grey as the floor. It was gone? In its place, a mannequin with its eyes cut out. What is this doing here? It is fixed to the bed with wires that encase and entwine over its gleaming white skin. They recede somewhere back into the mattress. It is bound there. Its stiff lifeless arms are stretched to the sky as if pleading to be let free. In replacement for its missing eyes, cement filled the gaping wounds. Cold, like death. I can remember that feeling.

    “CLEAR!”

    What’s going on?

    “CLEAR!”

    The floor it’s, moving? It tiny insects enveloping the floor twitch and move, their wings, faster and faster.

    “CLEAR!”

    A burst of orange, the butterflies swarm. I can’t see. The room filled with thousands of them. The chaos grows, the flapping and humming is deafeningly loud. Then it stops. It’s slow; I can see past them, they move so slowly. From outside of the door I can see, it’s that figure again. “Hey! Who are you, what do you want from me?”

    “You need to wake up now, see what you did? You need to wake up now.”

    “Please tell me what this is?”

    “See what you did?”

    “What I did?”

    “Wake up…NOW!”

    I wake in my hospital bed, still can’t see, can’t move. I hate this. “We got him back! He’s ok, his blood presser is stabilizing and his heart rate is fine.” Did they shock me? “You gave us quite a scare!” ya well, don’t shock me… “Okay Mrs. De Lucé you can come on back in now.”

    “Is he ok, what happened?”

    “He went into cardiac arrest, his vitals are steady now, we don’t know why but his heart just…stopped.” Well you should have just left me; I needed to see what was going on, something is trying to tell me something. “God, please Donnie Please wake up… Donnie…please…” come on, not with the crying again, I’m sorry ok, is that what you want from me? I’m sorry for trying to kill myself, so stop crying. Please stop crying, I can’t handle this anymore. Why can’t I just get back to the life I had? Any life is better that no life at all. Wait, what am I saying? Its true…a life filled with feeling, even if that feeling is sadness or hurt it is still feeling. I see now what I did was selfish and stupid. I just hated myself, so much. I… wanted it all to stop, but I just made things worse. I’m not athletic or smart or hot or any of that, but now I see I can be me; Just me.

    “Mom?”

    “Donnie? O Donnie!”

    “I’m so sorry…”

    “Shhhh… it’s all right, I love you so so much…I love you so much…”

    “I…I want to live now, I like myself…and…everything’s okay.”