When it rains, it what?

The curtains in my room were hoisted but it seemed that a bigger, thicker curtain was drawn down outside, making the whole expanse of my room shrivel in dimness, and making it difficult for me to say if it was morning or twilight.

If you were a voyeur prying at me from the staid ceiling, you would see that my nude anatomy was lying like a lifeless remain of yesterday’s murder story, forsaken among the cornucopia of thick, fetid but bloodless white sheets, after the murderer was rewarded of its sick guilty pleasure.

My toes were colder than ice popsicles, and everything was quiet like a baby’s crib. At the instant I thought of slipping back to sleep, a boisterous thunder clapped outside, the lightning created a flash that’s so haunting you would think it only belonged to horror films. I pulled the thicker sheets up to cover my shivering body and realized not more than a minute after than I was too awake in fact, to go back to sleep.

I slipped into my pajamas and sweat shirt, and walked to the kitchen in half-daze. I was surprised to find everyone at home— schools were closed and every kid in town was at one corner either talking to his/herself or playing tricks with his/her ghost playmate.

I went outside to the porch with a cup of hot old tea, and I realized that I was really in a horror movie. The skies were angrier than I thought it really was. The westward winds blew a creepy hum to my ear and the rain was as noisy as a crowded room on the roof. A few blocks from where I was standing, some houses were as good as a tub, or worst, some houses were not as good as houses anymore. I wonder if how many families were left homeless by this rain that I write about.

Here in the city, they have names for their rains, but all the same, after years of living and believing in this city, I find these names not as sweet or as friendly as the nameless rains of my youth back in the province. Back in the good ‘ol days, rains serve as the juncture of dry and wet, of hunger and harvest, of hot days and cool nights. Rain was an occurrence one looks forward to and misses thereafter. Rains were for young people. Children run like chicken on mud with heaps of joy upon their dirty faces under this short distance of heaven and earth.

That’s why I find it confusing for city people to curse rain. I have always loved rains. And city people call their rains typhoons. Typhoons are different from the rains I grew up with. I never knew of typhoons or seen any of its violence until I got here in the city. Typhoons never leave the city at peace. Typhoon scares you, makes you hallucinate of murder stories on gloomy mornings. And they were never sweet, even if you get to spend them on a shoddy motel with a lover and all your guilty pleasures.