Rain Dance

The cloudless sky was still above Mann and Carol’s house in Phoenix, AZ. One day, Mann sat on the porch as the house was ablaze, unbridled by reason.

Earlier, in the morning, he had been in his study listening to the cries of Carol, his younger sister, in the next room. Mann was sympathetic but misunderstood it all.

Carol no longer tried to convince or aid anyone with her understanding of anything. Doctors had called her mentally-ill, but Carol knew that before all of this began—the tug in her gut, the visions—that she was cross-eyed and unaware.

Mann listened to muffled wails from her room and walked out of his room to her’s knocked on the door.

“What is going on?” he inquired.

Carol stomped hurriedly to the door. To Mann’s amazement, she smiled and seemed relaxed and relieved at the sight of him.

She was nonchalant and seemed happy.

“Hey,” she said.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, relieved by the interruption but anxious for him to leave.

“Ok,” he said, and he turned away from the door. Dull Mann walked back to his study, thinking about her alertness. “Trouble,” he thought.

Mann had left, and she began again. She cried out uncontrollably, and then tried to contain the noise. She felt that she was insufficient for the task of saving the world. It was perhaps that she had spent so many years on the wrong side of people that she now was so attentive and pained. She was deadly now, to good or to evil. She saw her plot written on the walls: messages, visions. It wasn’t even devotion, maybe yet, but rather fear that made her move quickly left, and then right, and then to the door to her room.

She exited swiftly, but shut the door closed slowly.

Carol heard the televisions--four of them--around the house sputtering news commentary as she walked down the stairs towards the front door. Carol imagined lots of nodding and dubious smiles. 

      Mann watched the one in his study, and with it on he was oblivious to her exiting. He lit a cigarette and lounged in his chair to the news.

Arid, hazy air blasted onto Carol's face as she opened the front door to the house. She went to the stoop and waited for instructions. At once she began walking east down the road in front of the house. She felt hurried but calm, away from the confines of her room. The wind swept around her and gave her an identity: she was an instrument of faith and action. She walked forward and backwards, and after minutes of this, she stopped on the road. Three raindrops hit her on her head. In an otherwise light-blue sky, a cloud had formed above her. 

Mann was asleep while Carol walked hurriedly back to the house. He had turned the TV off before falling asleep, and the screen, now a mirror, watched him as he sat slumped asleep in his chair, a fire from the cigarette now burning next to and underneath it. He awoke, startled by the heat and crackling of the burning carpet beneath him, and rushed down the stairs and out onto the front porch. He stood for a moment, muscles clinching and wanting to move forward, but he took a seat. The thought to call for help never entered his mind. Somehow he needed the place to burn.

      Carol was walking swiftly as a downpour followed her to her house. Carol saw the side of the house outside of her brother’s window: pillars of flame shrank under the pouring rain. Mann stood up when he saw that the fire was dwindling, and together they watched the rain douse the fire out completely. Mann said, “I couldn’t do anything.”

“I know the method,” Carol said. She fixed with two fingers Mann’s messy hair from the trial. She looked next at the house and went inside to break every television and then to her room to see where she stood and what was next. Mann called 911 to save the inside of house that didn’t need to burn anymore.