Fool in the Rain (Flash Fic)

[TheCynic]

Well, I wrote this for a magazine recently. There was a word limit of 500 words, so I couldn't really play with the idea.

Here it is:

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= Fool in the Rain =

“One small step for man…” I mused, recalling Neil’s famous quote. It was raining, just like that November morning two years ago. Disorderly crowds of nervous people scurried along the street down below, oblivious to my existence. The sky was grey, the exact shade of grey I remember – the shade of death.

The finer details of that day never left my memory. I could tell you what I’d eaten that morning; the dress I’d worn. It all started with Harry.

“Jimmy’s dead,” Harry said, slamming down the receiver, “Suicide, apparently. Jumped off a roof on the corner of Moore’s and Winchester’s.” I didn’t finish my doughnut. Ten minutes of blurring traffic and wailing sirens later, Harry pulled our cruiser up in front of a grey building on the corner of Moore Avenue and Winchester Street. And then we made straight to the roof.

“So this is what he saw, at the end,” Harry said, looking down at the street below. It had been cordoned off by yards of grotesquely yellow ribbons, standing out in sharp contrast against the surrounding dullness. The rain was pouring in droves then, as if bent upon washing away all traces of Jim’s blood on the pavement below. It was getting hard to see.

“Why would he do this?” I asked quietly, to no one in particular.

“Why? Why would he not? The guy’s life was beyond horrendous. Overdue bills, bankruptcy, mortgage, unpaid taxes – he practically had everything up his behind,” Harry answered. “And then there was Lucy,” he snorted.

Everyone at the department knew about Lucille, Jim’s wife of twelve years. Put it bluntly, she was a harlot. She burned through affairs like a woman possessed. She would abuse and beat their two children on a regular basis, and when she couldn’t take the fights and money problems anymore, she quit – slit the daughters’ throats, and hanged herself.

It was a messy affair. Jim loved Lucy; he was never right since.

“Looks like he finished his last smoke,” Harry remarked, pointing at a forgotten, soggy cigarette butt lying near the edge. The sight made my heart drum; it reminded me of Jim’s last words to me that morning.

“I’m going to quit smoking today,” he had said with a smile. Did he know, then?

Two years.

That was two years ago.

A lot of things happened in two years, and now I was standing in the rain, looking down at the corner of Moore’s and Winchester’s.

I understand you now, Jimmy, I thought to myself. I know why you jumped.

Did it hurt?

I looked down, again, at the sparse crowd trickling along the street in the pouring rain. The skies were crying: a salute to some eternal sorrow unbeknownst to man.

“I’ll run in the rain till I’m breathless; when I’m breathless I’ll run till I drop…” I murmured.

A twisted, mirthless smile contorted my face.

I’m going to quit smoking today, I decided.

And then I lit a cigarette. My last one.

[jarek56]

Cynic, you live up to your name in 500 words of stuff.

If I might ask, what was the general idea behind this piece? Enlighten me, if you wouldn't mind. You managed to conserve words well enough to get the feeling of depression out well enough, and that the main character was a woman. But why was she jumping off the building? What left her in this state?

[TheCynic]

Cynic, you live up to your name in 500 words of stuff.

If I might ask, what was the general idea behind this piece? Enlighten me, if you wouldn't mind. You managed to conserve words well enough to get the feeling of depression out well enough, and that the main character was a woman. But why was she jumping off the building? What left her in this state?

Well, I was trying to write something from the perspective of a depressed, suicidal person... trying to capture the feelings in those last moments... the feeling of nostalgia, of reliving the thoughts and events that most influenced his/her decisions leading to the point of suicide. All that in 500 words.

So go figure

In the end, I guess I just wanted to write something interesting.

[jarek56]

Well, it certainly was thought provoking, I'll give you that. Made me want to cry, a little. But it WAS quite true to the idea of making it a...well, dammit, Cynic, it was obviously about suicide!