to the Bone

   The night is pitch, and still. But it had rained today, rained and hailed and thundered, with electricity clinging to the cloud ceiling and grumbling occasionally like an old man clearing his throat as though in protest. We're a cult, those of us who go outside when it rains. Those of us who listen the distant roar of the approaching stormwater, basking as it comes in the stillness of the diffused light, gauzy from the clouds, the air scrubbed clean. We're a cult, the cats of the city who all come out to stretch in the still of the vespertine hours, all called by something deep and unnamed, noticing one another, realizing we're not alone, but continuing on our ways eventually.

   And then the hail started. I looked down the street perpendicular to my path and I could see it coming, a thick wall pushing through a thin. Pennies, cold and white and centimeters in diameter, dropped from the top of the Empire State Building. And I didn't head back. Even as the wall hit, I continued forward. Continued is a good word; "pressed" is not. I just, kept on. Not for any purpose, just thought to go for a walk.

   I don't think it's possible to be soaked to the bone, though actually I have heard of a type of acid that does exactly that, seeps through the flesh leaving it undamaged, but eating right through once it finds something osseous to munch on. They have to inject you through the muscle, if you spill any of that on yourself, inject you with gel that coats your bones so they don't dissolve once the acid hits. It's supposed to be incredibly painful, but either put up with that or lose whatever part of your skeleton, I guess.

   I've heard, even, of a man who spilled some of it on his groin, by accident...

   The electrical storm continued on above, as well, throughout the rain and the hail. If I got hit by lightning, how much homework would I be able to get out of? Not that I've got much. It'd just be nice. But I didn't get hit.

   I lay down, the day before yesterday, walking back from not-going-to-see-Cap, in the rain, on the grass. It was more of a drizzle, on that day. A lady pulling out from a nearby parking lot asks if I'm okay, or need a ride. I accept her offer, and get home that way. This time, there's a young family who offer to give me a ride, as I stand in the driving hail at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change, heading away from the apartment still but at least with my eye on shelter. I accept their offer. The young boy of the family has to crawl into the back, I think; at the time I thought that he'd been just sitting back there and that had left a seat open, but thinking on it now I realize that the other way makes more sense.

   The hail against the roof and windows was very loud. We had to communicate in a combination of semaphore and American Sign Language in order to convey direction of where to head to bring me home, as the usual method of Morse obviously wouldn't have worked against the irregular patterns tapped out by the weather.

   But I made it back, I guess.

   And now the night is so still...