It wasn’t raining. It was the second time. I looked out the window; the rain visibly shattered everything around it. I was among friends; we had gathered there after school on the final Friday, beginning winter break, but where I lived, winter break only meant heat-filled days without the protection of school’s central a/c, the comforting insulation, and the shade coma that was the roof and four walls.
That second time the sun was down, the moon ran high, but the night belonged to rain – rain and the devil. I looked out my window, noticed a shadow that had not been there before. Being an insomniac since infancy, I made it a point to know my shadows. The trees were like yarn, flagpoles like shattered gravel, but there was a new one. It was humanoid in shape, and arrogant in posture. It wanted to stand out from the rest of the darkness, because it wasn’t just darkness. It was light of the soul of darkness.
But there it stood, dressed as a man, with the pride of a demon. His eyes never wanted to show. All that sailed through his ocular pits was black, and perhaps a faint twinkling in the back, but that could have either been rain, or a reflection from my side of the window. He peaked from beneath a tree branch, looked right at me, and dipped his head, thinking that I knew I owed him something, but if I did, believe me, I didn’t.
But the first time, no, I don’t expect to ever experience anything closer to that first time.
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