And Then there were Three

1

Cafeteria food.

I suck in an irritated breath and hold it in before stuffing cheese pizza in my mouth. I almost gag at the terrible taste. A faint, consciousness-killing drone of a voice somewhere in the recesses of my memory says that one cannot taste food if they can't smell it.

Bullshit.

It takes me several more tries to force the rest of the slice down my throat, but I do. Cursing the class that lets out so late that all the good stuff gets eaten, I try to wash out the taste with soda in an attempt to salvage a few taste buds. Thunder rumbles outside, and I know it's time to bolt.

The skies decide to let loose the moment I set foot outside the cafeteria. The air is cold, the wind is frigid and the water is icy - I growl as I feel the water seep into my clothes. I break into a run, not caring whether or not I splash myself or any of my fellow escapees. It's a good fifteen minute walk to my apartment when I'm at ease; but today, I jog there in eight. I'm still soaked to the bone, though.

I trail water as I announce my entry into my apartment building with a loud squelch. The janitor won't be too pleased about the mess. Shrugging - although it wasn't as much a shrug as it was a violent shudder of my already shivering body - I make my way up the stairs, all the way up to the sixth floor, open the door to my apartment and slam the door shut. I hear the old lady next door call me some interesting names and laugh. I don't know why she keeps it up - I don't change and I don't care.

Peeling my soaked clothes off me, I stuff them in the dryer before seeking out dry clothes in my bedroom. There should be a clean set somewhere, I just have to excavate it from my bedroom floor. Acutely aware of my nakedness, I begin my mission. It ends ten minutes later with a fairly clean pair of shorts and no shirt. Time to sleep shirtless.

As I lay in bed, I look at the rain beating furiously against my window. Buffeted by the wind, the drops slap against my glass so hard that a small part of me idly wonders whether there will be scratches on the glass tomorrow. Suddenly, I feel funny in my body, a wave of an alien feeling that I had never experienced in my body. It starts in my chest and ripples outwards, like a shockwave, making me shudder under my blanket. It feels as if everything in me - my body, mind and soul - is shifting, orienting in a particular direction that I can't help but visualize as pointing towards the window. It's like they're enraptured spectators, changing direction to pay full attention to the performer.

I frown. Who is the performer? The rain? And what is it trying to tell me? My frown deepens as the pattering gets more intense, more desperate - like the frenzied victim trying to act out a movie name in the last few seconds of a game of dumb charades. It is like listening to someone rattle off in French when you're still learning the basics. You know that you should be understanding what's being spoken - the meaning lingers just behind a thick wall that strains against your forehead as you think as hard as you can - but that stupid wall doesn't break, and the cathartic relief that should have followed still evades you. Frustrated, I clench my fists, simultaneously wondering exactly when I lost my mind to the extent that I was trying to decipher meaning from freakishly off-season rainfall. But a cold, dogged determination had settled in me, and I keep straining my mind, trying to decipher the rain.

It is so odd. The rain becomes more furious, falling in opaque, silver sheets, its beat turning from muted pattering to a furious drum beat. The wind starts howling out its frustration, and I hear the old lady next door pray nervously through the paper-thin walls. I don't blame her. If I weren't so passive about life, I would be worried about the roof coming down on top of my head.

"Something's coming," I say to myself, as hailstones join the rain. The wind screeches, seeming to agree. "I only wonder what."

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