As quickly as it started, the rain ended. Simon watched as the last few raindrop fell to the ground. At first he watched a handful fall. Separated from the immense sheets of rain, they each looked small and insignificant. He watched them fall from the porch, like the last water drops after closing off the bathroom faucet. When he thought all the raindrops had fallen, he looked up and saw one last raindrop streaking down captured by the glow of the streetlight.

Gravity played tricks with the raindrop, as it appeared to Simon to slow in midflight, providing him time to examine its small shape. The raindrop’s sides pulled upward to form a bowl at its top, seemingly caused by the different velocities of its two halves as it had torn itself away from its cloud before returning to earth. The raindrop moved slowly, and Simon watched as it approached the ground. He had seen documentaries showing high-speed cameras showing the slowed decent of a water drop into a puddle. This experience was different. The physical forces working on the drop were the same, but the reality of time felt and looked different. He was not dividing and slowing time to watch the drop. His existence was that division.

The elliptical bottom of the raindrop struck the ground first, sending waves up and over the topside of the raindrop. The waves rebounded off the tapered top, and returned again to the bottom. In that time, the raindrop reached the ground, and pushed the water in the puddle out in a jagged circle that wrapped around a tiny indentation that was all that was left of the raindrop. The sound of the raindrop as it hit the puddle was loud and broke the overwhelming silence that had succeeded the torrential roar of the rainstorm.

Simon stood staring at the puddle where the waves from the final raindrop still worked their way from the edge of the puddle and back to its center. The neighbor’s light reflected in the puddle, its image warped as the waves crossed over it. Now that the rain had passed, the humidity returned. The humidity felt similar to the rain, the only difference being that the humidity was not visible or audible: it was a silent rain.

He heard a slight buzzing in his left ear. His ear felt as if he had ascended up to a great height over a short span, similar to when he traveled rapidly over the hilly country surrounding his hometown of Fishs Eddy in upstate New York. He shook his head trying to pop his ear open and managed only to stop up his right ear. He returned to the garden in an attempt to clear his head. The pressure must have changed with the passing thunderstorm. He worried over the change, as pressure had triggered many headaches in his life.

The sky brightened slightly as the moon’s light filtered through clouds. The dark thunderclouds had passed off to the distance, leaving behind puffier clouds that moved across many layers. He watched as banks of clouds passed in front of the moon’s light. The clouds moved quickly at the lower height. Whatever strong wind drove the clouds did not reach down to the earth, as the air remained stiflingly still near Simon. The buzzing grew louder in his ears and Simon felt his body begin to shake. The shaking was different from when his body shivered from the cold. It was an exaggerated shiver, as his body and limbs trembled at the same low frequency as the buzzing that grew louder in his ears.

One moment Simon was standing in the garden wondering at the tremors, and the next he was on the ground, his limbs flailing about him. He had no control over his body. His limbs stomped on the wet grass and he was outside his body, as he had felt in the dream last night where he watched his body floating miles above the earth. He saw his body shake through his own eyes. He felt nothing in his limbs as they made contact with the wet earth. He did not even feel the friction of his own body moving. It was strange to see his body move but not feel any of the movements. He could do nothing but stare out at his body. His muscles did not respond or provide any feedback as to what they were doing.

He did not have much time to worry about his frozen body. His entire focus shifted away from his body when he saw the voice. It was not a sound as he knew sounds, as the buzzing in his ear or the thunder from the storm was a sound. It was a sound that he saw almost as if he was reading letters, but there were no letters to be seen. He knew the voice in the same way as he knew his senses, but seeing this voice was different from any sense he had previously experienced. It was more than a combination of hearing and seeing, it was as if all of his senses focused on the single voice, which broke apart into a million billion pieces that registered simultaneously across an infinite number of senses that he had never realized he possessed.

He knew it as a voice in the same way that he knew it was not a voice of this world or even a voice of his reality. The words washed over him and he saw and smelled and tasted and touched them in the same way and at the same instance. If there was such a thing as truth, this had to be it. Each syllable reverberated through his mind leaving a fiery scar across his consciousness. It was not about denying or understanding the words. His entire existence was less real than those very words. He knew their meaning better than he knew anything about his world or even himself. And he listened.

“The world was never as it seemed. You must return home to cross paths with him. Take her with you. She will support and guide you. This is truth. At the end of it all, it is you that will decide what this truth means to the world.”

The voice ended and remained at the same time. It did not echo as sound echoed through valleys, but remained omnipresent nonetheless. Each word, each sound, he could pull up without thinking and know. Simon understood not only the words that had been seen, but the very meaning of those words to levels that he could not explain. He looked down and found himself lying in the muddy ground. His body no longer shook. Mud covered his clothing and he felt scratches along his hands and back. He coughed and breathed shallowly, realizing that he had not taken a breath since he had fallen to the ground.

He shed those thoughts easily. There was much to do and plan. He remained on the ground for some time working through these thoughts, squeezing the meanings and paths from the words that seared his consciousness.

His first thought was Penelope. He checked the phone and found that she had not called. He hesitated only a moment before dialing her number. It was almost a relief to here the phone ringing. On the third ring she picked up.

“I thought I said not to call me,” she answered by way of greeting. She sounded distracted, as if she was concentrating on something that had nothing to do with him.

“Something came up,” Simon said. “I need you to come over, Pene. We have to plan a trip.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, the distraction still heavy in her voice.

Simon took a deep breath before beginning. Penelope was a very decisive person. She made decisions quickly, and once she decided, it was almost impossible to change her mind. Simon knew to be careful not to tell her about the voice, at least initially. He thought how crazy it would sound if someone else described it to him. Crazy from anyone, that is, except coming from Penelope. She may try to pull his leg with such a story, but if she was being honest, he would trust her in an instant. He wished he could believe that she felt the same way about him.

“Listen, can this wait until later?” she asked. “I’ll try to give you a call when I get home.” She made a sound of acceptance as if it had been Simon who asked the question, and before he could respond, she hung up. Simon stood holding the phone for a while before he turned it off.

He cursed himself for being so slow to respond, to not interrupting her before she hung up. He had planned the conversation before he made the call. While lying in the mud, he had pictured how it would go. He saw himself pleading passionately that this was important. Describing why they were going back, promising to handle everything. It was a family emergency, he would have explained. He wanted her to be there for him. He hadn’t been able to get it out. Whenever he spoke with her, he never did a good enough job. He always thought she was waiting for him to say more, to say something that she wanted to hear. He never felt adequate in his conversations with her. He thought that maybe the reason she did not take him more seriously. A real man would have been more forceful when speaking with her.

He dried himself off with a towel and changed out of his wet clothing. Before he finished dressing, he knew what he had to do. He grabbed the keys and went into the driveway to get his car. Hot air blew from the air conditioning vent as he pulled the car out of the driveway. He pulled down the street and headed toward Penelope’s house.

The streets were crowded as he headed down Westheimer Avenue toward the Galleria. Even with the thunderstorm, many people were driving to the bars and restaurants in the center of the mall. Cars were driving quickly around him, passing his blue sedan on both sides. He allowed them to slide around him and continued to drive slowly. He was not in a rush to get to her apartment. It was unlikely that he would find her there. She did not take her phone to the gym, so that ruled out the gym. That left only the mall, the restaurants, or the bars. His greatest fear was finding her in a bar with another man. She promised that she was faithful to him, and he wanted to believe her. As difficult, though. She sometimes did not treat him well, and he wondered why she even kept him around sometimes.

He passed the strip malls on either side of the four lane avenue. Even with the heavy traffic, the lights cooperated and he made good time. By the time he neared the curve that brought him to the start of the Galleria, he was having second thoughts with his plan. A large furniture store was to his right, and he cut across the right lane to turn into its empty parking lot. He pulled into a spot near the exit.

Penelope was paying the cashier when Simon called. She waited for the cashier to give her the credit card slip and signed in during her brief talk. He was such a nice person. She felt herself smiling at how desperate he had sounded on the call. He was very cute when he sounded like that. She took back her credit card and placed the slip in the brown shopping bag filled with her new trousers. Perhaps she would have him visit her tonight. She hadn’t seen him in a few days, and she was not in the mood to be inside.

After leaving the clothing store she wandered around the mall, lost in thought.

Word count: 2,012

Total words: 4,120

Words remaining: 45,880

I made it to where the point I hoped to arrive at yesterday. That’s where everything fell apart. I pushed through the rubble and ended with enough words to call it a night. I have no idea what to do with this mess tomorrow. It might be time to introduce characters or a goal or a story or something. I’ll worry about it then.