by Mitch Goth
As soon as Rain shut the door to her room behind her, everything racing through her mind slowed to a halt. The euphoria that lingered through her body began falling away and only grief took its place. Every light lost its splendor, every movement didn’t create the wonderful electricity, all the beauty she’d seen in the world was crumbling.
The room was quiet, too quiet. The stillness left Rain alone with nothing but her thoughts, her now heavily cleared thoughts. At first her mind stayed empty, but the realization of what she’d swiftly set in. Rain Phillipa, the good natured suburban girl, the sheltered shell of human, and the person she saw every time she looked in the mirror had murdered two people tonight.
Tears welled in her eyes. Whatever remained of the high faded fast. Her overwhelming melancholy weakened her body to the point of shaking knees. To keep from falling to the floor, Rain leaned against the door and began sliding to the ground. She ran her hands through her hair, trying to get some of that old euphoria back. None came back.
As soon as she landed safely on the floor, Rain’s head sunk into her knees and the tears finally began flowing. She wanted something to distract her from this depression, she needed something, anything. But the room remained quiet and still. There was nothing, no sound, no sight to take her away from this terror.
Then she remembered her journal. Her head finally rose up from the support of her knees and she crawled across the room, still finding herself too distraught to stand. In no time she was leaning against the bed and rifling through her backpack. She pulled the notebook out and turned to the next clear page, but she paused. She tried to collect her mind, tried to focus her hate.
This was all her parent’s fault. If they hadn’t been so strict and controlling of her she never would’ve needed to rebel. Without the rebellion, Rain never would’ve tried to steal that handbag and gotten a ticket straight to the girl’s academy. If her parents hadn’t tried to send her away, she wouldn’t have run away and become a part of this life. If it weren’t for her parents, she would've never had to kill anyone. She wouldn’t have needed to step on the accelerator of that car, she wouldn’t have needed to pull the trigger of that gun. Throughout all her muddled, depressed thinking there was one thing Rain knew for sure, this was all her parent’s fault.
But despite her anger and her consuming confidence in it, Rain couldn’t muster the strength to write a single word. The pen was just inches from paper, but still it only shuttered minutely in her uneven grasp. And as she sat, staring down at the empty page, trying to gather the power to begin penning the hate speech against her family, Rain found it increasingly harder to do. Her confidence in her fury, just moments ago overwhelming, was calming.
Maybe it wasn’t her parent’s fault that all this happened. Maybe it was hers. Rain dropped her pen and let her head sink into her hands. Maybe it was her fault. If she just would’ve gone on the way she was none of this would’ve happened. If she would’ve been happy in the life she was living, she wouldn’t have ever rebelled and caused her own departure. All of this was her doing. She was responsible for killing those men, just like she was responsible for the depression that came afterwards. As much as she still despised her parents, Rain knew she couldn’t pin this on them. This was her fault.
Pushing the notebook away from her, Rain crumpled onto the floor. Her tears began taking the short plunge from her eyes to the floor, creating a small puddle below her. Despite the tears that flowed, her weeping made no noise, the room remained silent.
All Rain wanted was someone to come comfort her and tell her this wasn’t all her fault, even though she knew it was. All she wanted right now was to not be alone. But wishing didn’t bring anyone to her aid. No matter how much she hoped for someone, anyone, nobody came. She remembered a place where someone always seemed to be around to calm her and ease her sadness and fears. She’d grown to hate it, and left it in an irreversible impulse. For the first time since she left, Rain wished she was home.
Rain remembered her very first day of school, so long ago. She missed her family immensely. But when she got home, they were there, and all the blue of the day was instantly washed away. That’s how it was for a long time. Whenever something brought her to sadness or tears, her parents were there to comfort her no matter what the situation, no matter if it was midday or midnight, no matter if they ever knew why or not. She knew now that she’d never experience such oblivious understanding and unconditional love any other place else on earth.
But then new memories came into mind, more recent events in her life. She recalled when she first began staying out beyond her curfew, and how that unconditional love morphed into mindless, red-faced anger. She recalled how tight rules got in her home after that, and how she continued to defy them, continued to live her own life. Breaking curfew became breaking dawn most every night. And her parent’s frustration and disappointment only mounted, and what remained of the understanding and love were themselves washed away. It was in these remembrances that Rain knew she couldn’t go home, not now, not ever again. She knew to expect that she’d get homesick again at some point, but she also knew she’d snap out of it.
Finally finding enough energy to lean back up and look around, Rain saw the extreme differences between this room and the rooms she was used to in her home. This was far smaller, far more plain than her home. But something she couldn’t help but notice in this room was the constant quiet. There was nobody but her. It was a burden when hard times like tonight came, but at any other time the stillness was comforting. There was nobody to worry about, no judging eyes and red faces to come back to. In this room, Rain was free.
And so she leaned back against the bed and sat motionless, becoming a part of the more comforting silence. The two men she’d killed still hung in her mind, but now no tears fell, no lamenting of home came, the stillness stayed. Rain figured if she could get through her family’s berating and loveless rule all alone, she could handle this all alone too. And so Rain sat as strongly as she could, her hands folded. If there was nobody left to hold her hand through life, she could at least hold her own. The memory played on, but she stayed solid, quaint with merging into the quiet loneliness of her room.
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