To Love the Rain

Chapter Five

When I got home, the sky had darkened considerably. Gray, angrily churning clouds loomed in the distance, and I found myself shivering at the foreboding weather. It was as cold as ever, and the thin hoodie I wore did next to nothing against the unrelenting buffering of the winter winds. I sighed as my apartment complex came into view after a little while of biking; as much as I hated school, I hated coming home to a lonely room every single day.

In the recesses of my mind, I knew that it was because my mom had to work two jobs, and she did it for me. However, I couldn't help but feel a little bit bitter every single time I saw Alex's parents pick her up after school, or every time they went to one of her tennis games. As far as I could remember, my mom never showed up to any of my track meets. Ever.

"Whatever," I mumbled under my breath, trying my very best to push down the ugly smirk of jealously grinning at me from the corner of my mind. Besides, I forced myself to think rationally, Mom's doing it for me.

With a practiced motion, I unlocked the door to our little apartment.

Unlike the outside world, still dimly lit by the virtue of daylight, the inside of my house was like an eerie, pitch black cave. That was honestly the best way to describe it, because with all the curtains closed and all the lights off, it looked like somebody had painted the entire room black. I took another shaky breath, before stepping inside and closing the door behind me.

Darkness.

It surrounded me in its chilling, choking presence, almost drowning me with its oppressive weight. God, it was so lonely. I had come home to this practically every single day from the day I was old enough to walk to school alone. When I was a kid, I had been scared of the dark, so coming home from school was practically my nightmare. Since my mom was never home, I had learned to live with the darkness until I was tall enough to turn on the lights. And when I was a kid, I would get the worst nightmares while living inside my nightmare. Instead of doing my homework, I would cower under the blankets of my bed with my night light on, shivering uncontrollably at the creaky wooden planks and the rustling of leaves outside my window. The worst part were the storms that ravaged the area. Horrible, excruciatingly loud claps of thunder and lightning would tear apart the world outside my bedroom, giving me a heart attack every single time. In my mind, deafening booms of thunder were the roars of the monsters under my bed, flashes of lightning became the shimmering of ghosts and ghouls and a legion of demons marched along to the erratic pitter patter of rain.

I would always tear up back then, begging God for my mom. My adolescent mind would run wild under the nightmarish conditions, fearing the worst things imaginable.

What if my mom left?

What if I was alone in the world?

What would I do?

And I would spend three miserable hours, shuddering unconsolably until my mom came home from work. Eventually, it got to the point that she sent me to Mr. Clark's house until I was big enough to face my fears. I sighed again as I flicked on the lights, still hating the way the darkness affected me even now. I guess, in a weird way, I never really got over my dislike of the dark.

With no one else but me in the house, the little apartment home suddenly looked a lot bigger. An oppressive feeling of emptiness was ever present as I practically slept walk through the motions of daily housekeeping. Taking out the trash, putting away the dried dishes; I tried to help around the house wherever and whenever I could. It was the first thing I did when I came home every single day, not just because it would help my mom, but because it gave me something to do, an escape from the loneliness. I used to run a lot as well in the afternoons, but lately, running was a taboo. Whether it was subconscious or not, I just didn't feel right settling back into the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other after that day.