Tucked like a lost child beneath a makeshift shelter constructed from charred wood, I listened to the sound of the black rain.
The sound of rain used to be precious to me, a natural rhythm of water pounding the ground and windows, nature's music that enveloped me in a wave of calm.
There had been many times where I had curled myself into mum's favourite chair near the window after she had disappeared, watching the rain turn the world blurry. Seeing the water trickle down the face of Big Ben, it was reassuring to me: when it rained, I wasn't the only one crying. The world was crying with me.
In this broken world, the malicious barricade of clouds spit oil. This was no longer nature's rhythm but a discordant tangle of chaos. It was nature's cry out for help. Ultimately, humans were at fault for this destruction that lay like an exaggerated disaster movie in front of me. We were the vermin of the earth, wreaking pollution and decimation wherever we set foot.
The world wept ugly tears of obsidian, as if asking why, why did we do this?
The rain pounded the rubble, creating a river of tar that wormed its way threateningly towards my hideout. Pathetically, I hugged my legs to my chest, rocking slightly to calm myself.
I had tried to sleep earlier, figuring there was nothing else I could do until the rain passed. I had closed my eyes, trying to let myself sink into the welcoming embrace of rest but then, like a blade slicing through candy floss, Natasha's face flashed on the inside of my eyelids. Her neck twisted at an odd angle, her body inhumanly limp, her lips still twisted into a faint smile… her permanently closed eyes crying black. I awoke again, immediately.
I tried focusing my senses, listening to the rain to calm me.
But nothing about this rain was calming.
Instead, the sound seemed to distort and morph into TV static, the world pixellating and blurring out of focus in front of me.
I must've fallen into a disturbed sleep for soon I walked a hallway, the sound of static a persistent and disorientating cacophony that dulled my senses. The hallway danced and jumped, the physical embodiment of a broken record, or glitching like video games sometimes did. It was like I had walked straight into an ancient TV set, swimming my way through the untuned chaos.
I'd only seen an old TV once in my life, when my mum had dragged me to a museum. We'd formed a huddle around the tour guide while she pointed at the oversized contraption with a tiny screen and smiled in satisfaction as we peered at it with curiosity while she demonstrated the static it created. For some reason, the static between channels was more fascinating than the fact it could play videos and sound. That was all something we'd seen before but the static, it was like we were staring into a void that defied time and space. A manmade nothingness.
I'd had nightmares about that void all week, the static becoming a physical thing that crawled from the body of the TV with a great gaping mouth that engulfed me.
This seemed like one of those nightmares from childhood.
It was my apartment, I soon realised as I turned the corner and found myself in the main, open-plan part of the flat. In the dream, my mother sat at the table, her little finger curled delicately around a china cup of coffee. She sat there, unmoving, staring at the wall.
Suddenly, she burst out laughing, her dainty laugh blending in with what resembled a laughing track on a cliché sitcom. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't see what she was watching, I only saw the blank wall.
She laughed again, her back turned to me.
"Mum?" I dared to ask, stretching my hand out to her.
She didn't respond, just continued staring at something I couldn't see.
Soon, I'd made it round to the other side of the table, hesitantly studying her face. Her eyes were open wide, too wide, in what seemed like fear. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her mouth was curled into a fake smile, showing two rows of perfect teeth. She laughed again, choking on the force it took to conjure laughter from misery.
Discomfort spiked at the underneath of my skin like tiny needles, every single instinct telling me to run. Of course, in dreams, you were powerless. Like she stared at the wall, I found myself gazing at her, unable to move.
"Mum, what are you looking at?" My voice was drowned out by the static, getting louder and louder in volume. My hands flew to my ears, the sound becoming painful. Her face was distorted, a hyperbolic smile stretching from ear to ear. Her laughter mixed in with the static, a pained gargle of a cackle.
Suddenly, her smile vanished.
Simultaneously, the static stopped, leaving an eerie silence in its place.
Then, she began to scream, a robotic scream like the one Kai had let out when he was stabbed by my hands.
As unexpectedly as she had started, she stopped again.
Then she uttered one word.
"Help."
My eyes flew open, my heart racing impossibly fast. My clothes clung uncomfortably to my skin which was drenched in cold sweat and my hands were shaking uncontrollably. I pressed my fingers to my temples, attempting to calm the static in my head.
"It was just a dream," I reminded myself feverishly, "just a dream."
The ugly sound of the rain continued, making it hard to completely banish the static.
Why dream of that? Why now?
Before I could stop myself, I fell into the fuzzy hallways of that memory.
The memory I had been fighting to forget.