[IP] Memories of Summer Rain

...

The cold rain was settling down over the rundown gutter-route of the old abandoned park, slowly sweeping off towards grounds unfamiliar as they waited. Sounds of unconcerned pitter-patter echoed off the waterproof fabric of Sarah's umbrella as she stared off down the line, watching as the slow bend of the water's travel twisted from site behind brush and fences.

Only the two of them seemed to be present, although distantly Sarah could remember there were probably more people involved at some point or another. Hard as she attempted to recall, her memory wasn't quite what she thought it should be. The questions of how she had gotten here, or what the two of them were doing in a place like this, seemed impossible to solve with memory alone.

"What are we waiting for, exactly?" Sarah asked while not truly expecting an answer. Neither of them had spoken for awhile, or maybe forever? She wasn't sure if the man had ever spoken to her, now that the topic was considered. "I don't see anything here." She added for good measure.

The odd thrumming of warmth in her floating chest seemed to twist, uncomfortable sensation building in pressure until she regretted asking much of anything, but aside from a raised hand Sarah's companion didn't bother to look in her direction. As the hand soon lowered, the pain subsided and she was left back where she'd been previously: Staring at the rain and wondering what it was she was doing here, and questioning why she knew she couldn't leave.

"Soon we'll be leaving." The man spoke as if he'd read her thoughts.

Sarah looked up from her mental wanderings as the cold voice spoke. She could recognize now, however vaguely, that he'd spoken at least once before, but chasing down the thought of when or how seemed far more difficult than the mild curiosity might encourage. Only the faintest flickers of that time seemed to hold any weight. A microwave timer, a door in splinters, and dark shapes that might be men.

She wondered a great deal at that as she stared into the passing water, ripples uncountable by the barrage of tiny droplets.

"Am I dead?" Sarah finally asked. "I think I might be dead."

The unpleasant sensation thrummed again, but instead of growing worse, this time it softened back into the nothingness it seemed to originate as her strange companion. The man seemed deep in thought, but for her question or something else, Sarah wasn't certain.

"You were dead. I killed you" The man finally replied calmly, voice unconcerned beside the rather dramatic claim. "But I decided you might be more interesting alive."

Sarah found his matter-of-fact tone unsettling, clear in his statement of the truth as the black robes shook of the rain before it reached him. It was such an odd thing, almost imperceptible, but as she watched, she found that too was distantly understood. Perhaps she might do something like that if she tried. Somehow, Sarah knew she wasn't supposed to try.

So she had died, and now she was back. The more she thought about that, the more she could remember. The thrumming hovered in her chest as she poked at that knowledge, and water swirled down a metal grate beneath her feet.

"You were there... When the men with guns came." The sensation of discomfort rose, but Sarah continued. "You killed them." She paused for a moment, deeply aware of the now painful suggestion she not speak. It seemed that he was the source of that. "Why?"

"I did." Carefully he scanned the distant sky, not cruel or callus: Just cold. "They were weak."

"And me?" Sarah felt as though a knife were in her ribs, twisting now with ever word- not in physical pain, but with attributes much more alarming. "Am I weak?"

The rain fell, and the pain of asking such things subsided and washed away. The strange man in the black clothing didn't need to say anything to Sarah; not for her to know the answer. Above, large black shapes shuddered along the clouds, thick and reflective pieces of painted steel floating along the sky.

"This world is lacking in some ways, but it has become very efficient in the others" The man replied. "As it stands, I will need you to do something for me."

Sarah didn't respond to that, shifting beneath the umbrella to stare at the man. The odd suffering that wasn't pain seemed tied to his words, prodding her towards some goal she didn't quite understand. Slowly, the man pointed.

"A single being can only possess so much. Their power is finite, no matter who." His arms lifted, a strange gesture of one hand directing skyward. "The greed of this world is draining for someone that doesn't belong to it." A flash above was followed by a shrieking boom of fire and thunder, a distant shape of black now plummeting towards the ground below. "But you are a part of it, and you possess that same quality."

Another hand raised, and more bursts of red and orange light greeted it. More shapes splintered and crumble to wreckage in the dark gray of the clouds above. Each one came with a rush of heat, not from the distant machines and lives undoubtedly screaming as they fell- but from the man himself. As if he was burning, radiating something outside sight but not perception.

Sarah felt it sinking into her bones as she watched the sky's far-off guardians crumble beneath the man's sickening onslaught. Even in her horror as the display, the creep of warmth inside her felt a fair trade. She wanted more of it, just as she wanted to scream: Yet she made movements towards neither of those things.

Somehow, Sarah knew she couldn't.

"I ask you now, to do what you did before." The statement of command was clear as the twisting knife of persuasion in Sarah's chest. The wrongness of it, finally finding clarity in her mind. "I'd like you to stop the rest now, with what I've given you."

She could see that there were others, somehow- as if the images were pushed along her mind by force. Hundreds of others, approaching, taking off into the air for their direction. Feelings of panic, and anger, and fear.

"I will." Sarah replied, for she knew that she could do so easily with the strange gift of the odd warmth that swirled around the man. Already in her bones, in her head like a light high of liquor: It was terribly warm, but not burning- not really heat in the way a body might know heat. With this odd strength, Sarah felt she might mold the world beneath her strength, but somehow she found in it a small resistance.

"But first I want something in exchange."

For the first time that she could remember, the strange pale-faced man turned to face her, and Sarah saw the endless depths of his eyes. Strange stones of white, black, and all manner of colors twisted: Eternity watching her from a throne aloof of all the world and realities she held dear. A gaze that gave her the impression he was less a man at all, and more a god.

Still, she stared back and made her demand, even as the fibers of her body seemed to thrum and shake under some mighty onslaught she didn't comprehend: her voice held.

"I want what you took from me. I want it back."

The smile curled, cruel on that cool white face, and Sarah thought the man's head might throw back in laughter. For a moment, truly it seemed he would, but those teeth of stained ivory soon disappeared behind a cold expression of thought and settled under murky depths, before a barely perceptible nod of agreement.

"Then serve me in this." His feet lifted from the ground, rising up towards the sky of clouds and trailing smoke of the fallen. "And you shall have it."