Rain
Sarah Linds had kinky hair that tended to curl badly in the rain. And rain it did. It had poured all day and promised to pour all that night too.
Sarah worked nights in a bad part of town. She waited in the rain to cross the dark street. She held her umbrella, pink with white flowers, stiffly, more to protect her hair than her blouse.
The pedestrian crossing light had just turned red. She knew she would be stuck there, on that corner, for a full minute. She frowned and pulled nervously at her hair.
The gurgling of water down a nearby drain felt rhythmic. The sound felt calming. Sarah let her free hand drop to her side. She listened to the water, its bubbling sound, its hollowness. “Wow,” she said aloud and shook her head. “That’s almost hypnotic.”
The light had changed so she stepped off the curb. Her boots sloshed. She paused and looked down. Both her boots were full to the top with water. “What the heck,” she muttered.
The light changed again, more quickly than she expected. Sarah stepped up onto the island in the middle of the road feeling a little miffed. She wondered how best to empty her boots without getting her pants all wet. Then she realized she was just being silly. Her pants were already wet.
Sarah lifted one leg and held up with her free hand. She tried to raise her foot enough to empty the boot. “I gotta take up those stretches again,” she said. She was barely able to get the water to dribble out. She set her boot down and it sloshed. The boot was full again.
Sarah noticed water running down her arm. No. Make that both arms. She looked up to see if the umbrella was leaking. It wasn’t. She nervously pulled her hair. Her hair was soaking wet. She grabbed a fistful of hair and squeezed. Water flowed out of it as if squeezed from a sponge.
She looked down and saw the water overflowing her boots. “That’s funny,” she said. Her boots looked much closer and her pants were all wrinkled and foreshortened. “Am I shrinking?”
The light changed again. Sarah tried to step off the curb but her legs wouldn’t respond. The didn’t feel numb or anything, they just refused to work.
Sarah looked both ways. There was no traffic. She wanted to jaywalk but her legs didn’t work. “Help,” she called. Then louder, “Help!”
Water in the gutter by her feet no longer appeared to race by. It moved slowly, almost in slow motion. She peered hard at the water. It appeared to be made up of transparent snakes. Thousands of them. All moving in the same direction down the street.
The pedestrian crossing light changed sooner, faster. Then it seemed to flicker. The transparent snakes were distinct now. She looked down at her boots again. Transparent snakes crawled from the gutter up and into her boots. A mass of them. And every once in a while a bit of reddish meat passed down through one as if it had swallowed a piece of her.
Sarah felt her hand resting on the ground. That seemed just plain wrong. She realized her legs were now almost gone. Then she felt the first bite. Raindrops hung suspended in the air. More bites more pain.
Pain shot up her arm. As she watched, the transparent snakes ate her hand. The pain became worse. Soon she felt as if she were being eaten alive. She screamed once. Then she screamed continuously.
Just before dawn a man stopped his car to make a left turn. He rolled down his window to toss out a cigarette butt. There, on the island to his left, he saw a pile of clothes. And on top of the pile, a pink umbrella with white flowers. He rolled up his window. The light changed. He turned left and drove off through the rain.
