The rain smells like dog breath. Turning her nose up at it, she peers out from under the market stall and eyes the gathering clouds as they swarm overhead. The rain hits the pavement and kicks up a stink that makes her feel queasy. Makes her belly heave like she be drinking but that was hours ago. The paper bag in her hand, it’s gone all soggy and the pages of the book within are beginning to stick together. Bloody rain. Stupid rain! The market finished for the day just as she came on the scene. The vendors packed up their shit and left her to it, and now she’s standing there not sure how long she’ll have to wait until the weather eases and she can make a run for it. This kind of weather wouldn’t usually bother her, but today’s not the day for drowning like a cat. People come and go. Shoppers. Lovers. The occasional time traveller just like her. Taking out her phone, she snaps a few images. A few glimpses into a time and place soon to be forgotten like everything else. Life does that, y’know. It sucks you in then spits you out without so much as a reason why. More than anything she’s looking for a reason. She’s pretty certain there isn’t one, but she wants to be sure. Has to be sure. Reaching out her free hand, she watches as the droplets of water hit her open palm. It’s a nice sensation. Gives her a sweet sense of catharsis, and yet the moment soon becomes too real, and as she finds herself immersed at such a simple wonder, she can feel another existential crisis coming on. That won’t do at all, so she puts her hood up and clutches her soggy paper bag before rushing out into the rain. There’s panic and euphoria mixed with mild embarrassment as a group of teenage boys eye her up and laugh as she almost slips in a puddle, but as she carries like the wind, the only thing that interests her is the image she has of herself as a bullet, shooting through life not caring about anything save for the fury of her own momentum.
A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.co.uk
A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.com
Categories: Lucid
Author S. K. Nicholas 
A good read👍🙂
Thank you! 🙂
A wonderful glimpse of a few moments in time
Thank you, my friend. That’s very kind of you to say 🙂
Very interesting, how you’d, described this woman, being in the midst of the rain, with her mind elsewhere…
Thank you. I think she’s on quite the journey. Who knows just where she’ll end up.
FINE JOB, FRIEND (AND THAT LAST PHRASE, WOWIE) I WISH HER & HER SNAPPED GLIMPSES CLARITY & STRENGTH) g.r.
Thank you, my friend.
I’m so pleased you found yourself drawn to her.
“This kind of weather wouldn’t usually bother her, but today’s not the day for drowning like a cat. People come and go. Shoppers. Lovers. The occasional time traveller just like her. Taking out her phone, she snaps a few images. A few glimpses into a time and place soon to be forgotten like everything else.”
I smiled. This is so me. X
It is, isn’t it? Reading it back, I could see you walking in her shoes.
And then I remembered seeing a photo you once posted where you’d walked in the rain and ended up looking like, well, a drowned cat! 😉 x
Oh yes! I look very disgruntled in it, but I don’t usually care. It amuses me to get soaked in a flash flood. I love the way you write, Stephen. X
Thank you, Allane ❤ x
Reblogged this on FVR Publishing and commented:
This guy’s work is 👌👌👌
So kind of you, Nicholas. Thank you!
Anytime my friend
And then that ending. Love it!
Thank you!
I’m so pleased you did 🙂
🙂