What Memory Remains

“Can’t catch me!” A young girl shouted as she ran from her younger brother. The two laughed as they ran through the yard, tagging and re-tagging each other. Their mother stood at the edge of the porch railing, beaming as she sipped her cup of coffee. The sound of a door slamming ushered in her husband, who came up behind her and put his arms around her waist and gently kissed her neck.

“Well good afternoon to you, too,” she said mirthfully.

“It can be an even better one,” her husband replied and nibbled at her ear.

“Oh, stop!” She batted him away playfully. “It’s midday, they’re not even close to running out of steam yet. Look at them….”

They stood there in blissful awe, watching their young play.

“So ignorant to the sinful ways of the world. I envy them,” the husband thought aloud in commentary.

“Yeah, they are. You always have such a way with words.”

“I’ll stop immediately, then.”

“No, I like it.”

“Oh come now. Marrying a romantic…you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“Of course I do, and I like it. You should have become a poet.”

“Hey now, just because I don’t do it as a profession doesn’t mean I’m not one. It’s hard….besides, a good conspiracy story can be just as fun.”

“Yeah, it’s fun. It’s just…kinda crazy about what happened to that guy that gave you information. What happened to him again?”

“He drowned in his own tub. Really weird circumstances too.”

“That makes me nervous. I mean, wasn’t it information about NOS-“

“Let’s not talk about that.”

“Okay, fine. Besides, I just really like your poetry, or deep stuff that you write about.”

“Swimming into the depths of one’s soul…you’re not too good at that. Better bring a life vest.” Playfully, she elbowed at him. “Alright alright. You’re a decent writer...”

She shot him an “I win” look, to which he finished his statement with“…at best.” Just as she started to push at him, she stopped when his eyes narrowed as if focusing hard on something. She turned to investigate the source. A large, dark rain cloud was looming beyond the horizon.

“Aw, c’mon. It was supposed to be sunny all day,” he huffed at the sight. “Although….that’s weird.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t look like a group of clouds, like a system. It’s almost like…this one single cloud by itself. See? Look.”

“Huh….that is weird.”

Even more strange was how quickly the cloud had begun moving towards them. In less than a minute, they could hear the sound of rain pelting the earth.

“Kids, get inside!” The mother called, and she shooed them in against their moans and groans of protest.

As the kids got onto the porch, still resisting their mother’s request, the rain cloud was now over their house….and completely stopped.

“Whoa! Look, Dad!” The son pointed out the apparent weirdness of the situation. The cloud hovered directly over their house, pouring down rain hard and unyielding, but only on their house.

“It’s raining on just our house? Why isn’t it moving?” The wife said. Suddenly, something came hurdling down from the cloud. It was an onyx blur, and despite the rain already surrounding it, the thing seemed to be directly covered in a wall of concentrated water. It only took four seconds to reach the ground, which came to pass with an audible THUMP. The impact splashed mud and dirt everywhere, and when the debris settled they all saw a large person kneeling there in the grass and mud.

He stood up, and the family was immediately terrified at the sight. It was a person, presumed to be a man by his frame, who stood at seven feet tall. He wore a long black rain jacket with a hood over his head and black clothing covering both his arms and legs. His hands and feet were dawned with gloves and boots, so no skin could be seen. But above all else, his most prominent feature was his mask.

The ominous black mask was reminiscent of a gas mask, except the glass parts for the eyes were tinted black, giving the appearance that he had no eyes. There was no breathing apparatus for the mouth, and instead only had metal pieces arranged in a line that resembled a stitching pattern. Places in the hood of his jacket poked out from tubes that ran out from the mask and seemingly down into his torso. After taking in the sight of the intimidating man, the husband soon realized who he was.

“GET THE KIDS OUTTA HERE!” He yelled, and they hollered back in fright as he pushed them inside the house. There was yammering as they pounded on the door, and he quickly locked the door while continuing to yell for them to leave. By now, the masked giant had halved the distance between them, moving towards him in big, lumbering steps.

“I know why you’re here,” the husband said definitively.

“As you should, Tom Morasco.” The masked man spoke in a deep, garbled voice.

“Look, I don’t have to publish that story…it was stupid to even entertain the idea.”

“But you did. You gave it to your editor. What’s to stop it from getting out now?”

“I—I don’t know”

“Your editor being dead, that’s what. Just like your informant.”

“That—that was you.”

“Tisk, tisk. The number one rule of working for NOSRAD is that you DON’T TALK about what goes on in NOSRAD. Refresh my mind of the story. My memory tends to get a little….fuzzy sometimes.”

“It…it was some experiment.”

“Go on.”

“It was an experiment that killed a lot of people….no one survived it. And they kept getting more test subjects….not telling them that they were going to die. They lied to them. So they basically killed a lot of people for nothing...because they were testing or looking for something. There’s paperwork and evidence to prove it all.”

“Good so far…but that’s not all, is it?”

“Well, there was one exception. One man who survived.”

“Intriguing….continue, please.”

“But people won’t believe it! I could just say the evidence was falsified….bad sources….we can work this out. Please…..just leave my family out of this.”

“Well…we already know your dear wife….Jen is it? She doesn’t know anything more than there’s some dirty secrets at NOSRAD, so you did get lucky with that one. But that doesn’t mean anything because EVERYone seems to believe there’s on goings that are less than legal there. Just no way to prove it, which means nothing. But you…..you have all the evidence.”

“Yes, I do. Thank you, thank you for not hurting…”

“Although I have one problem…your source got it wrong.”

“What….what do you mean?”

“It wasn’t just one person who survived the Injection…there was one other. One they never told anyone about. Someone who they erased, then erased the eraser. Would you like to know who it was?”

“I-I guess…who?”

“Haha, you’re an idiot. I’ll give you a big hint…you’re talking to him right now.”

Perplexed, Tom backed up further and tried to run but was struck with a blast of water and knocked down. Tom looked up to see the raincoat-clad man still advancing on him, and the pursuer gave a wag of his finger.

“It’s just easier if you hold still.” Tom tried to get up and run away again, but ran right into a dense wall of water that felt more like hitting a brick wall. “Now that wasn’t smart of you. Tom, do you know why they call me the Rainmaker?”

“Because you can make it rain?”

“Of course, Tom!! It was really a rhetorical question. Of all people, you should know about rhetoric! Sheesh!”

The Rainmaker held out his hand, and manipulated the rain water to form a sphere around Tom. He lifted Tom off the ground, watching as his victim clawed and desperately attempted to escape with water filling his lungs. But there was nothing that Tom could do to get away, and The Rainmaker watched as the man slowly drowned inside the aquatic tomb. Once dead, the water dispersed with a flick of the Rainmaker’s hand.

Minutes later, the killer was on the phone with NOSRAD with his new information.

“This is Vera?” The masked man asked huskily.

“Yes,” a female voice on the line said.

“It’s done.”

“Good. We just happened to have something else for you. One male and one female…both targets. Any means necessary, but no drawing undue attention. We’ll have someone nearby contact you with more info on them.”

“Sounds kosher to me.”

“Give it an hour. They’ll come to you.”

After standing around for a bit, he became bored and began exploring the now abandoned home. With the look in that family’s eyes, he was sure they wouldn’t be trying to come back anytime soon. As he searched around the house, he tried to ignore the feelings that attempted to resurface. The quaintness of a family home…what it must be like to have.

“Stop it,” he said to himself inwardly. Yet, he simply couldn’t help himself. He explored one of the rooms, which he found to be the little girl’s room. As he scanned around the room for anything of value, his gaze fell upon a small panda bear. Instantly, he was transported in his mind to his past.

“Don’t be afraid, it’s okay” a horribly disfigured man said, slowly approaching a frightened looking little girl.

“No, go away! I’m not supposed to talk to strangers!”

“But I’m not….it’s daddy.”

“You’re not my daddy!”

“Shhhh, don’t let mommy hear you. It’s me….I just….I just don’t look the same.”

“Go away!” The little girl exclaimed wide-eyed as she clutched her stuffed panda bear. “Petey Panda says you have to leave me alone.”

“Sweetie, please listen! I …..”

“Bethany? Is everything okay?” A female voice called in concern.

The sound of footsteps and a door opening caused him to panic, and he left out the window just the same as he had come in.

Then, as he snapped out of the vision, he felt a surge of emotions tirade him. While it was long ago, the pain of the event still felt fresh within him. Mustering up all his strength, he pushed it down into his subconscious and walked downstairs. Apparently, he had been daydreaming for a while, and he had to be ready for his accomplice. After a while, he met a scraggily-haired man who gave him a folder with names, information, and photos of his next targets.

As he looked it over, he was shocked to find one of the targets was a young girl, a blonde little thing that couldn’t be any older than eight.

“You’re sure this is right,” he questioned the informant.

“Yes, sir. That’s what they gave me. Alice and Sade are their names.”

“I can read. It’s just….she’s still a child.”

The informant didn’t know what to say, especially being that he never thought much into what he did. He simply was doing his job, passing information only. The Rainmaker handed the photos back but kept the files. He waved away the informant and reluctantly began mapping out how he was going to find them.

As he thought back on what he was slated to do, he couldn’t help but feel anger. Anger towards NOSRAD, anger towards the decisions he made to get him where he was, angry at life in general. It all hit him hard, and he suddenly had an urge to do something. He resisted as long as he could, but he eventually gave in. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled-up picture of a smiling little girl with a doting father holding her.

“Soon, baby girl. Soon…” he whispered, running his gloved hands over the picture as he fought back tears….