Writing

The Brolly

It's not always raining here, but sometimes it feels like it. Whenever I'm outside, it seems to be gray and wet, the water sluicing down from the sidewalks into the curbs into the sewers. Everyone here has at least one umbrella with them at all times - two if they have someone around from out of the city visiting. I like the rain, luckily, so that doesn't contribute to the depressing quality of the town, but I never use an umbrella. People think I'm a little funny because of that, when I'm the one person in the middle of a crowd of bobbing little shelters who's getting drenched. It's not that I don't have one. Of course I have one, they're like sacred objects around here. I just... I can't use it. It's not the right storm yet.

My umbrella is a ratty thing that's been sitting in the corner of my flat for nearly ten years now, and three years in a similar corner at the flat before that. It smells like mothballs, and there were holes in it last time I opened it up. It's an old-fashioned thing, a real bumbershoot of a brolly, something that could probably break your fingers if they were caught in it as it closed. It's not even got antique value or any such. It's just a big ugly behemoth of a thing that sits in the corner of my flat. But I can't bring myself to get rid of it. It hasn't seen me through the storm yet. And getting a different umbrella just seems... Disloyal, I guess? I mean, I've had the thing for thirteen years, next week. Giving in and getting a new one, even if I keep the ratty old brolly, feels wrong.

Part of why I keep it is the way I got it. That's a story I've never really told anyone, because it's just not the kind of thing you share. It wasn't huge deal at the time. It's not even really a huge deal now. It's just become bigger in my personal mythology, I suppose.

It was a rainy day, of course. I was a sophomore at the local college, which means I was broke and trying to pretend I wasn't. I got my food in bulk, dried packs of ramen and I got my clothes from thrift stores, pretending that I did it to be hip. I was leaving the local St. Something or Other Thrift and Gift with a bag full of new shirts - all my others had all been ruined in a mysterious dryer accident that had resulted in a dorm-wide evacuation and the fire department being called - when someone barreled into me from behind. My old umbrella is knocked from my hand and is promptly blown down the street and around the corner.

After a second that I spend mentally cursing and getting immediately drenched, I turn around to see who ran into me. What I see stops me short. To this day, I have never seen another person who looked so sickly who was still upright, much less running around and making people lose their brollies. To brazenly mutilate a quote, this guy wasn't so much knocking at Death's door as standing in the front hall and commenting on the decor. He looked mummified. He had not a hair on his head and not a tooth in his mouth. His clothes were a century old, at least. But there was this little gleam in his eyes, like he'd just figured out the answer to the universe and it was a dirty joke.

"Sorry, sorry," he says, with a voice like an angry cat. "Here, take mine."

I try to protest, because one, I'm not about to take this old man's umbrella and let him get soaked,  that would be murder; and two, it's ugly. Really, monstrously ugly.

He doesn't listen, not that I should have expected him to, looking like that. He shoves the brolly into my free hand and starts, I kid you not, skipping away. I'm staring at him, wondering who this weird old man is, when he turns back towards me and calls out over the sounding of the pounding rain, "Keep that brolly! It's going to help you during the storm! The big storm!" Then he turns and skips off down an alleyway.

I know I should have followed him, that I should have tried to give him his brolly back. It would only have been polite. Knowing whether the alleyway went through to the other side of the block, or if he just went inside, or if he really did disappear into thin air like it felt at the time would really help ease my curiosity, too. But I just stood there, gaping like some sort of idiot, before putting the umbrella over my head and walking back to my flat. I shook the umbrella off, dropped it in the corner, and didn't touch it again until I moved, when I put it in its current location. The entire block with the St. Something or Other and the alleyway was razed not long after, and I never did find out about the alleyway.

I haven't thought about any of this in a long time. It's just never been of importance, I guess. Sometimes a real nasty storm will blow through and I'll wonder whether this counts as the 'big storm,' whether I'm supposed to go out and do something with that monster of a brolly, but I never do. I know why I'm thinking about it now, though. Recently, there've been a lot of strange storms popping up. Storms forming tornadoes where there's never been a tornado in all of recorded history. Storms with lighting that forms faces whenever it strikes. Storms that cause entire towns to hallucinate the strangest things, things that I wouldn't even mention if it weren't for the fact that people crop up missing afterwards. There's been a thunderstorm over New York for nearly two weeks now, I heard.

You know what I think? I think the 'big storm' is coming. I think something's going to happen. I'm leaving for New York later today, and I'm going to the top of the Empire State building, thirteen years to the day of when I got my brolly. I'll hold it up to the sky and see what happens.

And if nothing happens? Well, I'll be able to stop getting soaked every time it rains in this godforsaken little town.

And if something does happen?

Well, then, lucky me.