It's Raining, It's Pouring

Her husband snored whenever it rained.

Fifteen years together had tested the woman’s theory that she had formulated after just a few months into their marriage. If there were but one droplet of moisture from the sky, without fail, he would snore his way loudly and endlessly through the night. It didn’t help that she was a light sleeper and woke the second his breathing got heavy. But either the rain passed before dark, or the storms never lasted more than a few days, so the woman managed to scrape by on a few hours when the rains kept up through the night.

Her husband felt badly about it, to be sure; he hadn’t known how loud he was until he started noticing dark circles underneath his young wife’s eyes every morning in the wintertime. A few times he was even sweet enough to check the forecast and make sure to sleep on his side or wear a nasal strip when he knew it would be a stormy night. But back then she hadn’t the heart to tell him that he was just as loud as ever.

But it was late winter now, when the rains were the worst. The woman looked at the weather predictions with dread: a huge storm was coming their way, supposed to last at least a week. Sure enough, the next morning the fog rolled in and stayed. It hung around the house like a damp rag thrown over the world.

The woman, already feeling drained by just the thought of no sleep, drove to work and had a terrible day. That night she came home in the driving rain and her husband met her at the door, beaming and full of news from his day at work.

The routine was the same: the couple both undressed and brushed their teeth and slid into bed. But tonight the woman lay awake and waited for the inevitable. Sure enough, within a few minutes her husband’s breathing turned into a whiffle, then a full-on honk. Schnaaahh, whiiisshh; over and over again. She rose and went to stand at the window; outside the trees creaked in the strong wind, and the rain was loud, but not louder than her husband. Eventually she lay back in bed, just gazing at the ceiling.

After another long day, she brought up her exhaustion to her husband. He agreed to wear a strip that night, and he did, and the woman woke up after two hours to the rhythmic schnaaahh, whiiishh of the man beside her.

Desperate, the woman stuffed ear plugs in and turned on the white noise machine, as the rain and wind raged on unabated for the second night in a row.

Schnaaaahh, whiiisshh, schnaaahh, whiiishh. The woman’s eyes popped open. The snores were louder than the white noise, louder than the storm outside, louder than the voices in her head. She stared at the ceiling until morning.

Another day passed, it rained. A night passed, her husband snored. At work the woman fell asleep at her desk and forgot to turn in several important papers, and was reprimanded by her boss. The skin beneath her eyes darkened and sunk, and it rained and rained and rained.

The man made a joke about Noah and the Ark when he got home from work the next night, and the woman said nothing. If the animals on the Ark were anywhere as loud as her husband, she could only feel pity for Noah. She made her way to bed as her husband kept busy in his office that night, hoping to maybe sleep a few hours before he came to bed. But not an hour of blissful napping later she awoke to her husband, sound asleep next to her, sawing logs.

Needless to say, sleep escaped her that night as well. She tried drinking warm milk, counting sheep, yoga, drugs. But the snoring carried throughout the entire house. It seemed that it was coming from the house. Could walls snore? Even the cat was snoring.

Next day. No sleep. Poor workday. Worse night. This time the woman didn’t even bother with the pretext of trying to sleep. Lying next to her husband, she just stared. The sound was like thunder. It radiated from his being and ravaged her ears. It made her shake with anger, with exhaustion, with desperation. She pulled the pillow over her head, soft cotton obscuring the sound for a brief and beautiful second. The woman wanted to fill the room with pillows, cover her husband with pillows, suffocate that god-awful bellow… of course she wouldn’t. Could she?

She was exhausted, out of her mind. But it would be so easy, like in the movies, placing the pillow over his face, just inches from her own, and holding it down until the snoring faded away into silence…

The sun rose and the man found the woman standing at the window, still looking out at the world being drenched in water and wind. To her, the rain now sounded just like her husband’s snoring. She watched him walk around the house, fully clothed and awake and upright, and yet the snoring went on. The world had narrowed to her pounding ears and her dizzy head. Had there ever been a time when it was sunny or quiet or calm?

Every moment of the woman’s day lasted hours, and each hour was another day. She saw the wet world through tired eyes, saw that people were speaking to her but never heard a thing. She dragged home, and watched the man fall into bed before her. Had he had a long day? Poor thing. He probably needed a good full eight hours of restful, dreamless sleep. The lights went off.

The snoring started.

It vibrated the bed, rattled the room. It was in her ears, her skin, her very bones. She heard the snoring, she felt the snoring, she f*****g saw the snoring �" the rain outside was gone and instead the snores were coming down from the sky and saturating the air and her exhaustion boiled down to pure rage. Her hands reached out, seized the lamp from the nightstand, and smashed it over her husband’s head.

Silence. Sweet, sweet, silence.

And the rain stopped.

Sleep.

 

 

It’s raining,

It’s pouring,

The old man is snoring.

He went to bed

And hit his head

And didn’t get up in the morning.

Reviews

[Caroline Hart]

hahaha I thoroughly enjoyed this piece! I'm a light sleeper myself so totally sympathise with the main character. Splendid writing, in fact I felt the rhythm and pulse of that awful snoring throughout the story. Well done! :)