Time Slips

The future is running in the gutters the past is shouting back to you from puddles. Would you go out in the rain?

Oona was on her backside for a full five seconds before she had even registered anything had happened.

The rain had been falling for hours. It wasn’t safe to go out when it rained like this but it was an emergency so Oona had braved it, despite the resolute expression on the security guard at her building. Arms folded and feet apart he needed to be tricked, bribed or bargained with if she was to get out of the building that afternoon.

 

“I’m sorry Miss, but you know the weather report for today,” he looked at her with benevolence, almost regally unconcerned with her spluttering and hand-wringing. Whether Oona had heard the report or not, he repeated the transmission from that morning, “There will be Time Rain from two until at least half four. That means no one goes out.”

 

“But it’s an emergency! I need to get to my doctor, now!” Oona had pleaded with him without result until she’d told him that she was pregnant, and bleeding. She felt him teeter on this information and finally he was ferrying her out of the side exit so that no one would see, sending her away with his small umbrella and a whispered, “Good luck.”

 

Alone on the pavements she had struggled through the large greasy drops, to the wonder of those trapped in shops and cafes during the downpour. One man shouted after her from the doorway of a dress shop, waving his hands towards himself frantically but the heavy rain flattened his words out to thin noise and she did not even turn to acknowledge him.

 

Oona hadn’t been out in the Time Rain before; like most people she had been frightened by it when she was younger. She’d fretted about fairy tales and scare stories, like the one about the Gleams: creatures who lived in the puddles who would grab at your ankles with their bone-sharp fingers and drag you into their world for dinner if they caught you. Gradually, fairy-tale stories crept to the back of her mind as she grew older, made friends and started day dreaming about boys, but now Oona found them jostling back in under the umbrella. Out of the corner of her eyes she imagined she saw hands of ice-coloured bone reaching for her.

 

Hurrying along resolute, Oona marvelled at how thick the rain was. It left slicks of rainbow coloured water on the tarmac and made it seem as if the sky was dropping watercolour paints. The droplets and puddles were more vivid than any two dimensional picture though because things moved inside the Time Rain.

 

It had started just over thirty years ago in northern Canada, then Chile. Strange stories emerged that were unbelievable and easily dismissed as madness encroaching in those remote places. Before long other countries began to make incredible claims too; it became a bigger story on the news and then the only news world wide. At first it was treated as a conspiracy theory or mass hallucinations until the rain spread across he globe People had seen the future running in gutters or had long past memories shouted back to them from puddles, and once everyone had seen it no one could argue with what was happening. Speculation rose that it was due to some chemical warfare gone wrong. Some blamed satellites tainting the atmosphere with the details of our life, broadcast far out into the galaxy from our noisy planet. After a few years of the rain no one cared about the why anymore. People were re-living their worst memories along with the happiest days of their life and unfortunately for the majority the bad times seemed to outnumber the good; some had even witnessed their own deaths or that of their loved ones.

 

It was when people started disappearing during the storms that action was taken. Not that they were needed: no one went out in the rain anymore.

 

So Oona knew why people were yelling at her to get inside, she knew looking into the Time Rain was not worth the risks. The future and the past were like bombs slapping down all around her.

 

“Please, just keep me from seeing something bad. My life cannot do with anymore drama at the moment.” Her teeth were clenched, biting back her rising anxiety in the rain. She didn’t want to make her situation worse and tried to focus on the route to her doctor, letting her eyes glide out of focus to avoid seeing anything she shouldn’t. Her eyes misted over when Oona realised she might not see her baby in the rain falling around her.

 

It was no wonder she had slipped in the large oily Time puddle she now found herself in. As she lay on her back, trying to understand how she’d got there Oona became a captive to the sky: it was alive with neon lightning which cracked around the clouds like the static on an old TV. She had never considered how the clouds would look if they were made of Time Rain. Everyone who remembered being out in it could only ever talk about the view looking down. Distracted by the sudden fall and the startling sky Oona was none too cautious as she struggled to her feet. She found herself looking fully down as she stood up, looking full into the puddle she had slipped in.

 

And it was beautiful, perfect.

 

A man was there, a man she did not know, but he was perfect. He was in a field she recognised from when she was younger, the one next to the bus stop where the grass was long and peppered with buttercups. He was playing with a toddler in a green dress, who had perfect brown curls. The child was on his knee, bobbing and laughing at the song the man was singing, trying to join in between giggles. Oona was laughing too because she knew that they belonged to her, it was what she had dreamed of. They both turned their laughing faces up to Oona; she was in on the joke, she knew the song. The little family in the puddle reached out their arms to her and with an oily splash she stepped down below the surface of the puddle.

Author's Note

Time Slips was highly commended in the Shorter Short Story competition at the Wincester Writing festival 2010.

Reviews

[Hannah]

Nice story! You did a good job of presenting the character of the story, and I like the ending. I also like your language, very well balanced. The only critique I can come with is that I would like to read more, and that's not even a real critique! Nice work :)