She Knew it Had to Rain.

It’s not like she wasn’t aware of what was going to happen. She knew that as soon as she signed that form, that the trigger was pulled. She knew they’d be after him. They’d find him. And then he’d find her. She knew that, going in, on the front end. The end of the front, rather.

What she didn’t bargain for was how it was going to make things easier. How her sleep would be so much more sound and deep, once she had set the blind-fear catching machine on its way. How the inevitability of it all was more comforting than it was ominous. Before, she had no idea when or where the strike would occur. On the toilet, while shaving her legs, because the back door had obviously been used that day. The fashion of the arrival. A midnight window shattering constructed from a mis-ironed shirt, a failed interview, a jewelry box, and a pint of bourbon. She had clue: not, as to what shape it would be delivered. Like a claw-back hammer to the piano that was passed down from her grandmother, with the delicate fingers of a virtuoso… Mangled with torn ends and ripped corners. Like everything else that she lived and breathed for the past five years.

But now, she could easily see the clouds rolling in from the horizon. Sure, they were dark, and sure to bring her life to a compressed and beatless halt. But at the very least, she had the sunlight in front of her until then. The clock was ticking, as it was before, but she felt it was finally readable. She finally had a watch to monitor. She actually HAD time, and she planned to kill it.

It’s never easy to be on the run. It’s never easy to admit to being on the run. And it’s damn near impossible to put an end-cap on the running experience, after you’ve done it for so long. And the machine wanted the details. The machine wanted to know the whys-hows-whats of every scenario that lead up to the running. They wanted her to “discuss” it. As if it would ever be something to splay out over and between an afternoon tea, on some veranda in the Hamptons, let alone a cold room with dated recording equipment in downtown Detroit. No place fit the discussion. The discussion hardly fit itself.

Discussing it becomes akin to the task of breathing bagged smoke. In a pitch-black hall closet. Without even a “hello” before it broke down all around her. It’s not like she didn’t remember her grandmother’s beautiful fingers, the blades that they were, and how those blades sliced the air as they danced through wondrous concertos, endlessly complex movements, and irreverent man-problems. It’s not like she didn’t wish for hands like those, hands to catch those smoky clouds before it broke down all around her. Like it always did. “It’s not like you didn’t fucking know what would happen if you left the fucking air conditioner on all goddamn day, you stupid whore!!”

But it’s not like she wasn’t aware of what was going to happen. It was obviously going to rain.