Weekly Writing – October 21 2023

Rain ran down through the channels in the bell, ringing it as the wind never would. Its maze-like latticed frame was made for water, not air, its clapper a sloshing bowl that overlapped onto his head where he sat otherwise sort-of sheltered underneath it.
The bell caught the worst of the storm, at least, swinging it away from him, from side to side. He sat with his knees tucked to his chest, hiding from the rest, never mind that he was already soaked through the skin.
Resting his chin on wet denim, staring out at the fog. The rain punched a hundred thousand holes through it, but couldn’t kill it; they wouldn’t come looking for him until both were gone.
Unlike him, they weren’t stupid enough to be out in the storm. They’d be sipping coffee in their cozy office, looking out the window at that same fog and hoping that, when it all cleared, they would find only his waterlogged shoes lying wherever he’d been stupid enough to stand in the rain.
The bell gave him some protection from what they were hoping for, too. That had been its purpose once upon a time, when there’d been a shrine and no city – to protect stray travellers. Now, it was a relic, a dull gurgling, gonging sound in the sliver of weedy lot behind a nightclub. If he was lucky – the only thing someone so stupid could hope for, really – they wouldn’t even think about it.
If they started searching around his apartment first, he might have time, between the last of the rain and morning, to slip out of the city. But he couldn’t risk another step until then – where his skin wasn’t covered, where it was wettest, it was already translucent.
He didn’t want to think of how his face might look. He just pressed his forehead to his knees, wrapping his arms around them and listening, waiting, while the rain hummed down in heavy, straight grey sheets and the bell swung its clapper like a holy, overflowing censer over his bowed head.