Submitted for the January 2024 prompt: Weather Warnings

How many raindrops until the world ends?

 

I think that as I battle against the rain, marching up the hill in Milldale, my English village. As much as it pours outside, it also floods in my head until I’m close to drowning. That’s the worst place for it to rain. This cage I live in, this broken obese man with shaggy grey hair has been drowning for years. 

And every day it rains.

 

I stop by the field of sheep and take another glug of booze. I almost choke when I hear the boy’s cry.

 

“Help!”

 

I trod toward a group of kids holding a boy face down in a puddle.

 

“Get out of here!” I grunt, waving my arms. The kids get up, and I try to kick one but they scatter. I pull the boy up.

 

“Thanks, sir.”

 

“Next time you wanna’ drink of water just open your mouth outside.”

 

He laughs. I don’t. I then turn and go back on my journey. It doesn’t take long to realise the boy is still following me.

 

“I wouldn’t have drowned, you know. I was just showing them what I could do, what with having a mermaid as a mother and all.”

 

“What the hell are you doing? Go home!”

 

He looks at me. Then he runs away. I nod, lip-twitching, and walk back to my home.

 

At home later, the TV blazes blue across my face in the dark as I am sunk in my armchair in my Mother’s house. The house has little light, the heater is broken and the air is thick. Around me are stacks of my family's possessions, which I usually ignore.

 

“After forty days the rain has still not stopped anywhere around the world, with scientists not yet discovering its cause. The consequences are becoming more severe.” The newsreader reports, “In other news, there have been more reports of sightings of mutated aquatic humans. At the moment, the authorities have not specified whether this is just a hoax.”

 

SMASH!

 

I stand and see a pebble has been thrown through one of my windows. I look through the broken glass, and there is ‘Fish Boy’

 

“What do you want?”

“I didn’t think it would smash through. Honest.” He says. “I just wanted your attention.”

 

“Well, you bloody well have it now, don’t you!”

 

“I just wanted to say thanks. For what you did. I don’t think I properly—”

“I said, go away!”

 

* * *

 

Another trudge up the hill in the rain, but I’m too strong for it to wear me down.

 

“Help. Help!”

 

“Not again,” I snarl, as the boy runs up to me.

 

“It’s my aunt. She’s fallen!”

 

His house wasn’t far down from mine, in a grim estate where most houses had already been abandoned due to flooding.

 

The boy bursts into the tiny home. I creep behind.

 

“Auntie Sandra, Auntie Sandra,” the boy whimpers as he gets near. I check the pulse of the pale body.

 

“She’ll live. Do you have a phone?”

 

* * *

 

“Samson, do you have cartoons?”

 

I look over at the boy. “No, we do not have cartoons.”

 

“Are you sure? It says in the magazine that on Channel 3 —”

I toss the remote on the boy's lap and storm out of the room.

 

I fry myself some eggs and bacon. It was breakfast time somewhere I guess. I brought it to the living room, the kid’s eyes eating up my home.

 

“Who’s that woman in the photo? Is it your wife?”

 

I glare at him. “No.”

“Who is it then?”

“My mother. This was her house. She got sick.”

“Sorry to hear that. Is she better now?”

I watch the cartoons.

 

“My mum’s a mermaid, you know.”

“You said.”

“Some kids say she died or ran off. I know different. I’m almost like her. Look,” he takes off his sock and shows me his webbed foot.

 

“So, you really are a Fish Boy.” I stare.

“My name’s Andrew.”

“And why should I care?”

“You care enough to look after me while my auntie is gone.”

“Not for long, though.”

The next morning, after getting the phone call about my test results from the doctor and cooking another breakfast, I gently wake up the kid.

“It’s time to go. The hospital called earlier but I let you… you’re awake now. Your auntie’s at home.”

 

Fish Boy yawns and stretches, then pushes the blankets aside. “Here, take this,” I say, giving him a wad of cash. “If I find out you’ve spent it on sweets, I’ll cast you out on my fishing rod as bait. It's for you and your aunt to get to higher ground. I hear it’s going to get wet.”

 

The boy looks at me. Then he gives me a hug. What a ruddy nuisance.

 

The next few days I continue my life, ignoring the rain and the increasing flooding of my village.

 

Now, as I sit in my chair, rain pours, and I let it. It pours through the hole in the window and into my house. Centuries of my family belongings drown around me. Soon water rises to my ankles. I open the front door as water cascades in and I step out. I wade in the water until I am submerged.

 

* * *

 

I wake to see Fish Boy staring at me.

 

“He’s awake,” says a man wearing a medical mask. “You should probably not sit on him.”

 

I get out of the bed in the mobile hospital and walk out onto the hill, wrapped in a blanket. We are on a hill at the highest point of the village.

 

“My mum saved you,” Andrew says.

 

I finally smile, and I realise maybe it wasn’t just the boy’s mother that saved me. Every day you change.

 

I look down at the waters that have consumed the village, briefly forgetting to breathe as I see a face looking up at me, somewhere beneath the blue.