by Raymond Towers
Thunderclaps announce their menacing presence
and bursts of light flash across the night sky
as the morbid raindrops begin to fall.
Dark and red, like death and blood,
they form a crimson blanket across the windshield.
As if they know, somehow know, what lays
damp and covered across the backseat
of my vehicle. A body no less, that of
my own brother, a single hand reaching out past
the folds of black plastic to cast a guilty
reminder every time I glance into the rearview
mirror. Clicking off the interior light,
I turn my attention to the night, and its
unholy rain falling from a vindictive sky.
Now thickening and clumpy, the drops slide
down the glass, a gruesome combination of
both blood and bits of bone, a sick broth dropped
onto my speeding vehicle, so much that when an
eyeball becomes trapped by the arc of a wiper blade,
I do not cry out in horror, but rather stare at it with
morbid curiousity, transfixed by its incriminating gaze,
and miss the sharp turn before me, resulting in a mad
plummet into the abysses of hell, and the sudden impact
or metal and rock, the clamor swept quickly away by the
rushed of the tumultuous sea, is if to prevent any possible
escape from the mangled frame of the car, and I gasp,
taking in a mouthful of salt water, and in a final act of
defiance, I reach over for the handgun I'd so recently used,
and place its business end against my temple, finding
myself suddenly reluctant to end my accursed existence.
Until my brother's clammy hand reaches around mine, bringing a blinding
flash across my eyes, followed by an explosion of noise,
muffled by the waves of water spilling inside, and once
the sound starts to drift away, I see that the black clouds
have all dispersed, and the rain has subsided, and
before me, are the jagged streaks of the darkest rainbows.