English: Wet T-shirt contest, Bikini Party 200...

English: Wet T-shirt contest, Bikini Party 2009, Morsko (Poland). Polski: Konkurs miss mokrego podkoszulka podczas Bikini Party 2009 w Morsku. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


The rain was falling gently now. It wasn’t nearly as hard as it was just 30 minutes earlier. The lack of intensity allowed everyone to think about why they felt so scared. Collectively, they were trying to return to their senses, figuring that becoming rational as a group would actually shed some light on what had just occurred.
This was not a sun shower. Sun showers are full of romance, hope and bright visions, with the anticlimactic rainbow that eventually appears after the heavens are through rinse cycling. But, a steady rain, one that’s driving on and off for hours and which occurs during Halloween week is surely different, and not in a good way.
Rainstorms have a way of getting inside our heads, especially when we’re expecting some lightning and thunder, but they never come. Lightning and thunder during rain speaks to clichéd safety—the kind found when one attends a Dracula play or even a slasher flick in a movie theatre. The Saw franchise comes to mind.


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It was two couples in the small, VBRO house they shared, with just a common kitchen area as the one place where they could all gather. Feelings are not permanent; they are states which happen during periods of disconnect. Nature can cause the logical mind to act illogically, as Spock might say. But nevertheless, the thing that brought them together in the kitchen that early evening was not just the rain.


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The temperatures were not that cool. Dahlia was wearing cut off shorts and a tank top. Tom had on sweat pants and a t-shirt. Randi and Cal came upon them clad in their pajamas. It was a bit surreal, but somehow, they were drawn towards one another and they didn’t much care that they appeared retarded as a foursome.
“How come you guys are wearing your PJ’s?” Dahlia queries.
“Well, they’re kind of not PJ’s but we know they look like them,” says Randi.
“If they’re not PJ’s, then, what are they?”
“They’re handmade gifts from aborigine visitors to the U.S.”
“Oh well, then that explains it,” says Tom, not a bit sarcastically.
“Are you happy to see us or are you the poster girl for women without bras?” chimes in Cal.
“Now it’s officially a party, but I’m feeling scared,” confesses Dahlia.
Silence.
The kind where nervous conversation comes to a halt when someone like the newly titillated Dahlia states the obvious. Dahlia’s nipples harden from the wrong kind of excitement, though, and while Cal tries to make light of it, his feeble attempt at decelerating the collective fear that was gripping all of them, only heightens their sense of alert.

The wind slams the rain into the windows more fiercely now, drowning the little bit of calm resolve they have remaining.

“What is happening?” cries Randi.
“It’s perhaps God’s way of letting us know we shouldn’t be contemplating this,” Cal tries to explain.
“God has nothing to do with it!” affirms Dahlia.
‘That’s right. I know God isn’t watching and if he were, he’d fail to intervene as he’s done countless times before during atrocities,” yields Tom.
“No! No! We’re about to be punished!” says Randi, attempting to derail the paranormal and place the experience firmly back upon the confines of religious shoulders.
“We didn’t do anything wrong, Randi!” yells Cal, tears now streaming down his cheeks.
“Oh my God, the rain is falling down crazy again,” Dahlia warns.
“You said God!”
Yes, Tom, I did, but God has nothing to do with it. It’s just an expression,”

English: Perhaps the earliest depiction of a s...

English: Perhaps the earliest depiction of a striptease, taken from the German illustrated 1720 edition of La Guerre d’Espagne (1707), reprinted and commented in Olaf Simons: Marteaus Europa oder der Roman, bevor er Literatur wurde: eine Untersuchung des deutschen und englischen Buchangebots der Jahre 1710-1720 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), p.631. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


Dahlia suddenly performs an impromptu striptease, dropping down her shorts, kicking off her flip flops and less than seductively removing her tank top before finally collapsing on the hardwood floors in front of the stove.
Tom rushes to her side but it’s too late. The rain and wind howl without reason as Dahlia breathes her last.
“What the hell is happening?” Tom convulses at Dahlia’s side, blood effusing from his nostrils, his end but a moment away.
Randi and Cal embrace, paralyzed in fear, mouthing words neither can understand. The rain beats pat pat pat against the window once more, signaling a resolution of intensity.
“I love you, Randi.”
“I love you, Cal.”
Until the rain, fear and death, do us part.