Heavy Rain

The rain fell heavily that night. Heavier than it had in years. Not normal rain, but a rain that was much darker. She sat on her porch step and let the rain fall around her. It was done. The rain washed away the pain from what happened. Whenever she closed her eyes, all she could see was his face. Did she do the right thing? He deserved it, didn’t he? The woman stood, as if some invisible force was pulling her up, and began to walk away from the nowdark apartment complex.
The knife, now washed clean, dropped from her hand and crashed to ground. This sound seemed to wake the woman and she began to run. The rain fell in torrents, soaking the woman to her core. As she ran the rain seemed to envelop everything, As soon as she closed her eyes, the rain no longer felt like water. In the dark night, lit only by a solitary streetlamp long passed by, the rain looked like blood. Reminding her of what she had done. The man’s face again swam into her thoughts, pleading with her, asking for forgiveness. But there would be no forgiveness. Not for him. The woman’s tears mixed with the rain.
Her reverie was shattered when the blast of sirens broke the air. First one police car, lit up with sirens, drove by, followed immediately by another one. Finally, an ambulance finished the grim, flashing, procession. The woman's heart all but stopped. She crouched on the curb, hoping that the torrents of rain would shield her from sight. The sirens faded, and soon the only noise was the heavy downpour.
She kept running; the rhythmic rise and fall of her feet becoming more spread out. Just get back to her building. That is all she needed to do. There it was. Relief washed over the woman. She staggered to the door, and struggled to fit the key into the lock. The lock gave with a satisfying ‘click’ and the woman fell through onto the dry, dimly lit, hallway. The door slammed shut behind her.It took all the effort in the world for the woman to get herself to the third floor, through the door marked 4, and into her warm, sparsely furnished apartment. She peeled off her soaked clothes and turned the shower nozzle as far left as it would go. She sat at the bottom of her shower clutching her knees, the hot water pouring over her. Her tears mixed with the water. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve any of this. The minutes passed agonizingly. She ran through what happened in her head over and over again. The look of terror on his face; the face she once loved.

The heated water ran out and once again became a freezing torrent. The woman jumped out of the shower, turned the nozzle, and wrapped herself in a towel. As she walked out of the bathroom into the kitchen, one thing above all caught her eye: The knife block. One knife was missing. She knew where it was. Sitting outside the man’s apartment complex, The woman collapsed against the counter, wracked by sobs. The woman stood.

Lightning flashed across the sky, lighting for a moment the dark kitchen. The knife block stood on the counter, with a knife missing. Not one knife, but two. The rain fell heavily that night.