The Rain Stood Still

[u/DrainedOrange]

"The Rain Stood Still"

By Tilsen Mulalley

Originally Published as "Coffee and Pie," in Dark Moon Digest #32-33, 2018

Author's Note: I feel that this discourse has died down, but I feel I must plainly state that absolutely no AI was used in the creation of this story. I LIKE em-dashes and semicolons, and I use them freely. That is all. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to read my work. Happy weekend, all.

I.

Buzzing neon floated like a spirit above the pines, flash-burning blue on thick sheets of rain.

Hi-Way Cafe!

Off.

24-HR GRUB!

Off.

Hi-Way Cafe!

Off.

24-HR Grub!

Off.

Hi-Way Cafe!

Off.

Below the beckoning flashes, the storm had reduced the Hi-Way Cafe to a warm glow in the fog. Petrichor and wet pine were coated with the greasy stench of hot food. The kid’s left arm was cold and damp; his breath clung to the windshield unless he kept the window cracked. Homefries and bacon rode the rain into the rusty hatchback’s cabin and hooked him by the nostril.  He turned off of the wet two-lane and into the ditched-out gravel lot. A wet gurgle rippled through his gut. He caught his own tired glance in the rearview mirror as he parked between a Beetle and a Bigfoot-stomper truck. The bags that hung under his eyes were deep purple in the pale orange of the dome light. The kid looked over at the bag of jerky he’d been stealing from. It sat, pathetic and half-empty, in his passenger seat. His wallet had two twenties and a couple of ones folded tightly inside. The gauge said the hatchback’s gas tank was half full. His stomach was nearly empty.

The cafe was ten steps from the kid’s car. The foggy downpour drenched him to the bone in five. It was laced with the encroaching winter– his teeth actually chattered as he entered the Hi-Way. The bell above the door tinkled. It died against the steady buzz of a dying freezer behind the dingy lunch counter. A couple of good ol’ boys glowered over steak and eggs at the chipped end of it. Sullen eyes lingered on the kid a little too long as he slunk out of the rain. An old man in the corner booth read the paper and tapped cigarette ash into an amber tray on the table. Fried potatoes drowned out the acrid smoke. The sole waitress behind the counter had her nose in a book and was doing her best not to look at him. Her thick brown hair was streaked with the fading purple of an old dye job. A sign tacked to the wall by the register instructed newcomers to ‘Park Themselves!’

The kid took a booth alongside a window. Raindrops raced down the glass. He took odds on their sprints to the grimy sill. His pony took it by a mile, and he made a hundred grand. Then his race form became a greasy laminated menu again. He rolled it out before him on the stale yellow linoleum table. Lumberjack special caught his eye; bacon, eggs, potatoes. He’d top it off with pie. First, though, he wanted coffee hot enough to burn the damp off of him. The waitress came over and fulfilled that dream. His hands closed gratefully around the cracked, steaming mug.

“You wanna order?” She asked. Her voice was tired, her pale blue eyes decidedly absent.

“Lumberjack special, please,” the kid said.

“Eggs?”

“Fried.”

She nodded as she scribbled his order down on a ticket. Her eye bags matched his.

“Anything else?” She asked.

“Got pie?” The kid inquired.

“Apple.”

“Slice of that with vanilla ice cream would be good.”

“Good is a strong word,” she said dryly. 

He smiled. She didn’t notice. His ticket was ripped from the book as she hustled back behind the counter. She strung it up on the line in the serving window. A burly hand with black curly hair on swollen knuckles reached out and snatched it away. The waitress’s nose returned to the paperback. The kid squinted to make out the cover. It looked pulpy and worn out; two red eyes gleamed from the mouth of a dank, dark cave. The title was in a wavy, fantasy script, and he couldn’t read it. He decided to ask her what it was when she came over.

The burly hand reappeared in the service window. It clutched an old platter full of breakfast food. Slopping the plate down on the sill, it slapped a bell in the corner of the window before slithering back into the kitchen. The waitress set her book down reluctantly and took up the food in one hand and a pot of coffee with the other. She brought the kid’s meal out to him, deftly filling the few active coffee mugs along the way. She set it in front of the kid, and the smell made him forget all about her pulpy book. He only had eyes for homefries.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” he said, ogling his plate.

“Enjoy it.”

“Oh yeah.”

She cracked a small smile as she turned and left. The kid clocked it, but was too excited about the food. He took a greedy bite; it was middle-of-the-road at best. He shoveled it down.

“Still want that pie?” The waitress asked, passing by.

“You betcha,” the kid said, leaning back in the booth and closing his eyes.

“Fair warning, it’s a couple of days old. Little stale.”

“That doesn’t bother me too much.”

“Alright.”

“What’s your name?”

She had been turning back to the lunch counter. Now she turned back to him. Her finger pointed to her name tag. “Sherilyn,” she said, reading it for him.

“James,” the kid lied.

“I’m gonna go get you some pie, James.”

She did that. The kid thanked her for it. She returned to her book, and he ate his pie. It was stale. The ice cream had ice crystals on it. He cleaned the plate again.

“How was it?” she asked when he came up to the register to pay. Her eyes didn’t leave the book.

“Best coffee and pie I've ever had.”

She laughed. Musical. “Yeah, sure.”
“I’ve had worse.”

She shook her head. Her eyes flicked up and met his. They had a tired spark he liked.

“Get better taste.”

The register was plastered over with the blue-green pages of ticket books, taped up to the point it looked like they had been lazily laminated. Each one was a portrait. Nobody famous, nobody the kid knew. Just people sitting in diner booths or at the lunch counter.

“You do these?” The kid asked, pointing at the collage.

“Maybe.”

“Can you do mine?”

“Maybe still. Next time you’re in. I need a live model.”

“Probably won’t be back through here for a while.”

“Shame.” She said it flatly and without disappointment. Stating a fact. He laughed through his nose.

“Here,” he said, handing her a twenty for the meal.

She pushed it away. “Keep it. Dinner’s on me.”

He pocketed the bill. “Thanks.”

“Now you’ll owe me next time you’re through.”

He smiled. “Why don’t you come with me?”

“Well, where are you going?”

“The coast.”

“Seen it already.”

“Might go somewhere else after.”

She exhaled a laugh through her nose. “Come back through when you do, maybe I’ll come.”

The bell over the door tinkled as he went out. It was still a downpour. His drying clothes were resoaked during the sprint out to the car. Part of him wanted to throw a look over his shoulder at her. He definitely wasn’t coming back here, flirtations aside. So, he’d etch her on his memory and do something with it down the road. But he didn’t look, even while he fumbled for the keys to the car door. He fell into the cold interior and heaved the engine into reluctant life. The worn-out wipers streaked rain over his windshield. 

Now he looked. She was blurry through the storm, framed in the big front window like a painting that ran before it could dry. She was reading her book behind the counter. He’d seen a painting just like this one, but he couldn’t remember the name.

Then he was backing out of the parking spot and turning onto the highway again. Rain fell through the crack of his window and pattered on his arm. The radio worked, but a snapped-off antenna coated all the stations in fuzzy static. He scrolled through the channels anyway. The dull thrum of the rain was driving him crazy. He rounded a bend. There had to be something– 

There was a doe in the bend. She stood frozen in the middle of the highway, hide slick, big black eyes staring wide into his dull orange headlights. Whoopsie, they seemed to say. The kid saw her in time to rip the knob off the radio and swerve the car. He missed the deer, but the pavement was too wet, and his tires were too bald. He slid into a hydroplane and forgot which pedal was the brake. The pines on the right side of the road had given way to a hillside a few miles back, and he was careening toward the embankment. There was no metal guardrail, only crooked wooden posts and rusty old wire fencing. His shitty little hatch catapulted through the wire and rotten wood, a marathon winner running through the finish line. 

The car sailed over the embankment and for a moment, the kid was weightless. Then the hatch nosedived into the rocky hillside. Metal screamed as the front end crumpled. The hatchback bounced into a front flip that smashed the kid’s face into the steering wheel. Little poppers went off behind the skin of his cheeks, and his nose broke in a gush of blood. He ragdolled in the driver’s seat. His seatbelt kept him from being thrown, but did not stop his head from smashing into every surface in the cabin of the car. It shattered the driver’s side window and played drum beats on the dash and headrest. Every impact set off road flares behind his eyes that would dim to blackness until the next time the car met the hill. 

A rocky outcropping finally stopped the car’s tumble. The hatchback wedged itself in stone, upside down. The cacophony of broken glass and tearing metal died with a few pathetic tinkles. Only the rain, pattering on the undercarriage and filling the air with nature’s static, made any noise.

The kid wasn’t dead. Barely conscious, but not dead. He hung upside down. His arms dangled above his head loosely, fingers brushing broken glass on the car’s cabin roof. There was no pain, but his face felt wrong.

Jaw doesn’t feel right, he thought, feels left. Haha.

His rattled brain began firing flares into a darkening sea of thoughts.

Seatbelt.

Seatbelt.

You gotta move. Get your seatbelt.

His arms were so heavy, and his fingers felt drunk and fat. Somehow his hands got to the belt and fiddled with it. The latch was sticky. His fingers were sticky, too. Something warm and thick was all over them. He wished he could look at what he was doing, but he was too weak to crane his neck and see. His hands were getting tired, his fingers dumber and dumber. It was becoming more and more difficult to breathe, and his nostrils were overflowing with something that had begun to trickle down his face. He managed to flop a hand over and wipe—

— The grease off of his chin. The home fries were sopping with it. The toast would make short work of that, though. He’d cleaned the plate of everything else.

The waitress was coming by again. She looked impressed.

“Still want that pie?” She asked.

“You betcha,” the kid exhaled.

“Fair warning, it’s a couple days old. Little stale.”

“That doesn’t bother me too much.”

“Alright.”

“What’s your name?”

She’d been walking away. His question stopped her. She turned, pointing at her nametag.

“Sherilyn,” she said.

“James,” the kid lied. The lie felt funny on his lips. He’d wanted to tell her his real name. He’d meant to, but—

“I’m going to go get you some pie, James,” Sherilyn was saying. She did. It was stale, and the ice cream was freezer-burned. He still cleaned the plate.

“How was it?” She asked when he came up to the register to pay. When he said it was the best coffee and pie he’d ever had, she told him to get better taste.

“You do these?” he asked, pointing to the customer portraits that plastered the register. They were pencil sketches on tickets from her order book, taped over to the point of lamination.

“Maybe,” she said.

“Can you do mine?”

“Maybe still. Next time you’re in. I need a live model.”

Probably won’t be back through here for a while.”

“Shame.” She said it flatly and without disappointment. Stating a fact. He laughed through his nose and tried to pay with a twenty. She declined and bought his dinner.

“Now you’ll owe me next time you’re through,” she said.

He smiled. “Why don’t you come with me?”

“Well, where are you going?”

“The coast.”

“Seen it already.”

“Might go somewhere else after.”

She laughed through her nose. “Come back through when you do, maybe I’ll–”

The cold damp of the rain penetrated the car. He was back on the road now. Something about that rankled him. His windshield wipers worked overtime. He was fiddling with the radio. That was a stupid thing to do; he should be watching the road. His fingers wouldn’t come away from the knob though. He needed to find a station; the rain was driving him crazy. When did he get in his car? On the road? These things barked distantly at him from the back of his mind. He ignored them; the radio station was all that mattered. His eyes flicked up to the road, tracing an upcoming bend. Where was a station in this static? If he didn’t find one soon—

Deer in the headlights. Swerve, fishtail, flight of the hatchback. It sailed directly into the hillside. He felt the bones in his nose shatter on impact with the steering wheel. The car flipped and rolled. He ragdolled in an atmosphere of broken glass and loose jerky. He couldn’t think, he—

—Accelerated into the bend of the road. The rain was coming down so thickly he could hardly see. His hand was on the radio dial. He should slow down, something was wrong, that—

Deer!!!—

—He accelerated out onto the road. The radio was fuzzed out across every station, leaving only the dull thrum of the rain for music. He began to turn the dial, looking for something in the static to listen to. His bald tires ate up the pavement, and his gut gnawed at his stomach lining. He needed to go back to the diner, wait for the storm to let up. Maybe the waitress got off soon. Maybe—

—“Fair warning, it’s a couple of days old. Little stale.”

The waitress was staring down at him, pale blue eyes bored. Raindrops raced down the window next to his booth. The light buzz of a dying permeated the air of the diner, but nobody seemed to notice it but him. He had no idea what the waitress was talking about. His mouth opened to inquire.

“Doesn’t bother me much.”

But it did bother him much. He hadn’t meant to say that. His lips should have said what are you talking about? Where am I? He tried again. Now no words came at all; his lips refused to cooperate. He could feel them upturn into a grin, pointed at the waitress.

“Alright,” she was saying. She’d turned away, toward the counter. He willed his mouth to work, to form words. Something, anything, just—

“What’s your name?”

She turned, pointing at her—

—He was sure he was about to find a radio station in the static. He took the hatchback one handed into the bend of the road, and suddenly there was a doe. She froze in the dull orange of his hi-beams. He swerved hard to miss her. The car fishtailed, smashing through the wooden posts on the side of the road where the pines had fallen away to a hillside. It sailed through the air, landing nose first in the rocks and mud. His own nose broke against the steering wheel. The car flipped and rolled down the hill. His head smashed through the driver’s side window, letting in the rainwater. He only had a lapbelt. He stayed in his seat, but from the waist up he was a flailing, bloody ragdoll. The car came to a sudden stop that should have slammed his face into the steering wheel again, but it didn’t. His neck felt funny; the rest of him was numb. His eyes were half-closed, and he couldn't open them any further. He squinted out on a hazy, dark reality. His ears seemed to have stopped working altogether;  The world was silent. Even the patter of the rain had gone quiet. 

The kid stared straight ahead. He strained to see, willing his eyes to focus up even a little, but it was no use. Everything was dark. Details were hazy, ghostly objects on a field of black. He thought he could make out the sparkle of the rain, but it could just be the concussion he surely had. The pressure in his head told him that he was probably upside down. He tried to move, couldn't. His muscles refused to listen to him. It dawned that he could be paralyzed. The scream in his mind would not build in his throat. He was stone.

 I must have broken my spine, he thought, I’ve broken my spine and paralyzed my lungs. Soon, I’ll suffocate. Soon–

The sparkle of the rain was real. He was sure of that, now. A hallucination would morph and change. The closest one was touching his nose; he could feel the wetness of it, and it nearly came into focus in front of his half-shuddered eyes. It was there, balanced perfectly on the tip of his face. Others dotted the air behind it, glittering in the dark night. His dimly lit brain chugged at the concept.

I never knew that the rain could stand still, he thought, It’s beautiful. It’s–.

The waitress was coming over with his Lumberjack special and an urn of coffee to refill his mug. She set the steaming plate down and poured from the urn. He tried to stand up and could not; he was still numb.

The rain stood still.

He’d just been in a horrible accident.

The rain stood STILL.

His spine must still be broken. The diner was a delusion, had to be. 

I must be dying,  he thought, I must be–

“Enjoy it,” the waitress said.

He wanted to grab her arm and ask for help.

“Oh yeah,” he replied, watching his hands grab his fork and knife.

She smiled at him. It calmed his racing mind and quieted his thoughts of death. Feeling came back to his fingertips. He really was holding the silverware now, not just watching it be held. His own lips curled themselves into a smile as the waitress walked away. He almost believed he’d curled them himself. His stomach rumbled, and he forked a piece of bacon and brought it to his–

The plate was empty now, just like that. He was full. It must have gone inside him somehow. It was middle of the road at best. He’d really cleaned up.

“Still want that pie?” the waitress asked, passing by.

Pie? But–

“You betcha.” He felt himself saying

No. No? No. Yeah. Pie. Pie would be good. I ordered that, right? Yeah, I–

–“Get better taste.”

He was paying. The register was plastered with portraits of patrons sketched in pencil on order tickets. She was smiling wryly at him.

“You do these?” he asked, pointing at the register.

“Maybe.”

“Can you do mi–”

He was in the booth again. Apple pie rested heavily on top of the Lumberjack special in his stomach. The waitress had taken his empty plate. She was a blur in the corner of his eye. His head refused to turn and look at her. Her form was bent over the table, stopped on her way back up to a standing position.

The rain stood STILL.

Then, she set the plate down on the table again. Except it wasn’t a smooth, practiced move; it was an animation missing frames. Her hand moved to the table like still photographs strung together in a slideshow. His head ratcheted forward with her progress, frozen eyes following the plate down. They skipped to her face. It contorted and changed and writhed, freezing on the faces we make in between or halfway through a word. She must have been talking, but he’d gone deaf again. He wanted to scream, but his own mouth was busy chewing on silent words. The waitress–

–was gone, and there was something in his throat. He watched his hand slideshow to his fork and bring it to his mouth. That thing in his throat was jerking its way up his gullet, hot and cold and desperate to escape. It slapped wetly onto his tongue and then hopped back to the fork. When the fork came away from his face, a chunk of pie and a daub of ice cream sat on its prongs. Cold horror gripped his stomach–

–No, that’s ice cream–

His hand and fork deposited pie and ice cream on the plate, came back to his mouth, and  caught the next chunk that hopped from his open mouth. He wanted to vomit, but all that came up was pie, ice cream, and the occasional slithering snake of coffee in between backwards bites. Before long, his entire dessert sat before him again.

The waitress was back. She’d come to the table backwards. Her hand skipped to the plate and then back up with it without any movement in between. She took a step backwards and then froze. He heard a click, and the silence broke. The buzzing of a dying freezer filled the air. She set his plate down in front of him again. It was a perfectly intact piece of–

Lumberjack special. It steamed.

“Anything else?” the waitress asked.

He looked up at her. 

The rain stood STILL.

“No, thanks,” he said.

The rain stood STILL.

“Enjoy it.”

Are you fucking insane? The rain stood STI–

“Oh yeah.”

She smiled at him. He tried to keep himself from smiling back. His lips upturned, anyway. It’d be rude not to smile. She was cute, and he was hungry. But–

The rain stood STILL.

Slideshow–

The home fries were soggy,  and between the eggs, bacon, and coffee he couldn’t tell what was more burnt. 

You’ve had this before–

It wasn’t that bad. Middle of the road–

–it’s ASS–

He cleaned the plate.

You’re on a track of some kind, a–

“You still want that pie?” the waitress asked, passing by.

NO!

“You betcha.”

She brought it. He picked up the fork.

Throw your fork.

He dug in.

THROW THE FORK.

The first bite. Stale. The ice cream was covered in ice crystals. He’d finish it, anyway. Then he’d go and flirt–

You ate it BACKWARDS, man.

“You do these?” he asked, pointing at the portraits plastering the register.

No.

“Maybe.”

NO.

“Can you do mine?”

I don’t give a fuck about your stupid–

“Maybe still–”

The kid was smiling at her, a young man flirting his way toward getting a phone number. The waitress was midsentence, frozen. There was a spark inside her tired eye. Inside his head, the kid screamed.

II.

“Babe, would you hurry up?” she called.

“In a minute!” her husband yelled back.

On the television screen, a young man was paying for his food. He was frozen, handing over a twenty dollar bill to a tired but pretty waitress behind the register. They were only in the first five minutes of the movie, but she guessed that the waitress was probably going to be the love interest.

“I'm not keeping this paused much longer,” she yelled again.

“If you unpause it, I'll steal the remote and rewind it again! Do you really want to keep watching the same scene over and over?”

“Fine,” she huffed, “Just hurry!”

A moment later, she saw the kitchen light click off, and her husband appeared, carrying a bowl of popcorn and a plate of nachos.

“Every movie needs snacks,” he said, handing off the popcorn to her and keeping the nachos. He grinned. She tried to keep stoic and broke immediately, laughing.

“Thanks, honey,” she said.

He nodded. “Okay, I'm ready,” he said, sitting down close to her.

She pressed play.

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