Blood Rain

Rain dripped and flowed into gutters and every available fissure in the street. Collecting into puddles stained an oily red by the lights that blinked on and off outside the bar. Red and black, red and black, in a rhythmic, hypnotic pools.

She should have become immune to the rhythm by now, after all the centuries of watching. The repetitive flashes of red and black. How many shades could one discern in a single colour?

The first cascade is a brilliant vermilion fountain, slowing down to a shower of rosy crimson. Then it trickles away to a rich burgundy, and finally a languorous maroon ooze, almost black, as the liquid pools in the crevices.

Eyes glazed over snapped to full deadly attention as the first whispers were heard. A tiny scratchy noise. Gauzy wings unfolding. Skin shedding in the sheltered backyard.

She crept nearer, holding her daito close to her. Almost turning the corner, watching events unfurl with the corner of her eyes.

Run, why don't you run, fly. Fool...do you not know that I have been watching you for such a long time, and you never sensed my presence? Why do you keep forcing me to do this?

When the metamorphosis was almost complete and skin just about completely shed, she slid out of her corner, loosening the gokatana from its sheath. Turning the corner, she leapt, drawing the blade free and slashed the chiropteran just as it was preparing to take flight. The creature shrieked in agony, throwing its head back to take a glimpse of who had attacked it. Impaling the creature with the tip of the sword, she drove the blade straight through the mass of rapidly disintegrating flesh and turned the edge, tearing through wings and bone and blood.

A familiar shower of rain....in all its intense colours...

So much colour; she watched, fascinated. Gradual awareness that her eyes were hurting from the pulsating, dazzling glare. Her throat felt raw...had she been screaming too?

Itai desu...itai...

Everything hurt. Her eyes, her ears, that thing which used to pulsate inside her but now lay dead and cold in a body eternally young.

The drumming of the rain on the zinc rooftops grew silent. Liquid pools coagulated and evaporated, any stray rivulets draining away to unseen depths. It grew quiet enough for her to hear her own ragged breaths.

Quiet enough to harden herself again, to tear her gaze away from the blinking lights.

A figure of an American man came into view, blocking off the lights while his shadows danced in the street.

"That was a quick one, Saya. One of your most effective kills to date."

"Leave me alone, David," she snapped, returning her sword, now dry and spotless, into its sheath.

She walked away back into darkness, where there was absence of colour and contrast. No bright lights to expose perspectives she did not want to see.

Wouldn't you run, all of you, and hide somewhere, away from the rain and the light.

Away from me.

01102001

2348hrs

2