The Rain Isn’t Water
It started with a shadow that didn’t move.
On the morning of July 8th, a dark, bloated cloud swallowed the sky, stretching from horizon to horizon. Weather services said nothing. No warnings. No radar pings. Just... silence. Like they were cut off, or worse—watching, and saying nothing.
At first, people went about their days, squinting into the sky. A few murmured about ash from wildfires, or volcanic fallout. But this wasn’t smoke. It was too still. No breeze pushed it. No sun cut through it. The world dimmed like a theater before a show, except no one clapped, and nothing felt staged.
Three days passed before the rain began.
But it wasn’t water.
I was in the kitchen when I heard the first drop hit the roof. A thud, not a splash. I thought a bird had fallen, or maybe a tree branch. But then came another. And another. Each one landed like wet clay thrown against glass. I opened the front door and froze.
The drops fell slow, thick, like gelatin-filled sacs. When they hit the ground, they didn’t break apart—they merged, burrowing into soil and sidewalk, leaving behind glistening red tendrils that looked like veins. They pulsed softly, like they were alive.
Next door, Mrs. Hatcher stepped outside in a robe, holding her cat. The rain coated her hair, her arms. She laughed, stretching out her hands. Her cat squirmed. Then scratched her. It must’ve sensed something we didn’t.
She didn’t make it through the night.
By the following morning, the veins had spread.
They ran along gutters, wrapped around trees, disappeared beneath front porches and windows. I saw them on the street, like blood vessels threading through concrete. At first, they didn’t move. They only pulsed. But people noticed something worse.
Everyone who’d been touched by the rain had changed.
Mrs. Hatcher was the first I saw.
Her skin sloughed off in strips, peeling like old wallpaper. But she didn’t scream. She smiled. Her face was wrong. Her eyes had gone black—no irises, no whites. Just glossy stones. Her jaw hung loose, unhinged, and she let out a low, vibrating hum. It made my teeth hurt to hear it. Like it hit a frequency meant for something else.
She stared at me, unblinking.
And then walked into the street barefoot, the veins bending to meet her steps.
We tried to warn others. But anyone outside when the rain fell—anyone touched—eventually turned. It wasn’t always fast. Some took hours. Some took days. But it always happened. Their skin blistered and peeled. Their voices broke into insectile hums. Some crawled into their basements. Others walked the roads in groups, like somnambulists.
They weren’t just infected. They weren’t human anymore.
And worse, they wanted us.
On day five, I saw my father.
He’d left days before, driving to the store before the rain ever started. I hadn’t heard from him since. But there he was, standing on the front lawn.
He didn’t knock.
He just stared at the house.
I peeked through the blinds. He wasn’t soaked. He was dry, as if the rain parted around him. His face was wrong—stretched. Too long. His mouth smiled too wide, and when he opened it, I saw rows of teeth inside teeth, spiraling like a shell.
He whispered something I didn’t understand.
And then he walked away, the veins following behind him like leashes.
I fled the next morning.
I wrapped myself in garbage bags and plastic tarp, sealing every inch of my skin. I left my home behind, stepping over the red tendrils now snaking through the door frame. I didn’t look back.
The roads were broken, crisscrossed with wet, living veins. I walked for miles, passing abandoned cars, corpses in plastic raincoats, and things that looked like people but weren’t.
One girl stood in a gas station doorway, humming. Her arms were covered in twitching veins that moved under the skin. Her eyes followed me. But she didn’t speak. Just hummed, in that same low tone that made the air tremble.
I found a farmhouse on the edge of town. The rain hadn’t reached it—yet. An old woman lived there. She let me in, said nothing. Her eyes were pale, and her hands trembled as she poured me tea. She hadn’t been outside in days. She said the veins were afraid of her.
I didn’t ask why.
That night, I heard her in the attic. Talking to someone. But I knew she was alone. When I checked in the morning, I found a shallow puddle of red rainwater beneath the boards. It pulsed, as if breathing.
The woman was gone.
Just gone.
By day ten, I stopped counting the dead.
The rain grew thicker. It fell like syrup, sizzling when it hit the earth. The veins were no longer just in the ground—they crawled walls, hung from ceilings, even climbed trees like blood vines. I watched a crow land on one, and it melted. Not burned—melted, its feathers dissolving like ink in water.
I tried to find other survivors. I found a man hiding in a library. His arms were covered in cuts—thin, symmetrical lines. He said the veins were talking to him, through the rain. That they promised a new skin. A better one.
He killed himself before nightfall.
Day twelve.
There’s something under my skin.
It started with an itch. Now, it moves. I see it when I pass mirrors—a twitch beneath my jaw, a ripple near my spine. I haven’t been touched by the rain. I swear. But the dreams are different now.
They show me the sky before the cloud. What’s really behind it.
A being. Or maybe a mind. Massive. Endless. Sleeping just above the atmosphere, its nerves stretching down into us. The rain is its blood. The veins, its fingers. It’s waking up.
We aren’t being invaded.
We’re being converted.
I don’t know how many of us are left. Maybe a few hundred. Maybe none. The radio went silent on day seven. Emergency broadcasts faded into static, then hums. The same tone. The same call.
I’m changing.
I feel it when I breathe.
But I’m still me—for now.
If you’re reading this, don’t go outside. Don’t touch the rain. Don’t follow the voices.
And whatever you do…
Don’t listen when they call your name.
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