Always the Rain by Carlotta Dale
from Dystopia: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
“The rain continued,” the old Bradbury story tells us, but that’s set on Venus, and this is Earth, or used to be.
The rain.
They’d forgotten how to turn it off. Among other things.
We once had four seasons: dry, fog, rain, snow. Now it’s just this.
The rain.
The Asteroid Defense Shield was still operational, but wasn’t as picky as it used to be, no longer detecting smaller chunks or even pieces of space garbage. It let them through. I was out on a walk last month—however long months are now—when I witnessed a teenager on a skateboard catch a direct hit. There wasn’t much of him left.
I don’t take walks anymore.
They’d put up the Shield—all very hush-hush technology—after a near miss in 2052. It was successful, and everyone was jubilant, until the scientists and troubleshooters disappeared. Or were “disappeared,” who knows? Word began to leak out that the Earth was now on a slightly different orbit, one in the midst of a meteor belt. Nobody remaining could fix it.
So the meteors fell, the rain fell, and almost nothing worked. The rain was kind of a comfort.
The lovely, ever-constant rain.
This story appears as part of Dystopia, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series.
Bio
Carlotta Dale lives in L.A., a city she adores from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, in a house that’s essentially an oversized cabinet of curiosities. She’s had many jobs, including gigs as a ghost writer. She still uses adverbs — sparingly — and has only had one (!) piece of fiction published, by Punk Noir Magazine (!). If she gets a second outing, she’s going to feel like part of the family. She can be found on Twitter @carlottadale38 and on BlueSky @carlottadale.bsky.social.
PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.
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Wow! I love how much this packed in to just a few words.