There are an average of 130 suicides a day in the United States. Nearly 70% of those are white men and nearly 53% of them exit the mortal coil utilizing a firearm. There is all manner of ways to end your own life, and the truth is, I never thought much about it. Would I be a pill popper, a wrist cutter, a hangman, or go archaic and fill my pockets with stones and walk into the nearest, deep body of water? I had not the faintest idea, but knowing myself and my fears of going against the social grain, I’d probably put a gun in my mouth. I mean, is there anything more American than punching your ticket by exercising your second amendment right?

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Some of you are probably chuckling at that, some are probably rolling their eyes, and some, for all I know are pitching a tent at the thought of shooting their gun at anything. I only bring it up because it’s the easiest way to ixnay yourself. You could easily throw up the pills, the rope could break or you’re an idiot that doesn’t know how to tie a proper knot, maybe someone lied because that body of water is only like four feet deep these days due to climate change. So many things can go wrong, and so much preparation has to go into some of these methods.

But a gun, I mean c’mon, there’s a meth head on about every corner with a piece tucked into his waistband, aimed right at their cock and ready to be sold or traded for a little more something to take the edge off. If you want to go about it legally, then you only need to be 18 with an IQ above 60 and you’ve hit all the requirements for gun ownership. All I’m saying is that if you want to kill yourself in America we practically pave the way for you with rules written by crotchety, slave-owning, old white folk in the 16th century. We only ask that you not be a fucktard on your way out and take other, innocent people with you, but again, this is America, and if there’s anything we love more than guns, it’s fame and attention.

I digress, I’m not here to wax poetic about guns. God knows we have enough evangelizing from both sides of the aisle about it. No, I’m here to document what may be some of the last words that I ever write. Maybe someone will live through this and find what I’ve written, maybe some alien will finally beam down after we’re all gone and sort through the mess and discover this. Who knows? Maybe I’m just writing it to stroke my ego and convince myself I’m leaving behind something of a legacy or chronicle. Probably the latter. We are not as humble of creatures as we like to think.

The first day I can remember noticing something amiss was the middle of the morning on June 8th. I was on my first break at work, back when I had a job, which to be frank was another lifetime it feels like. I worked as a therapist at a local behavioral health clinic. I had just wrapped my first morning session with a single mother of three who was being evicted from her apartment because despite rent exponentially increasing, everyone’s wages stayed the same. Amy, that was her name, former heroin addict, cleaned up her act for her kids only to be kicked in the uterus by society, a deadbeat baby daddy, and a broken welfare system. I spent more time offering her case management services than therapy, it’s tough to focus on your depression when you’re trying to figure out how to feed your kids and give them a warm place to sleep.

It was muggy that morning, the warmth wasn’t that unusual, but the moisture was. The entire cracked asphalt of the clinic’s parking lot shimmered with puddles that fed into the rain gutters along the street. The rain the night before fell so hard it had stirred me from my sleep and I surfed more than I drove into work that morning. At the time, I considered it a blessing, that nature was doing some preliminary work to prevent forest fires that ravaged Oregon for the last three summers in a row.

I was looking at my phone, reading through the ole Apple News that I paid a monthly subscription for to doom scroll and keep myself informed of the world’s happening simultaneously. I didn’t notice anything too out of the norm at first. A school shooting here, a country invasion there, a potential new Covid variant, a leaked sex tape involving a politician and a furry. You know, the usual stuff. But peppered in between all of those stories were also a lot of mentions about suicide.

I switched over to the browser and went to a local news website and there it was, plastered all over the homepage. Article after article involving suicides and the main headline at the top of the page read, in big bold letters: RECORD NUMBER OF SUICIDES REPORTED INTO THE MORNING. I clicked on the headline and skimmed through the article. I could feel my brow furrowing and my eyes narrowing as they raced along the words. There had been 37 reported suicides the night before and the story was still developing as more was being reported this morning. The local police department was struggling to keep up with calls and was already seeking assistance from state troopers.

Christ, I muttered, as if trying to conjure the guy to resurrect again. The sound of an engine revving screamed through the air, it was the sound of one of those sports cars with a glass pack on it that made it sound like it was ripping ass down the street. It was not an unusual sound downtown, as the nearby university had its fair share of students who found those cars to be dripping in big dick energy. I closed the browser on my iPhone and stuffed it back in my pocket as the car sped down the road farting its muffler off. A pedestrian somewhere along the sidewalk shouted something at the car.

Fucking kids, I muttered as I stretched, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. In through the nose and out through clenched teeth. That was my doctor’s recommendation to help get the blood pressure back down. Which brought my thinking around to asking why I even looked at the news, all it did was kick up my anxiety.

Someone screamed as the glass pack asshole continued to invade my ears. I opened my eyes just as I heard the sound of the crash. Directly across the street from my clinic, the sports car had smashed into the iron-wrought fence that ran the perimeter of the local Planned Parenthood clinic. A woman walking on the sidewalk was picking herself up after presumably diving out of the way of the oncoming vehicle.

Without thinking, I ran toward the crash. Already, traffic was starting to pile up along the road and other pedestrians started gathering around the accident. I stomped through one of the parking lot puddles and felt the water swell into my shoe, immediately irritated at the feeling of a wet sock, but it didn’t slow my run. By the time I reached the gathering crowd, someone had helped the woman up and was asking if she was okay. From what I could see she appeared scraped up and a little dazed, but nothing serious enough to warrant an ambulance. The driver of the obnoxious-sounding sports car, on the other hand, was a different story.

It was a young guy…from what I could tell of what remained of his face. He hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and his window shield had a large, jagged hole in it on the driver's side. The serrated edges of the glass were stained and dripping a thick crimson. The body of the driver was sprawled across the smashed hood. His black t-shirt was eviscerated and had strips torn away to show long, bleeding lacerations all over his torso.

A woman screamed as soon as she saw the dead young man. His face was pulverized to a bloody pulp by the wrought iron fence. Parts of it were squeezed in between the bars like peanut butter cookie dough between the spokes of a fork to make the criss-cross patterns. But his skull hadn’t completely exploded apart and kept his whole head from going through the fence. One eye dangled loosely from a thread of nerves and the other had completely ruptured into a jelly that oozed into the mess of blood, brain matter, and shards of broken skull.

I had to turn away to keep from vomiting. I had seen plenty of gore in horror films and never felt squeamish about it. But none of that can prepare you for seeing it in the real world. You get the luxury of knowing it’s not real in a film, you get the luxury of not having to smell it. The strong metallic stench of blood mixed with engine oil and leaking radiator fluid as the sports car spat the last of its own life out.

There was so much noise from the crowd, a cacophony of murmurs and chatter on cellphones. People live streaming the accident, assuming there was at least one person responsible enough to call 9-1-1 while they took a stab at raising their follower counts. There must have been, because within minutes an ambulance, firetruck, and police cruiser arrived in a hail of sirens and lights. Officers and paramedics pushed back the crowd and then got to work.

As I walked back toward the clinic I could hear the woman who’d nearly been run over talking to someone in the waning crowd. He was looking right at me! She exclaimed.

You’re sure he wasn’t looking at his cell phone? A man asked.

Maybe he was drunk? Another asked.

No, he was looking right at me…and he was… he was smiling! The woman said, nearly in hysterics as she began sobbing.

Nearly two weeks went by after the car accident without any further incidents. The entire mess felt like a fading nightmare and the plethora of news articles on my phone felt like an odd coincidence. Everything moved on as it quickly did in our day and age, one tragedy could be swept from memory the moment a celebrity baby was born or when another tragedy simply took its place in the limelight. When you have billions of people on the planet nothing ever slows down, nothing can be absorbed. We’re just always moving on to the next thing and the next.

I carried on with my daily therapy sessions with clients, stopping only to think about the accident I witnessed when I stepped out front of the clinic. The twisted section of the iron-wrought fence across the street was a burning reminder for the first week, but then it was replaced the following week with a new section. Even the torn-up landscaping beside the sidewalk was plowed up and fresh grass seeds were planted. You wouldn’t have even known that just two weeks prior a college kid pumpkin-smashed his skull into the fence.

Then the rain came again. Unusual for the end of June, but not completely out of the question. It came on suddenly in the night, with such ferocity that it woke me. One moment it was early summer silence, punctuated only by the faint sound of insects. The next it was torrential downpour beating upon my roof so loud it was as if someone turned the tv on in my room and cranked the white static volume to max.

It jolted me awake and I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand to see what time it was. There was a moment of relief when I saw that I still had four more hours before I had to get up for work, but even after I set my phone back down and rolled over, I couldn’t get back to sleep. The discord outside was too much, almost droning in my ears and hypnotizing.

Throwing back the comforter, I slipped out of bed and padded over to the sliding glass door in my room. I pulled back the curtain and turned on the back porch light. Thick raindrops pierced the light. The rainfall was so heavy it was almost a shroud that covered the illumination and nearly snuffed it out. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness, only the splinters of rain needling every surface. I could only hear the drone of it, the relentless shower.

I stood there for an indeterminate amount of time, listening to the rain, watching it slice through the night’s stillness. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t remember who I was or what I was doing. It was like being hypnotized and falling into a trance. I wavered on my feet and swayed slightly. It was pleasant agony, relaxing yet insufferable for all the noise it put in my head. Part of me wanted to bask in it while the other was willing to do just about anything to make it stop.

It feels strange now trying to explain how it made me feel. Almost like someone experiencing hypothermia but feeling like they were burning up inside. The dichotomy of two opposing sides seemingly cannot be rectified but is shared nonetheless.

I don’t know what shook me from the trance, but I remember the last thing I thought before I snapped free. I should kill myself. There was no sorrow or malice in the thought. It simply felt like a fact, that it was the next logical thing for me to do. Not return to bed and continue sleeping, but rather find some way to make everything stop. I had no plan for how I would accomplish this goal, and once the fading tendrils of the trance slithered away I didn’t think about it anymore.

The next morning I entered the clinic and was immediately pulled aside by the clinic’s lead, Janice. She led me to her office, and I could tell from the hushed tones of the clinic that it was going to be bad news. It wasn’t the first time I’d been pulled into her office this immediately in the morning. When you work with those who are clinically depressed or struggling with other behavioral health problems, you will inevitably lose someone to suicide or an accidental drug overdose.

Janice shut her office door and offered me a seat in one of her cushioned lounge chairs where hundreds of her patients had sat before. I steeled myself for who it could be this time, my mind began reviewing the list of my clients that were at higher risk or had been expressing increased suicidal ideation. After a moment, I stilled my mind and simply asked the question that would solve the whole quandary. Who was it? I asked, clasping my hands together tightly, trying to prepare myself for the news.

Janice pursed her lips and I watched her throat bob as she swallowed hard. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, took a moment, and then started again. It wasn’t only one person, I’m afraid, Janice said.

What do you mean? I asked. Did they hurt someone else before they ended their life?

She shook her head and said, No, three of your clients committed suicide last night, and then another did this morning.

All of the air punched out of my chest. Janice could see the blood leave my face and quickly pressed on, trying to say what she needed to say before I had a potential meltdown.

I’ve been speaking with every counselor as they’ve been coming in this morning, She said. I think every counselor lost at least one or two clients last night. Her eyes seemed to glisten with tears, which told me that she was not exempt from this statement.

What the fuck? I blurted out. Was there some kind of group suicide pact among our patients last night? It was a joke, a way for me to deflect the reality of what was happening, but at the same time, I was trying to reason how this could be possible.

Janice’s dire expression did not change as she shook her head. I don’t know, we’re still learning more details as family members and the hospital are contacting us. Have you not looked at the news this morning? The emergency rooms are flooded with suicide attempts. Record numbers of stomach pumps, self-inflicted cuts, gunshot wounds, the whole gamut. It’s like the entire town lost their minds last night.

I hadn’t looked at the news, I’d woken late that morning and didn’t have time for much else besides showering and dressing. The strangeness of the night before, of standing at the sliding glass door hovered over me that whole morning. I’d been tired and feeling out of sorts, so I had tunnel-visioned my whole routine and commute to work. I haven’t seen anything… I managed to croak out, answering my supervisor’s question.

Janice sighed and said, Well, take some time for yourself this morning and if you need to take the day off, I understand. We’ve had a couple of other clinicians go home already. It’s never easy to lose a client, especially when we work so hard to keep them here with us.

I nodded slightly and asked, Which of my clients was it?

When she told me, a chilling numbness permeated out from my core and writhed its way to the ends of my fingertips. I only spent an hour or two a week with each of them, but in that time I’d gotten to know who they were and helped them through different difficulties. We’d worked together, building coping skills and getting access to social services to improve their lives. Four people I’d grown to care about a great deal were gone now, ripped from the world by their own hands.

Raleigh had been a nineteen-year-old kid who was homeless since the age of fourteen. His family were addicts and abandoned him to fend for himself on the streets. We’d worked through his trauma and abandonment issues. I’d helped him get into affordable housing and get a job at a local bakery. Things were turning around for him, but still, his prior substance addiction caught up to him and he’d been found dead in an alleyway with needles in his arms.

Booka had been an Australian that came to town as a foreign student at the local university. She came from a wealthy family and was raised in a comfortable home with loving parents. But during her high school years, she’d fallen in with a group of young women who prided themselves on how thin they could be. Inevitably this led to an anorexic disorder that she was only just now coming around on. The morning I spoke with Janice, Booka jumped from her apartment window on the fifth floor of her building. She had landed headfirst on top of someone’s car smashing into the roof and snapping her neck and spine.

James had been a young car salesman. He always came in with a smile that he tried to sell to everyone as much as a used automobile. In public, he put on a show of being friendly and outgoing, but when at home he struggled with near-crippling depression. After a suicide attempt two years prior he began medication and therapy with me. I knew for a fact he was doing better, but that didn’t stop him. His girlfriend found him in the middle of the night. He’d come home and parked in the garage, but he never turned off the car.

Finally, there was Amy, the former heroine addict I’d been counseling and providing case management services for. Losing her somehow hit harder than the other three. Not because I didn’t care about them as much, but more so because she left behind her children. She’d fought so hard to get her shit together and keep them out of the foster system, that I couldn’t believe she would throw it all away. The local news article I found online said she parked her car along the shoulder of the freeway. She got out into the dark and unseasonal, pouring rain, and then she walked out in front of a passing semi-truck. Her remains splattered the highway and windshields of the other cars.

In the rain, I thought. She walked out into the rain. My thoughts drifted back to the night before when I stood at my sliding glass door and stared out into the black night being pierced by the thick sheet of rain. I could almost hear the white noise of it in my ears again and I could almost feel myself drifting back into the trance I’d found myself being lulled into before.

Do you think it’s the rain? I suddenly asked Janice.

She couldn’t mask the puzzlement on her face. Moments ago she told me about my four clients whom all ended their own lives in the span of one night, and that was my first question. At the moment, I couldn’t see how strange that was, in the moment, it felt like the most logical question to ask.

What could the rain possibly have to do with any of this? Janice asked.

I shrugged and said, I don’t know, I was just thinking about that spike in suicides when it rained a couple of weeks back. It’s unseasonal, isn’t it? Maybe there’s some connection?

She smiled at me, but it was not one of good humor, but rather pity. After a moment, she said, I think you should take the day for yourself, I’ll have the front desk reschedule your clients today.

I nodded, my thoughts still caught up in the idea of the rain doing something to people.

Do you have someone you can talk to? We always encourage clinicians to have a therapist of their own to help process, even if many of you don’t take the advice.

I shook my head. I’ll be okay, I said. I’ll take the day. I offered what I’m sure was a pathetic smile and stood up.

Are you sure you don’t want to speak with someone? This is heavy news, and I know I’m struggling with it.

I’ll let you know if I change my mind.

Please do.

I’m sorry about your loss too, whomever it was.

Take care of yourself, I’ll see you tomorrow.

I nodded, grasped the handle of her office door, and departed. I didn’t stop in my office, and instead, I went straight down the hall, through the front lobby, and out of the clinic. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone else, I felt like I didn’t have the words to give. My mind kept cycling through the four clients I’d lost. I didn’t have the bandwidth for anything else. I don’t even remember driving home that day, I don’t remember going into my house, and I don’t remember lying on the bed and falling asleep.

I dreamt of Raleigh, Booka, James, and Amy. I was standing at my back sliding glass door again, staring out into the oblivion of night as rain pierced what little illumination my porch light cast. I could see their faces in the dark, pale in the black and filled with sorrow. They watched me silently, their pallid cheeks soaked with rain. They didn’t speak or move so much as a blink, they just watched from the dark, bodiless.

It was only a week before it rained again. The news was filled with stories and conjecture about the recent and severe uptick in suicide rates across the world. Meteorologists were, at the same time, discussing strange rain patterns that seemed to be blanketing large swathes of land with no warning. Even places that historically received little, to no, precipitation like the Atacama Desert and the Rub al-Khali were suddenly being drenched.

It didn’t take long for other people on the internet to start drawing the same connection that I had between the bizarre instances of rain and suicides that followed. Conspiracy theories began swirling within days from all the fringes of the web. It was an alien virus, it was God’s punishment, it was biological warfare from the Chinese or Russians, and it was our government culling the white American population to replace us with other ethnic groups. The Great Replacement theory was my favorite one because it was so absurdly ridiculous. Every time someone sounded off about it, they were quickly corrected and told that the suicide rate was equal among all populations across the world, not just the whites of the U.S. But still, they persisted. It was funny, but equally troubling when you realized that these people believed the theory to be true with all their being.

The simple truth was that no one knew what was happening. Scientists had taken samples of the rainwater from various places to study and see if there were any particulates, bacteria, or foreign matter hidden within. But as far as anyone had reported, there was nothing detectable, which of course just led to more conspiracy theories. Because why would scientists or the government reveal anything to any of us? Not when they were trying to cull the white herd!

Even proclamations of fake news were curbed quickly as hospitals were spilling over with patients. There was no denying that people didn’t want to be a part of this planet anymore and were trying to exit any way they could. We just didn’t know the why of it other than a somewhat tangential connection to the rain. Maybe it was a culling of sorts, maybe it was the earth trying to rid itself of a few billion parasites.

I kept going to the clinic and I kept seeing my patients because despite the world feeling like it was unraveling all around us, I didn’t know what else to do. Half my patients stopped showing up, some from panic, some because they no longer breathed. The ones that did show could talk about little else other than what was happening in the world. They wanted to know if I heard anything not being said in the news, or if I thought it was the rain or something else. I would try to redirect them and reassure them, but it can be difficult to do when you also feel the same trepidation about everything.

These were people whom all had their own lives and their own problems they brought in with them every week. We’d discuss and dissect these same issues during almost every session. But then the rain came and that was all anyone could talk about. Collectively, we all cast aside our problems that now felt trivial in the face of the mass suicides and this ominous weather pattern that foretold it. Tragedy brings people together as much as it tears them apart.

When the rain fell again, half of our staff didn’t show up to the clinic the next day. Most called in, and some didn’t, which felt like an omen of what happened to them. Few clients came in as well, which left what staff was in the office to read and watch what bits of news they could. The reports of suicide were innumerable and some local papers weren’t even reporting anything. I’d been two hours late that day due to six different car wrecks in town on my drive over, most of which didn’t have a police presence to help direct traffic.

It felt like the early scenes of an apocalyptic film. Where police and ambulatory services were spread thin and chaos was erupting. It was only a matter of time before I felt like we’d be seeing some pillaging and rioting breaking out on the streets. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but you put people up against a wall and who knows how they’ll lash out.

When someone finally popped up on a local news stream it was a haggard-looking anchor named Mason Riley. His tie was loose around his neck and his white hair was a bit unkempt. His cheeks sagged into bulldog jowls. The man looked exhausted. He went on to state the facts we already knew, that there were record numbers of suicides overnight, numbering in the thousands. They urged everyone to stay home, and only venture out if necessary.

So, that’s what most did. Stores were closed due to staffing issues, restaurants stopped operating, and everything slowly shut down. People huddled in their homes and waited for the rain to fall again, they waited for the CDC or some other organization to give them answers. Of course, there were the naysayers who urged people to come out and live their lives, that the only thing amiss was the government trying to control us and tell us how to live our lives. There was no proof that staying indoors would stop anything from happening anyway, enough people had ended their lives inside their homes, dry from the rainfall.

I kept coming into the clinic and saw what patients would show up. Some of the other clinicians did as well and we did what we could, fearing each day that crept by would lead to another rainfall. For nearly three weeks we had only the usual late July weather. It was hot and dry, there were even some claims of drought in some states. People needed water, it was true, but what they didn’t want was the rain.

Things nearly went back to normal, hospitals settled down a bit and stores began to return to normal hours as people put aside their fear and ventured back out. Countless funerals and memorials were held and the obituary sections of the news felt endless. Little did we know at the time, that the obituaries would get far longer until no one was around to write them anymore.

In early August, dark clouds appeared in various places across the world, and our city was one of those places. The bright blue summer sky was suddenly taken hostage by these ominous blots that were as dark as spilled ink. Then came the thunder, the flashes of lightning, and finally, came the rain.

I remember people screaming at the sight of the clouds. They ran to the nearest shelter they could find the moment the downpour started. I was driving home from the clinic when it started, and I remember the tightness in my guts as the drops hit my windshield. Rain used to be so asinine, especially in Oregon, it was one of the most common things in the world. But now it felt like acid was crashing down from the sky to melt everyone where they stood.

Traffic became erratic as people began to frantically speed up to get out of the rain. Others were screaming and sprinting along the sidewalk to get inside. The rain quickly became a downpour and I flicked my windshield wipers on as high as they would go to try and see through it. I focused on my breathing, deep in and out through my teeth. I kept waiting for some sensation to come over me or some desire to suddenly end it all, but it didn’t come. There was only the drone of the rain beating against my car.

I came to a stop at a red light in an intersection downtown and was surprised to find that I was one of the few left on the road. The sidewalks were empty, but I could see people standing inside various businesses. I finally had a grasp on my anxiety and stopped my breathing exercise as I sat waiting for the traffic light to permit me to move. The static of the rain drowned out the radio and as I felt myself being lulled into its cacophony, someone on the sidewalk caught my eye.

It was like the dream I’d had the week before of the faces staring at me from the darkness of my backyard. Only this time, it was around a dozen people standing on the sidewalk on either side of the street. They stood like dark statues, watching me as I sat in my car. Their faces were pale and looked hollowed out as if their skulls were pushing against their faces. This time they weren’t just faces as they’d been in my yard.

They were all dressed in clothing that wasn’t out of the ordinary. It was only the faces and the emptiness in the eyes as they peered at me that sent ice through my veins. Were they not afraid of the rain? Were they in the throes of whatever trance the rain put people into? Did anyone in the cars around me notice these people? I asked myself these questions as I found myself unable to look away from all these forms along the sidewalk.

The rain’s hypnotizing white noise pulled me further from myself. It felt like my thoughts and control were slowly being snipped away like a marionette whose strings were cut away one at a time. I couldn’t stop hearing the rain, I couldn’t stop staring at these hollowed remnants of people on the sidewalk. It wasn’t until I saw someone I recognized that I somehow shook free of the trance.

She stood on the sidewalk near the passenger side of my car. The rain plastered her long, dirty blonde hair to her face, and I almost didn’t recognize her. Her once light blue eyes were now black and her face more sallow than it had been when I first started seeing her when her heroin addiction was only just starting to wane.

Amy, I muttered. Recognizing her snapped me from the clouding trance and hitched my breath. How could she be standing outside my car when she’d committed suicide just over a week before? I reached across to roll down my passenger window so that I could speak to her, then froze as I grasped the handle of the window roller. I couldn’t let the rain in, and I was afraid of her. Despite all the hours we’d spent together, working through all of the troubles Amy had, I was afraid.

The emptiness in her eyes, and the lack of expression on her face, sent my heart thumping. I waited a moment for her to move or make some kind of sign that she wanted me to roll down the window and speak to her. What would I say? I was so caught up in my thoughts and doubts that I was frozen. I could feel the drone of the rain starting to creep back into my head and stripping me of control.

The blare of a car horn behind me startled me. I looked ahead and saw that the traffic light was green and the cars in front of me were almost a block ahead. I looked back out of the passenger side window, but Amy was gone, as were all the other hollowed-out people on the sidewalk. I stepped on the gas and shook my head as if I could shake out the memories of what I’d just witnessed.

The rain didn’t let up that evening. I spent the night with the news playing on my laptop as the rain beat against the roof and siding of my house. Every story was the same, it was all about the rain, and what it could mean. By the time I went to bed, the stories of the rain were overwhelmed by the stories everyone feared. Once the stories of suicide started I shut the laptop and didn’t open it again. I couldn’t handle it that evening, the rain was scary enough as it was, but now to throw death into the mix…it was too much.

I feared what the world would look like when I woke the next morning. I feared what the numbers would be, how many people would end their own lives before the sun could rise again? I also feared whether or not I would take my own life. I felt no such desire as I laid down to sleep, but there was something that came with the rain. Some ethereal presence persuaded people that it was in their best interest to punch their mortal clocks.

The last thing I can recall from that night before I drifted to sleep was staring out the sliding glass door of my bedroom. I remember laying there and waiting for the pale faces of the dead to shimmer out of the darkness. I could hear the white static of the rain, the hypnotic drone. But before it could pull me into its embrace, sleep took me first.

Seeing as I’m relaying this tale now, I woke the next morning unharmed and still breathing. I refused to look at the news or any social media on my phone. I was too afraid to know what the toll was of the downpour from the day before. Instead, I showered, dressed, ate breakfast, and left to work at the clinic like I always did. I think I was trying to trick myself, if I treated it like any other morning, then surely that’s exactly what it would be.

The drive to work was met with no rush hour traffic. The streets were fairly empty save for a car here or there that crashed into a streetlight or smashed into other parked cars along the road. Bodies could be seen in the streets, laying sprawled out and gored with sharp crimson-stained instruments protruding from their chests or necks. Some still had their bloodied hands wrapped around the handles of the weapons, refusing to let go even as the last of their life left them.

I swerved around them as best I could and tried not to gawk for too long. At one intersection there was a large car wreck in the middle of it and I could see the broken bodies of the drivers crushed within windshields. A body hung from the nearby street light, swaying slightly in the morning breeze. How strong was your desire to die for you to climb a street light post with a rope in hand and then hang yourself from it? The young man looked lithe and athletic, so maybe the climb wasn’t that difficult for him, but good God it would be far easier to hang yourself from virtually anything else.

I remember the emptiness I felt as I drove to work that morning. The horror had transcended so far that it was as if my emotions were overloaded and I couldn’t process what I was seeing. The few living people I saw outside looked to be in as much of a daze as I was. The only ones that didn’t seem fazed by the carnage all around us were those with a singular agenda. I caught sight of a few groups of people looting from Best Buy and some other local shops nearby. I could hear the alarm sounding from Best Buy as people carried out boxes of TVs, laptops, and other electronics, but no police arrived to stop them.

When I got to the clinic I found it empty. The office space was barren and dark, a place that despite its best efforts, felt haunted now. I went to my office and plopped down at my desk with a deep sigh. I was ready to wake from this nightmare anytime now. I checked my voicemails, there weren’t any. I booted up my laptop and checked my email, it was also devoid of anything other than some spam.

I intentionally steered clear of clicking on the internet browser or looking at Twitter or Facebook on my phone. I knew there would be nothing there but misery. I was hiding from the truth, I knew, but I could see outside how bad things were, I didn’t need to know anything beyond that. I leaned back in my office chair and was startled so suddenly that I nearly fell back.

For a brief moment, I could’ve sworn I saw someone sitting on the sofa in my office. A dark shape with a pale face seated and ready to tell me their deepest fears and darkest secrets. But as I caught myself from toppling back in my chair and did a double take I saw nothing there. It was only the darkness of the office masquerading. It was strange how different a public space felt when it was vacant, almost as if any place could be haunted if it were silent enough.

My phone suddenly blared through the silence of the office. An alarm sound echoed through the halls and empty office spaces that signified an emergency of some kind or impending natural disaster. I pulled the phone from my pocket and looked at the screen as it burned with a bright red message that told me the most obvious thing I’d read in a while. It was a state of emergency message that directed people to stay inside and not venture outside unless necessary and casualties were being reported all over the area.

So much for avoiding the reality of the news, I thought. It comes blaring at you whether you want to read it or not. I closed the emergency message and stuffed my phone back into my pocket. I knew I needed to go back home, to wait out whatever this mess was… or wait till it was my turn to punch my ticket.

I shut my laptop and left my office, closing the door behind me felt like an act of finality in some way. I started to walk out of the clinic when a scraping sound caught my ear. I didn’t remember hearing it on my way in and I stopped to listen more intently. The sound emanated from Janice’s office. I crept over to the door like a child not wanting to wake their parents as they snuck out of the house.

The door to her office was closed and I put my ear to it to listen more closely. For a moment there was nothing, but then I heard it again, that slight scraping sound accompanied by a creaking. It was louder now that I had my ear to the door but still faint. Janice? I said aloud. My voice made me wince slightly as it broke the ghostly quiet of the office. Are you in there? I said. When there was no response I asked, Are you okay? Again, nothing, just the creaking and the scraping.

I opened the door, and I didn’t know what I expected to find, but in the circumstances the world had found itself in recently, I should’ve known.

Hanging just above her desk, was Janice. A creaking rope fastened through the tile ceiling and knotted around her neck. A neck that was twisted at a horrible angle. Her graying black hair covered most of her face, but I could still see the grimace of agony, I could still see the trail of spittle and drool caked onto the corners of her mouth. The smell of piss and shit hung heavy in the air and I assumed beneath her skirt were stained pantyhose and underwear from where her body evacuated its remnants during its death throes.

One of her black heels had clattered to the floor, while the other one remained on her foot. Its tip scraped back and forth gently over the top of her desk. Accompanied by the sound of the creaking rope, the music of suicide played through the dead silence of the office.

I thought about stopping at the store on my way home that day. I didn’t have much for provisions in my house outside of the usual week’s worth of food that I kept stocked in my kitchen, but the pessimist in me said that I wouldn’t need supplies for even that long. I also couldn’t get the image of Janice’s hanging corpse out of my mind. It was chilling and nearly crippling as it hung in my thoughts. How many people did I know that would be found similarly? Would there be anyone left to discover their bodies? Would there be anyone left to discover mine?

I drove by a Whole Foods Market on my way home and was about to turn into the parking lot, but I could see the shattered front windows from the road. I didn’t see anyone moving through the empty parking lot, but I assumed the place was probably picked clean. Instead, I continued driving back to my house, weaving through the crashed cars and, a few times, corpses in the street.

I’d always been a fan of apocalyptic fiction, but I have to tell you when you’re living in it, there’s nothing to be a fan of. The world wasn’t ending because of global warming or nuclear war, and the planet’s resources hadn’t yet dwindled either. No, we were, as a species, simply removing ourselves from the equation entirely. There was something in the rain, some terrible force that was driving us to this, I’d felt its pull a couple of times before.

Was it so terrible though? What did humans bring to the planet? We weren’t like bees pollinating flowers to encourage their growth. We were wasps, angry and stinging and destructive. We could be wiped away and the planet would be all the better for it. Maybe the rain was trying to solve a problem for the planet. Maybe this was the twenty-first century’s Black Death.

The truth was that we wouldn’t ever find any answers. Perhaps if anyone survives this there will be some scientist or historian that can investigate and discover what happened to us, what was in the rain that pushed us to our darkest self-destructive impulses. It would be a case study perhaps, some lesson for future generations on what to avoid doing. We’ve always been a reactive species, not pushing ourselves till our backs were against the wall, but maybe, just maybe this time that wouldn’t be enough.

In any case, when I did finally make it home, I parked in my garage and then set to sealing off my house. I didn’t live anywhere incredibly upscale, but once other places had been looted, there was no telling what the next targets would be. It wasn’t a Romero zombie flick outside, so I didn’t need to take off my doors and nail them up over the windows to keep the walking dead out. Instead, I just made sure that every window and door was locked and that my alarm system was armed. Nothing state of the art, I know, but it brought me small peace of mind.

I flopped onto the couch and turned on the tv, feeling somewhat ready to face the news of how bad things were. There was no local news, and every channel was dead, not so much as a generic Stay Tuned message. Once I moved beyond the local news to nationwide, I was able to get more. The news anchors were talking about the countless reported suicides in areas where the paranormal rain phenomenon was happening or happened recently. Some cities had gone completely dark, despite efforts to reach out.

It was nothing new, it was just a reaffirmation of how dire things had suddenly become. Three weeks before we were all living our lives like normal, and now it all was unraveled. We were going out with a whimper and by our hand. I had no one to share the end of the world with. My father was nearly a decade dead from an aneurysm in his brain and I was estranged from my mother and siblings. Work always took precedence over everything else in my life and destroyed the few romantic relationships I’d had. This was the lonely existence I’d created for myself, and it was as painful as it was a relief. At least I wouldn’t have to see anyone I cared for killing themselves.

It didn’t take long before I’d tuned out what they were saying and instead, I closed my eyes and within minutes drifted to sleep. I dreamt of the dead again, they were standing in the rain, lining the dilapidated streets, and all staring directly at me. They were sopping in rainwater and their pallid faces were sunken. They did not speak nor motion toward me, but all the same, I could feel them beckoning me to join them.

It’s only been three days since the last rainfall, but already the sky is darkening and the rumbling of thunder vibrates through the bones of my house. I’m trying to finish writing this as quickly as I can, just in case there’s anyone left out there that can find it. It doesn’t matter who I was, I’m just another body to be discovered or lost to time as my remains wither to dust. The act of writing this has simply kept me preoccupied as I’ve waited. It’s funny, isn’t that life in a nutshell? Keeping ourselves busy until we die? Forgive my nihilism, but I’m not a believer in anything beyond the physical world, even after all that’s happened and the things I’ve seen.

There it is, the first patters of rain. I can hear it splashing on the roof and tinkling against the windows. The clouds are obsidian outside and it’s casting the world in shadow despite it being mid-afternoon. The static sound of it breaking upon the earth is peaceful, I can feel it lulling me into a trance again. I don’t want it to hurt, I’ve always been a coward when it comes to pain, so I made sure to prepare for when I’m no longer myself.

There’s a full bottle of whiskey beside me and a bottle full of pills that I’ve mixed up from everything I had in my medicine cabinet. This is America after all, too many of us are walking pharmacies because it’s easier to treat the symptoms than the cause. I hope this cocktail of pharmaceuticals will do the trick and I can just drift off.

I heard a gunshot down the road. When I went to the window to look out, the only thing I could see was a house at the end of my street burning. Someone must’ve slicked the whole interior in gasoline for it to be burning like that in this weather. It’s like a beacon burning in the darkness of the storm. Self-immolation seems like a terrible way to go. Feeling the agonizing lick of flames until your nerve endings are burned away. No thank you, I’ll stick to my cocktail of pills and whiskey.

It’ll be nice, won’t it? Drifting off to sleep and never waking, I mean. I imagine it’ll be like it was before I was born, that I won’t even know that I’m dead. I remember telling that to patients when they talked about dying and what I thought it would be like. The thing is, I won’t ever know if that’s the truth. After all, I won’t know I’m dead.

The rain is falling harder, almost like it’s trying to shatter through the glass of my windows to get in here. The droning sound of it is so loud I can barely hear myself think. It feels like I’m falling asleep, I can see the faces outside my living room windows. There’s Amy, Raleigh, Booka, and James, all of my patients are huddled outside. They look so empty and sad, like starved orphans drenched in the rain.

Among the hollowed faces is another. One that I recognize because it’s the same one that looks back at me in the mirror. Only this one is as pale and withered as the others, and it’s also the only one in the crowd that’s smiling.

The thunder growls through the white noise of rain.

I can’t look away from my ghostly reflection.

I can feel my fingers twisting the cap of the whiskey bottle.

It’s not me doing it.

I am a marionette.

I’m so tired.

Pills rattle.

I’m not here.

About Contributing author: Channing Cornwall

Channing Cornwall is the author of over ten novels including, ANATHEMA, HELL CAME WITH HER, THE WORLD CARRIED ON, BREATHED OUT BY GOD, and DEVILS IN THE CONFESSIONAL. He's also produced a short story collection, WOLVES, a poetry collection, THE FAMILY GHOST, and a play, APARTMENT OF THE FEIGN. He's been an avid writer and reader since childhood when he was stapling pieces of notebook paper together in order to write his own comic books. When his head isn't in the clouds, piecing together his next story, he spends his time with his wife, Vanessa, and their two pups, Dizzy and Reese.

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