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My Little Raindrop
By Kristopher Monroe
I watched a meteorite fall out of the sky the other night. Or maybe it was an asteroid. I'm not sure what the difference is. It zoomed down past the electrical wires and demolished the tree house in the neighbor's yard. It was like a blast of rain in a heat wave, because I'd been wishing all day for something interesting to happen. Earlier in the day my boss had told me he wasn't going to need me for a few weeks and maybe I should look for some other work in the mean time, so I'd just been sitting on the porch drinking beer I couldn't afford and wishing on a star, so to speak, for something interesting to happen.
I ran and got my oven mitts and went over to retrieve it before anyone knew what happened. Dorris and Phil were out of town and I think little Jimmy was staying down the street, so I figured I'd just play dumb if anyone asked any questions when they got back. This was my personal gift from the heavens. My drop of rain in the drought that is currently my life.
I put the meteorite in the oven and turned up the heat as high as it would go to keep it from cooling off too much. I called my friend Beenie, who's an astrologist, or astronomist, or something, to see if he would come over and identify its origin and whatnot. I thought that he could tell me what galaxy it came from, but he said he was asleep and couldn't do it until after work. I said okay and tried to emphasize the sadness in my voice, but he just hung up. We weren't really that great of friends.
I tried looking it up online, but it was no easy task. I ended up looking at porn for over two hours before my computer overheated and turned itself off. When I went to the oven to check on the meteorite, I found that it had melted through the two shelves of grating and was burrowing itself into the broiler underneath. I grabbed the mitts, which were already singed, and put it on the counter to cool. Almost immediately it started burning a hole into the countertop, so I ran to get the tongs from the fireplace, grabbed it off the counter and ran and threw it into the fireplace before it destroyed my kitchen. The tongs were bent almost in half from the heat by the time I threw the meteorite into the ash.
"Hello?"
"Yeah, hey Greg. You still want me to come over and look at that thing?"
It was Beenie.
"Yeah, it's melting through all my stuff. I threw it in the fireplace. I'm wondering if it's radioactive or something."
"You sure it's not just a frozen heap of turd that fell out of an airplane? That stuff can be pretty toxic."
"No, man. It melted right through my oven."
"Hmm..."
Click.
Beenie never came over, but he did email me a chart he found on the internet with a list of all the known comets and asteroids plotted out on it. When Dorris and Phil got back in town, they came by to ask if I knew anything about the hole in their backyard where the tree house used to be. By that point my arms had started hurting really bad and I had a migraine that wouldn't go away and I wanted to tell them what happened, but I couldn't. I just stared at both of them and told them I'd been out of town myself, but I'd keep an eye out.
"Well, alright Greg," said Phil, like someone had died. "Please do let us know if you hear anything. That tree house meant a lot to Jimmy and it looks like someone dropped a bomb on it."
In fact, I hadn't seen Jimmy play in that tree house in years. He'd gotten really fat and waddled when he walked, so I wasn't convinced he could have crawled up in there even if he wanted to. I would have killed to have a tree house like that when I was younger, but I just nodded my head like I cared and told them I'd keep my ears and eyes open.
"Be sure you do," said Phil. He squeezed my shoulder for emphasis and made a face when he felt how mushy it was. "You okay, Greg? Feels like you got a little bit of muscle atrophy goin’ on there."
"Oh, I'm fine. Just been feeling a little under the weather. That's all."
"Well, you might want to get that looked at. Feels like muscle atrophy in there. Might be a sign of something wrong."
He punched me in the arm before he left and it was like play-doh. His knuckles squished into my skin and made an imprint that I could see when I rolled up my sleeve. I just shut the door and went back to my spot in front of the fireplace. The meteorite had melted all the iron in the hearth and had been giving off a strange stink in the last few days, but I was stuck with it. We’d bonded. Somehow, in a weird way, it made me feel not so lonely, even though it gave me a horrible headache. I know it was just a rock, but we were somehow melded and I felt like there was a little bit of whatever power it had was inside me. Unfortunately, I was melting along with everything else it had touched.
I kicked off my shoes and propped my feet up on the brick in front of my little rock from outer space. Man did that hurt. My feet immediately started to blister and my bones felt like they were liquefying. But it also felt good in a way. Somehow the garbage in the kitchen didn't smell so bad and the bills on the nightstand didn't seem so important.
"Jumpin’ Jeehosaphat, Greg! What on earth happened to you?”
Beenie had come over to get back the video game he’d let me borrow a month earlier.
"It's this asteroid thing. I think it's giving me some health issues."
I told him about my migraines, which were so bad I couldn't even see straight. Of course, when I could see I hated looking in the mirror, because what I saw kind of scared me. That’s probably why Bennie had that look on his face. My hair had been falling out for a week, my eyes looked like Dawn of the Dead, and I was so weak I could barely walk. I mostly just sat in front of the fireplace and listened to my slow heartbeat, thinking what it must be like to hurdle through space like a fireball.
"Jeezus H. Christ, Greg. You look like death warmed over. And your place looks like shit.” He looked around my apartment and wrinkled his nose. “And something smells like rancid meat in here."
"That's probably me."
"Jeezus, man. How can you live like this? You need to go see a doctor. Do you want me to call an ambulance or something?"
"No. I’m fine. I only feel like shit when I’m not in front of the fireplace."
"Hmm… well, okay. Can I get that video game while I’m at it?"
Once Beenie left, I went back to the fireplace. No matter how much it hurt, it seemed to fade into the background once I sat there for a few minutes. I could tell my body was looking pretty rough, but I felt so much different than I had before. I felt like I was crossing a barrier and stepping into some other place. My bad credit, my non-existent car and girlfriend, my apartment, and everything else were all on one side and I was on the other. I was like a guy who was dying of thirst and was given a tall, cool glass of rainwater. It’s just that the drops happened to be radioactive. My stomach churned and my intestines felt like they were sliding around on the inside. I felt like I needed to get closer to the meteorite, so I crawled into the fireplace and cuddled up.
END
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