The Sunshine Girl

“Rain should be refreshing. By principal, that which refreshes the earth and life should be just that...refreshing. It doesn’t matter if it has side effects that can be bad, that too much can be deadly. Any good thing outside of moderation is like that! But...Any good thing in moderation is refreshing, because that is the nature of moderation. That is why moderation is so...good. Any good thing in good moderation should be refreshing...because moderation is refreshing, and that’s why it is good. Why would that even have to be debated? Rain should be refreshing, almost always, when in moderation. This is Georgia... Rain should be refreshing here. It is... It is. I’m determined to believe...it is.”

These were the words Hannah spoke to herself as she walked along the slick sidewalk in the community, which was currently under the cover of darkness and being showered by a leisurely night time rain. There were clouds obscuring the stars, and the yellow moon shone eerily from its place among them. Looking up through the hair which was plastered against her forehead and brow, Hannah smiled at the beauty of the almost serene night. She preferred the sunny days to rainy nights, yes, but she could appreciate all forms of weather. Besides, even if her pajama nightgown grew soaked in the warm rain, she enjoyed the walking and preferred it to shivering in bed in wake of nightmares. And, she did have on her rainboots.

Hannah truly did like West Harbor at night. It was currently a little after ten, and while there were usually people straggling around at this point, the rain had driven almost everyone inside. So, the empty streets with their bright lamps and neat hedges made a picture perfect neighborhood, like some twisted version of cookie cutter neighborhood in which she grew up. ‘I had a corner house,’ she thought as she rounded a corner then. ‘It made me feel like... It made me feel special.’ She sniffed and closed her eyes, pausing there on the sidewalk and wiping her wet face with her equally wet hands. “Whatever happened to the neighborhood?” she asked herself aloud. “It seemed so much...sadder, when I went home. Stupid fucking broken dreams everywhere...”

“I don’t want that life,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be normal or average or to have all those silly regrets. I don’t want to die malcontent like daddy did. I don’t want to watch my life pass me by like mom did, only to feel nothing but wistful helplessness later. I don’t want that life... And Amber. She doesn’t want that life either. Damn it...” Thinking of her sister brought a deeper sadness over her, and a shudder of horror as she thought of the dream which had caused her to be here, out in the rain now. Amber had died, and she had watched ravens picking her body apart. ‘There was so much blood... Black, oozing blood like oil...’ She shook her head and forced herself to continue walking.

When she came to the end of the street, she turned and looked back down the way she had walked, and how the pavement curved and disappeared into some point in the distance. The normalcy of it seemed like some cruel satire in comparison to the people who were confined within the cute, identical homes with their perfect lawns and little impersonal touches. Hannah closed her eyes, squeezing them tight like a child in a haunted house, and wished it would all just go away. She felt a deep guilt resting on her heart as she considered what little impact she was surely making on the people there. She wanted to help everyone, to solve their problems, and see them on the path of life they deserved. It was a silly, childishly hopeless dream, and perhaps that was why she felt so crushed and disillusioned now.