Death Waits Only for the Rain

( Prose )    
   
   
The summer’s humidity creeps the simulated sidings of the trailer home that sits in its rental stall on pilings at the below-sea level park near a train trestle towering over a flat, dry riverbed, silhouetted against the naked glare of a full moon.    
   
In times past, long before there was a drought, heavy rains that came annually like clockwork would fill the riverbed with season’s deluge like an El Niño. It would cascade its banks, and had always caught park residents’ children unaware; playing too close with tragic results as the river’s path went on for miles down to the sea.    
   
On this particular night pregnant with fear in the extreme heat of stagnated, swollen air, unable to take on more baggage from what the mercury indicated from the house trailer’s interior; a man and woman were lying uneasy, side by side, on a queen mattress covered with disheveled and flattened gray sheets stained with their sweat, while all of the pillows had been shoved off and were scattered on the floor of a cramped bedroom at the far end of their home dimly lit by moonlight.    
   
Yet now the macramé curtains are closed, and no windows are cracked open, nor is the brass ceiling fan turning.  There were two empty glasses the couple had imbibed from hours ago during a moment toward a promise of lovemaking, no longer swaddled in the glow of the wine’s velour.    
   
He planted a long kiss, and the pain that always mystified them, passed.  Her pale body, almost thin, turned away even though their bodies still touched, pretending to sleep while listening to his forced breathing. Struck with a palsy and trying not to speak.    
   
Alarmed when she moved aside, reaching for the cunning in its metallic feel of cold smallness. She hasn’t noticed his breathing has stopped. The words are halting as his voice breaks,    
"I beg you, not tonight." The bed trembles as he shakes.    
   
She wants to hate him at this moment, but instead;  "Darling, don't speak of the dead."    
   
Then comes a sudden rasp as his throat closes in on itself, "You're not dead yet!"    
   
She turns to face his profile and makes him see as she offers it, then presses it into his clammy hand with a terrible resolve, "I need your help. Consider this a medicine to help me sleep".      
   
He can hardly see as his tears well up. Her eyes glisten as she helps him load only one chamber. She’s distracted how it sounds like rain is beginning to patter on the roof... and never hears him whisper    
   
"Oh God, forgive me..."