From the article archive
The Tourist: When it Rains
When it Rains
The blue neon sign soaked in a languid bath of late summer rain. Every so often it would flicker and dance, a mockery of life that mirrored the faces of the crowds that passed by on the sidewalk below.
The doorway of the club was visible in between pedestrian masses and it was a sure bet that the call I had made earlier would send Carnegie out on the street. He wouldn't be able to resist the possibility of getting his hands on the man that had taken away his best chance for getting out of this place. Only, it hadn't been a man.
Grayson had been the stoolie, the squealer, the loose lips that sank Carnegie's crime syndicate. Amanda Grayson was the closest thing I had to a friend in this steel and concrete hell they call The Purge. Saving her from Carnegie's thugs had been easy enough, but I couldn't save her from the genetic coding.
Every sorry soul that's sent here has an expiration date force coded into their genetic structure. The powers that be refer to it as the 'End of Sentencing Date'. Supposedly, if you've been a good enough little boy or girl before your date comes up the genetic coding will be repealed and you get a jump-ship ride off of The Purge. It would make a nice bedtime story to tell the kids, if the inmates weren't all sterilized. No one in the history of The Purge has ever had a date repealed.
What Carnegie didn’t know is that Grayson’s time had expired two days ago. He also didn’t know that I had found his oh-so-secret black market doctor and had put enough weight down to make him snap. All Carnegie’s secrets became my secrets. Our secrets.
Carnegie was a vicious bastard, even more so now since he was sure they had cranked his date forward when he was taken in for questioning and punishment. It didn’t matter much to me. I was going to hurt him, and not because that’s what my employer wanted. This became personal a long time ago. I was going to hurt him for Amanda.
Her voice, that deep whiskey voice, resides behind my eyes like some mnemonic phantom. She whispered my name. Twice she whispered it. Then simply “It’s my time.”, and she was gone. I held her for a long time, trying to keep her warm beneath the sheets that covered us. Didn’t matter, I knew it didn’t but I held on anyway.
Knowing what Carnegie knew, that there is a way off this rock and a way to get the clamp on my lifespan removed, didn’t make me feel any better. I was cold. Cold, empty, and the sight of Carnegie as he came out of the club with a couple of his half-ass bodyguards in tow just pissed me off.
The only sound I made as I followed them came from the low hum of my sonic disruptor as it charged up to full capacity. It was only a safety precaution though. I moved with the unnatural ease that only comes from having enhanced reflexes. I was going to follow them to the place I had set up for our little party. Even if Carnegie got antsy and changed his mind it wouldn’t matter. They were out on the streets now, where I do my best hunting. It was still raining, it almost never stopped in The Purge, and I was a shadow between raindrops. The blue neon flickered in a mocking salute as I slid away into the wet gray city.
Amanda always used to ask me, “So, do you think about me much?” Then she would watch me from the corner of her eye and her lip would come up in a half smile the way it always did when she already knew what I was going to say. I can still feel the words on my lips, “Only when it rains baby, only when it rains.”
The blue neon sign soaked in a languid bath of late summer rain. Every so often it would flicker and dance, a mockery of life that mirrored the faces of the crowds that passed by on the sidewalk below.
The doorway of the club was visible in between pedestrian masses and it was a sure bet that the call I had made earlier would send Carnegie out on the street. He wouldn't be able to resist the possibility of getting his hands on the man that had taken away his best chance for getting out of this place. Only, it hadn't been a man.
Grayson had been the stoolie, the squealer, the loose lips that sank Carnegie's crime syndicate. Amanda Grayson was the closest thing I had to a friend in this steel and concrete hell they call The Purge. Saving her from Carnegie's thugs had been easy enough, but I couldn't save her from the genetic coding.
Every sorry soul that's sent here has an expiration date force coded into their genetic structure. The powers that be refer to it as the 'End of Sentencing Date'. Supposedly, if you've been a good enough little boy or girl before your date comes up the genetic coding will be repealed and you get a jump-ship ride off of The Purge. It would make a nice bedtime story to tell the kids, if the inmates weren't all sterilized. No one in the history of The Purge has ever had a date repealed.
What Carnegie didn’t know is that Grayson’s time had expired two days ago. He also didn’t know that I had found his oh-so-secret black market doctor and had put enough weight down to make him snap. All Carnegie’s secrets became my secrets. Our secrets.
Carnegie was a vicious bastard, even more so now since he was sure they had cranked his date forward when he was taken in for questioning and punishment. It didn’t matter much to me. I was going to hurt him, and not because that’s what my employer wanted. This became personal a long time ago. I was going to hurt him for Amanda.
Her voice, that deep whiskey voice, resides behind my eyes like some mnemonic phantom. She whispered my name. Twice she whispered it. Then simply “It’s my time.”, and she was gone. I held her for a long time, trying to keep her warm beneath the sheets that covered us. Didn’t matter, I knew it didn’t but I held on anyway.
Knowing what Carnegie knew, that there is a way off this rock and a way to get the clamp on my lifespan removed, didn’t make me feel any better. I was cold. Cold, empty, and the sight of Carnegie as he came out of the club with a couple of his half-ass bodyguards in tow just pissed me off.
The only sound I made as I followed them came from the low hum of my sonic disruptor as it charged up to full capacity. It was only a safety precaution though. I moved with the unnatural ease that only comes from having enhanced reflexes. I was going to follow them to the place I had set up for our little party. Even if Carnegie got antsy and changed his mind it wouldn’t matter. They were out on the streets now, where I do my best hunting. It was still raining, it almost never stopped in The Purge, and I was a shadow between raindrops. The blue neon flickered in a mocking salute as I slid away into the wet gray city.
Amanda always used to ask me, “So, do you think about me much?” Then she would watch me from the corner of her eye and her lip would come up in a half smile the way it always did when she already knew what I was going to say. I can still feel the words on my lips, “Only when it rains baby, only when it rains.”
Recovered from the Gaming Outpost database backup. Original wording is preserved; damaged punctuation and presentation markup have been repaired. Historical links without a local match point to the Internet Archive.