The Raft

"It's still raining." Her soft voice barely made an impact over the constant sound of rain on the roof overhead.

"Of course it's still raining."

"But it has to stop raining some day right?" She was still hopeful. She pulled back the string on the blinds to look outside. It was consistently dark, it made the water look black. A permanent stream of water replaced the roads, and everything that wasn't at least two stories tall disappeared from view. Soon, everyone would need to move up to the third stories to be safe from the flooding.

"It doesn't have to." He hardly even moved. He just watched whatever movies he could find all day long.

"We should make a boat."

"That's stupid."

"If we make a boat, we could find where it's not raining. Come on let's go."

"If there's a place where it's not raining, then it's probably already crowded with people who had the same idea."

She grumbled and paced around the room some more. "I think I'm gonna go outside for a bit."

"Don't go too far."

She slid into a poncho and climbed the stairs to the roof of the house. The sound of the rain blocked out any other noise. It pounded against the roof, splashed into the streams, rattled the windows. The clouds above were so thick if she didn't have a watch she wouldn't know the sun was supposed to be out. The water looked like a flow of oil or ink pouring down the hill. Nobody else was out. Not that she could really see very far in the darkness, but she knew from the silence, from the stillness that no one remotely near her ever came outside. She was either the only one, or the last one.

She stepped back inside and hung the poncho up to dry. "I think we should make a boat, and see where the river takes us."

For the first time in weeks, he looked up at her. "Are you crazy? We could die!"

"What's the difference if we're not even living? We can survive forever, we've proven that. But are we living? What are we doing here?"

He stayed quiet.

"We need to leave, and if you aren't coming with me, I'll go alone."

"We can't leave... This is the only place where we're safe."

"If we can't, then I will. I'll be on the roof, building my boat." She marched back upstairs. The last he ever heard from her was the door shutting, once again blocking out all the sounds of the rain.