Matt Rowan: 1 Short Story
The Apparent Weather-Makers
The whip of a lightning bolt traced across the sky and touched down on the PNC Bank, right where Ted said it would. The crack of thunder followed right after.
“Behold and maybe fear my power,” Ted announced, a little too blase, a touch of nonchalance that came across as arrogance. It was a joke. He’d been needling Nicko ever since Nicko read him an aphorism by Nietzsche, in specific this:
Just as the people secretly assume that he who understands the weather and can forecast it a day ahead actually makes the weather, so, with a display of superstitious faith, even the learned and cultivated attribute to great statesmen all the important changes and turns of events that take place during their term of office as being their own work...
“I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing,” Nicko said. “Weather in the passage I quoted is the illustrative part of an analogy that has the look and feel of truth, despite your superhuman power or powers, which don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m not impressed.”
“And now the rain will stop,” Ted said. The rain stopped, not immediately but there was a gradual, noticeable slowing from the time Ted had issued his declaration to the time rainfall completely ceased—like turning the knob of a faucet very slowly.
“Why don’t you do this all the time?” Nicko said, “You realize you could be like one of the X-Men with these powers?”
“The X-Men have someone like me, Storm. They’re also fictional. Also, this is more intuitive, less stable. I can’t sustain my weather control powers. I can’t direct them, either. They sometimes show when I need them, like just now. That lightning bolt showed up. So did the rain’s ceasing.
It was more of a sensation than any true communication, control.” Ted sighed, “Or maybe I’m just a good guesser, lots of lucky guesses.”
“There’s really no difference, huh—when you get down to it?”
“I suppose it depends on whether you’re a more skeptical kind of person or you maintain some belief in the spectacular,” Ted paused, eyes searching. He continued slowly, quietly, almost muttering the words to himself, “I’m beginning to think there’s not a difference, yeah.”
Later, though, after Nicko had dropped him off at home, Ted said to himself, “Nicko believes I have powers.”
He went to his sofa chair, sat, and turned the TV to the Weather Channel. There was the Weather Lady, object of desire. Never made in his mind to be anything but an abstraction, a
a living representation of the Petrarchan qualities of his true relationship with weather.
He went to bed that night dreaming dreams of the Weather Lady. Of the rain she foretold. Of sun she vouchsafed would be back, given time. Of tornadoes elsewhere.
He awoke to learn that during the night the Weather Lady had been taken. The article on the internet detailing her abduction was vague, but it said a witness had seen her leave her workplace and disappear in a fog that lasted mere seconds. Then the fog was gone and so was she.
The witness had been held under suspicion of having played some role in the abduction, until another witness came forward and said, “He couldn’t have done nothing” in regard to the first witness. And the second witness, as far as anyone could tell, had no reason to lie or vouch for the first witness, as they were complete strangers to one another. The second witness had a good track record of always being an upstanding friend and member of his community. The community he was from was generally admired for producing, among its members people, you could rely on.
And when Ted watched the article about the abduction’s embedded video, it showed the news commentators debating and vetting the second witness’s honesty credentials, though all agreed his credentials were good at the very minimum. They cited instances in the past of his honesty, such as admitting he’d never successfully climbed the climbing rope to the gymnasium ceiling during high school, getting a quote from his high school gym teacher who said, “Oh yeah, he could never get up there, though he tried very hard many times.”
I’ve never been responsible for the weather, Ted thought. What it does and what I do, those two things are separate, which was a pretty guilty thing to think, he realized.
His thoughts didn’t stop there, though. Ted knew he was being followed by storm clouds. He felt their presence even when he couldn’t see them. And then sure enough, out of obscurity, they’d appear for the purpose of taunting him. Yes. Had to be taunting.
“Don’t you want to see what we’ve gotten you?” Words hidden in tendrillar flashes of lightning. He knew these weren’t the bad workings of his imagination. He wasn’t simply seeing things, though he might still be losing his composure.
He went to Nicko. He figured Nicko would have some helpful insight, probably stolen from Nietzsche, probably. The insight would be drawn from what Nicko read, which was Nietzsche mainly.
“I think I’m not the person to be asking, really. I don’t read a lot or really deliberately. When I do read it’s mainly for gems. Things that are good in conversation. Haven’t you noticed how good I am in conversation?”
“Lend me your book, then.”
“I really only have the one. But sure. Here. Take it.”
“Generous of you, thanks.”
Ted held the book and read its title. Human, All Too Human.
“Well, I am,” Ted said.
“Certainly in some ways,” Nicko smiled. “Aren’t we all, though?”
“Please, Nicko. You don’t believe I have actual powers. Like, real ones?”
“No,” Nicko said, unconvincingly. He seemed disappointed by something that went beyond the nature of their conversation as if life had slowly unfurled a great big disappointment. in Ted’s mind, the thought of mysteries solved and wonders ceased. Nicko seemed to Ted prepared entirely to chase after a phantom, this delusion. The delusion of control in all things, whether supernatural or everyday.
It was fun to imagine control could be had.
Nicko hadn’t heard about the Weather Lady. Ted filled him in on the details.
“What are you intuiting now?” Nicko said.
“The weather is close.”
“Well, that’s something. And the Weather Lady?”
“Probably with the weather, right along with it. But who can know? It’s equally possible I’m losing my mind.”
Nicko nodded.
“I have great faith in your abilities, whatever they are exactly. The question becomes, how much faith do you have in them? Yes? Have you considered that unconsciously maybe you’ve had the weather take the poor woman away for you?”
“Why would you even ask that?”
And just like that, Nicko began to rain. Glared at Ted. A thunderstorm. Peeled away skin and the lingering tatters of dress, all the affectations of being human.
“This is one of those things not easily solved?” Nicko said, now a cloud in the middle of a room.
“This was never about her. She was always your figment. Now you decide if I am too, and if a figment, of what exactly?”
Ted could think of nothing. Easy sometimes. As natural as any response given the right set of circumstances.
Nicko was snowing now, whipping the wind.
“I could be doing your bidding, you know? You could be ruling the world or anything. Give yourself the chance,” Nicko’s words were all around Ted, echoing.
What is this I’ve done? Ted was able, at last, to coherently think. But that was it.
Too frightened for anything more.
He was whisked through glass out into the streets, out into the world, batted back and forth against the forces of unseasonable cold -- until Ted was nothing but precipitation, no different from any other drop of freezing rain.
Matt Rowan lives in Los Angeles. He founded and edits Untoward. He’s author of the collections, Big Venerable (CCLaP, 2015), Why God Why (Love Symbol Press, 2013) and another, How the Moon Works, forthcoming from Cobalt Press in 2020. He’s also a contributing writer and voice actor for The Host podcast series. His work has appeared in Always Crashing, >kill author, Another Chicago Magazine, Split Lip, Booth Journal, Electric Literature, Necessary Fiction and SmokeLong Quarterly, among others.