wytchcroft

Moving through the rain-belt I felt at first that I had fallen asleep, listening to the soporific sound of the droplets bouncing off the cockpit windshield, bouncing off the glass. Sleep would have been desirous, for while I hunched in my unsleeping daze I became almost hysterically sensitised to the very sound I hoped would soothe my journey fraught nerves. The rain... it was... determined.

What began as a washing noise, calling like the sea wind from inside a shell, became next the dash of pebbles, (an impatient visitor perhaps, throwing them up at the reluctant window of my New England home) - and louder yet and greater - the drops become a hail and the hail slithering and scratching at the glass like the determined teeth of a rodent legion, gnashing with animal intent, burrowing into the edges where the leather seals were soft and entry only a matter of time. Rats - clawing and gnawing with the same dread sense of purpose they had shown when bringing down such proud edifices of science as the air pump railway system, sabotaged for good and leaving wide the chasm, to be filled by corporate steam and the sulphur breath of mammon. Merciless.

I could do nothing but howl myself as the aeroplane dipped and swung under the weight of the attack, plunging low into the dark bank of clouds.

Oh pity me sweet heavens - but that a sign of light might save my mind from such a madness.
Let there be light!

And there was light.

And the light was a glowering thing of red that opened like a wound across the flesh of the cloud. A broiling hot sunset fire into which we must surely plunge...