It was a gloomy day.
Five blocks.
Four blocks.
Three blocks.
There were still two blocks left to go to Jareth’s apartment when the raindrop splattered against the side of his head; hot, humid and hard as a fist. He swore badly and glared up at the sky, the entirety of his scrawny, rusty body simmering with anger and leftover grease. The big round rainclouds that had been ambling closer all day were right above him now; pregnant with water and fatter than seals.
“Go AWAY!” he shouted up at them. “Go away NOW. We don’t want you here! You’re just going to get in the way! Why can’t it be nice and dry all the time, huh? Why’ve you got to screw things up?”
The clouds reared up in slight surprised into a minor thunderhead and spat to themselves for a while as they pondered this. And then a very long, fine, wispy bit of cloud gingerly unspooled itself and slunk down the long, long way down to Jareth’s place, and spoke to him in a most reedy and foggy voice.
And what it asked was: “why don’t you like us?”
“NO ONE likes you!” shouted Jareth angrily into the cloudlet’s face. “You’re ruining summer! You’re ruining my walk home! You’re ugly and stupid and the weatherman warns me about you! Go away!”
The cloudlet visibly shrank under this torrent of abuse and retracted itself skyward, where the rest of the rainmass waited anxiously. There was a silence, an exchange of furtive and cumulus whispers, and a great and soft sob that torn at the air. Then WOOSH, the raindrops halted and the sky faded out into a clear, soft blue with a confused and lonely sun left in the middle of it.
It was a nice day.
There was not a cloud in the sky. The beaches filled. The lawn chairs overflowed. Sunscreen was sold out. Swimsuits were worn with reckless abandon in places where swimming was unlikely to occur. Many beverages were consumed. Sprinklers were extracted from the depths of garages and placed in pride upon lawns where they were danced through by shrieking children.
Jareth stayed home alone and played video games.
“This is pretty nice,” said a farmer. “But I’m a bit worried. I sort of was relying on that rain. Plants need that. You know, to stay alive. Think it’ll come back?”
But nobody was listening to her, and the city went to bed tanned and happy.
It was a very nice day.
There were still no clouds in the sky at all. The temperature was quite hot, even in the shade. Pets and children were kept away from parked cars. Sprinklers were replaced with just hoses. Cars were washed by hand as an excuse to get damp. The city’s water bills ballooned into full-blown, full-named williams.
Jareth ordered pizza in. He did not tip.
“This is a little warm,” said a homeless woman. “If it stays like this it could get worse out here. You know, it’s sort of dangerous. Especially if you don’t have a place to stay. Maybe we should be a bit worried.”
And a couple people nodded their heads, but on the whole they agreed it was better than the alternative, and better sunburned than soaked, and so on and so on.
It was a VERY nice day.
The sky was a blue lens held by a curious and somewhat cruel child above an anthill. Roadkill toasted and exploded within an hour of its creation. Corn popped in fields, still growing. Eggs burnt on sidewalks. Sweat crystallized on the collective skin of the city. Some of the buildings were crying softly to themselves.
Jareth slept in, then complained to his landlord about the upstairs neighbours being noisy at 1 PM.
“This is extremely bad,” said a manager. “I mean, really bad. Half my staff is at home with sunstroke. The other half is at home trying not to get sunstroke. And I’m going to stay home tomorrow because I, too, have sunstroke, and would appreciate a lie-in. Maybe we should do something about this.”
People were inclined to agree with him, but they all had sunstroke and put it off ‘till later.
The next day was a very, very, very nice day and it was all too much.
Jareth heard a knock at his door, opened it ready to complain to his landlord, and was face to face with half the city.
“I didn’t do it,” he said automatically. The looks on their faces told him that yes, sadly, he WAS still a very bad liar. It was his eyes. They wobbled around like indecisive flies.
“Look,” said the manager, “this is nothing personal.”
“Except for the personal insult you delivered three days ago,” clarified the homeless woman. “But we’re going to fix that.”
“And it’s nothing personal,” reassured the farmer. “Now grab his goddamned legs.”
Jareth put up about half of a fight, but it was the smaller half, and it didn’t accomplish much. On and on he kicked and carped and whined and thrashed through the boiled streets of the charred-out city. He kvetched down the highway and bitched through the doors and in the elevator he complained and it was only when they stepped onto the roof of the tallest skyscraper they could find that he guessed there might be a problem.
“But it’s RAIN,” he protested, as they lashed him to the building’s antenna, arms and legs. “Nobody likes RAIN. It’s BORING.”
The city, both on the roof and in the streets, considered this. Then it flipped him off and hurried indoors. Already the sky was beginning to bubble up in grey fog, building up and up and up and UP
It was a gloomy, overcast week after that, where the gutters overflowed and the streets held small rivers. And everyone was thankful for it.