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It had become so omnipresent that you stopped noticing it at all. Little blips in your radar-view, nothing important enough to worry about. The muddy boot tracks you’re staring at continually shift as if they’ve come alive to tell their story. You wish they would — it’d make this case a hell of a lot easier to crack — but Inland Empire’s wanderings have been nothing but a distraction. Meanwhile, the dampness that sticks to your clothes was accepted as an unfortunate constant of this reality, filed away with the rest of the little annoyances that almost make you regret giving up the warm darkness of unconscious drifting. You’re a detective, one of the few things you do know, and all that matters now are these craters in the dirt.
They’re faded by time and endlessly intersected, heels and toes and arches nearly indistinguishable. You mull over them so much that your eyes start to cross. It’s nearing the end of the day and this is your third time begging the dirt for clues, of course you’re getting tired…
No, there’s something else in the way, casting a haze over your vision and making the ground dance. Before Perception can say rain, Kim is pulling you up by the back of your jacket and tugging you under the shelter of the woodshed.
Oh. Rain. A real, heavy rain, not the constant half-assed dripping you’re used to.
Did it come suddenly, or were you so wrapped up in your work that you didn’t realize? Even the two devil-children have scampered off, leaving the yard empty and still. You glance up to the dark, dripping sky, then to Kim. Kim glances to the sky then to you — his expression colored with vague annoyance at both. Maybe he had tried to tell you before.
You turn your eyes back to the clouds to avoid his gaze. Thick and ashen, gnarled yet soft, the gaps of sky between wispy windows are gone, covered by a blanketing downpour. The door of the Whirling is tauntingly close. You consider making a mad dash for it, but the lieutenant crinkles his nose disapprovingly before you can even make the suggestion. If only you had bought that raincoat at Frittte. The five reál stashed away in your pocket don’t mean much here. Oh well, you think with a sigh, and Kim’s crossed arms mirror that defeated sentiment.
You lean back to the rotting wood. A droplet slips through the slat above you and lands square in the middle of your forehead. The lieutenant’s expression clears. Even if the joke is at your expense, you smile as you wipe it away.
He opens his mouth to make a comment, but all you can hear is the tone of dry-wit-snark as his words are muffled underneath the sound of —
for a moment, you think it must be a gunshot, police instinct and Half Light spiking with hackles raised —
thunder, you realize as Kim doesn’t flinch. You’d ask him to repeat that, but your thoughts are torn elsewhere.
When was the last time it rained hard enough to thunder? You try to remember; you must have heard a storm somewhere in your forty-or-fifty-or-so years of life, but nothing resurfaces. It’s all lost to that drinking-spree-induced retrograde amnesia that drained your pool of memories dry. You’ve already berated your past self to hell and back for that, to no reply.
“Are the skies ever clear here?” you ask, trying to tamp down your guilty regrets, so deep-seated that attempting to shake them would only rouse them further. The most you can do is distract yourself with the weather.
Kim squints out into the mist. His face illuminates in a flash. “When you live in this city, you get used to it.” Martinaise is as dreary as it is dilapidated, he won’t admit, top to bottom gray. Revachol lost its color long ago.
The scene before you has faded into a mess of monochrome. The fog creeps from around every corner like a spilled drink through sidewalk cracks, steadily crawling your way as if on the prowl. It obscures the yard, swallowing the Whirling and the tree where a body once hung, and you can almost see its ghostly shape in the haze, as if it was still swinging. Rain pounds the concrete like the ground has a debt to pay. It’s slightly unsettling, distantly familiar. Jamrock, home, must be the same way. If the weather would ever ease up, you could probably see it in the distance.
Another great streak of light and rumble from the clouds. A pit forms in your stomach. It feels like when you think about the Pale: awe and fear at the inevitability of nature.
You experimentally reach out from the overhead, as curious as you are afraid. It’s different from the pins-and-needles drizzle you’ve felt on the back of your neck since this morning. It’s heavy, steady, soaking everything in its path within seconds. It makes your fingers numb, but when you rub the water in, you feel cleaner. Purer, somehow — like this almost-handwashing could be a crude baptism.
“I like the rain,” you state simply, hopefully. Kim smirks at you for a bare second. Maybe it is a little childish, but it means a lot when you don’t know anything about yourself, even down to simple likes and dislikes. You squeeze your hands together to try to restore feeling to them. Nothing but cold-cramped pain. “...I think.”
“You think? What’s with the hesitation? It’s been raining on and off since I arrived here.”
You’ve answered too many questions with I wish I knew today, so you settle for, “Not like this.” Lightning strikes as if to answer for you. Kim gazes at the sky and hums affirmatively. Of all the unanswered questions, you’d at least like to know what in the world you’re feeling.
The humid chill sneaks under your coat and makes you feel drenched with cold even when you’re relatively dry. The stale scent of brine and decay is washed away by something more earthy and fresh, almost herbal. The universe keeps sending you mixed messages.
Your predicament must be written clear on your face, because Kim turns to you with a gentle smile and a soothing tone. “The weather here tends to be temperamental. This won’t take too long to blow past. Close your eyes and relax, it’s been a long day.” He takes out his little blue notebook and begins to flip through it, unworried. You’re a little jealous of his Composure.
Your mind likes to take every little gust of wind and spin it into a storm. You shut your eyes tightly, hoping that he’s right, as you imagine that this flimsy shed could shield you from your thunderous thoughts, too. A refuge from mental rain.
At the loss of visual stimuli, Inland Empire is pleading to take the reins again, and on a whim, you accept. You try to listen, to tune into the flow of the world and let your head paint its own pictures.
The city noise is muted by raindrops and wind. The only trace of Martinaise is the faint scent of salt on the air. It feels isolating, in a way that’s thrilling and peaceful and lonely all at once. An image is starting to form…
You’re swept up and carried away by your mind, dropped somewhere between distant memory and daydream. Suddenly, you aren't just a stone's throw away from the ocean, you're right in the middle of it. Instead of the Whirling-in-Rags’ orange neon against dirty puddles, you watch lightning and moonlight shimmer and bounce off of inky black waves, towering over you and crashing against the hull. It’s as vivid as real life, maybe even more so. You’re a captain steering his faithful boat through a treacherous storm — nothing but you and Kim and the exhilaration of the great, wide sea.
You never liked the calm and quiet, did you? Always jumping to extremes and looking for another adrenaline-dopamine hook to chase. Your emotions are as tumultuous as the weather.
In your mind, you stand tall and fearless against the rocking waves and pounding rain, against the ocean’s every attempt to knock you down. A little hurricane is no match for you, the great pirate… whatever your name is. It’s gotta be something awesome, a name that feels like saltwater running through your veins, passed through generations and generations like that trusty boat of yours…!
Kim laughs — you crack an eye open in curiosity and almost fall over, still halfway in the rise and fall of your fantasy. You shake yourself awake and stand straight.
“You seem to be having a good time,” he says with an amused huff. “Should I even ask what you’re thinking about? Another one of your crazy daydreams, or a conversation with the voices in your head?”
You don’t bother with a rebuttal. The scene is painted in front of you so clearly, Drama strutting in to take the stage.
“Imagine: a small yet sturdy ship braving the great Insulindic, with us as captains, steering it through a raging thunderstorm. We’re pelted by rain and surrounded by dark clouds, tossed by tall waves lit only by the moon… It’s terrifying, but freeing. Like flying.”
He’s smiling at you, with a confused furrow to his brow. “You certainly have a wild imagination.”
The wind kicks some spray up into your face. It's like the ocean is right at your fingertips. You stick your hands out to feel it; Kim clutches his notebook to his chest protectively.
"Can't you feel it? I love getting lost in a vision. Feeling yourself drift away…" You take a deep breath of the sea-storm-scented air and lean back. "Until you can see the pictures painted onto the back of your eyelids."
You hear a hesitant pause, an uneasy inhale. He's trying. There's a slight pout of concentration on his face as you sink into the turbulent silence. It deepens into a frown as he opens his eyes again. "...I don't see anything."
If only you knew what was lying behind that look. "Nothing?"
He shrugs and holds up his rain-dotted glasses as if considering a dice roll — fifty percent chance of wiping them without leaving smudges, five percent chance of them staying dry — he shakes most of the droplets off with a quick flick of the wrist and places them back on with a sigh. Does he operate on games of statistics like you do? Or are you the only one?
"Maybe I am crazy," you think out loud.
Kim gazes to the sky with tired eyes. "I've been feeling kind of crazy lately," he admits.
"Or maybe the whole world is mad."
"That would make you the only sane one."
A dry tone with a hint of warmth. You're not sure if it's a compliment or an insult, but you'll take it; anything other than the wet and cold.
A flash of lightning reflects off his spectacles and a flash of something melancholy passes over his face. Empathy tugs at your heartstrings.
You wait for the memories to return, to roll in like the clouds or strike like a crash of thunder, but they don't. That's what always happens in the movies and Dick Mullen books: they always come back at the perfect moment. Yours trickle in drop by anxious drop. An uncanny sense of déjà vu lingers under the surface, every waking second, and you just can't shake it. Like there's some connection lost where memories are supposed to chain together. A link you're missing.
Kim seems to be recalling something. What does the weather bring back for him? You could never know from the outside. Even if he told you, described everything in perfect detail, you'd never see the rain like he does. You'll never see it like you did last week, before that deluge of a bender.
"Do you ever wish you could see the world through someone else's eyes?"
"I don't usually concern myself with those kinds of conceptual matters, but…" He hums and shifts his weight. With a hint of hesitation, he continues, "I do wonder what goes on in your head, sometimes."
You'd spin that into a joke if your mind wasn't busy spinning itself into a whirlpool — something something mysterious men attract the ladies, that's so untrue it isn't even funny, what's the meaning of that look he's giving you? How come you still can't decide how the weather makes you feel?
The flimsy walls around you creak in the wind, the roof sways like heaving breaths. Kim nudges your side and the riptide of nervous thoughts dissipates. "So? What's it like being you? Having fun with the blank slate?"
Fun isn't the right word for it, but you can guess that it's better than before. Happy people usually don't drink themselves into amnesia. The little you've gathered about your past is equally incriminating.
You shiver and pull your collar up against the wind. "I think that… I must have needed a fresh start. But it's still strange, not knowing who I am. I feel like I'm different from everyone else, somehow. Like I'm working at a different frequency."
You can't imagine the world without your bright mental images and chorus of inner voices, but it's becoming more and more obvious that other people don't have two dozen imaginary friends guiding their every move.
"Hm." The noise is almost lost behind the rain. His voice is low and his face is mostly unreadable, slightly sympathetic.
"Do you really not see anything when you close your eyes?"
He pauses, fingers hovering over his notebook with a page half-turned. "What am I supposed to see?"
"Whatever you want?" You gesture and feel droplets brush your cheek, more sparse than before. "Ocean waves. A gap in the clouds. Home. Sky's the limit, really."
Kim clicks his pen and starts scrawling something in his notebook. You ignore the urge to peek over his shoulder. Is he writing about you? The idea makes you a little flustered. You fidget with the matching pen in your pocket.
He makes a few deliberate marks, then his gaze drifts off, deep in thought. The cycle continues, thought-stroke, stroke-thought. A flash of lightning, and you count five seconds of silence before the thunder.
Then he holds his notebook up to you. Waves of blue cross the page, reaching toward spiral-scribbled clouds. A few fingerprint smudges and blurry droplets dot the paper. In the middle is a boat, and two circle-rectangle figures sit within. They're featureless, but you can tell it's you and him. Underneath is the title "THE S.S. LOONY BIN". The art is charming in its crude, childish form.
"That's the best I can do."
"Heh. Thinking in ink? We both must be crazy." Kim puts it away with a huff and you backtrack, "It's a good drawing, though. I like it. I have twenty-four voices in my head, if that makes you feel any more sane."
He chuckles and shakes his head. "I don't think anyone's truly sane. Being a cop has shown me that. And, well…" He trails off and lets the rustling trees fill the quiet. You've shown me a lot, his half-grin says, for better or for worse.
You'll take that sentiment with a glass half full. We're all just little crazy apes on a spinning rock. When you were floating in unconscious nothingness, your body begging you to stay, your brain had made it sound like a bad thing. It's comforting in its own way. You may not know what you're doing, or who you are, but then again, who does?
Yeah, this weather is nice. You watch your reflection in the pools of water with a smile that matches his. The hazy, rippled shapes start to clear, and Perception gets your attention.
"Oh, I think the rain’s calming down!"
It hasn't completely left — you get the feeling that it never will — but the storm has died down, almost back to the usual drizzle. You glance at him, beaming, and get a raised brow in return. Reaction Speed chimes in, this is it! The decision is made in a split second.
You take his arm, and he barely has the chance to look up before you're dashing across the yard with him involuntarily in tow. "Hey—!"
Freezing cold water splashes up from under your feet to nip at your shins. He's barely keeping up behind you, an uneven, lopsided step as he's dragged along. The dirt has turned into one giant mud pit and you don't want to know what's mixed in with it. It makes you feel like a kid stomping in puddles just to make a mess, to hell with a raincoat and boots!
You'd probably stay drier if you walked. He'll probably be mad at you for this later.
But can he really blame you for wanting to have a little fun in the rain?