The rain had been falling for weeks now. The town of Middle Plantation, once just forgotten and derelict, now felt like it was sinking. The streets were rivers of ash-colored mud, and the buildings sagged under the weight of rot and mildew. Everything was dying. The people, the trees, the very air seemed to be suffocating, crushed under the immense pressure of something unseen, something that had crawled into the bones of the world and hollowed them out from within.
Inside the decaying tenement, Travis stared blankly at the grey, streaked window, though his eyes had long since stopped registering what was in front of him. Time had become meaningless. The days blended into one another, an unrelenting blur of endless, suffocating monotony. He could no longer remember what month it was, or what year. It didn’t matter. No one came for him. No one ever had. His life, once fragile and miserable, had become something even worse. It had become a prison.
At forty-five, Travis had nothing. He was a forgotten man, in a forgotten town, in a world that itself had forgotten how to care. There was no work, no neighbors, no friends. Just the endless rain and the four walls that held him captive. The house had long since stopped feeling like a home—it was now a tomb. His mother’s remains had never been removed, her decaying body still slumped on the couch across from him, shrouded in a thin, greenish veil of mold. He had never been able to let her go. Not because he loved her, but because he didn’t know how to let go of anything.
Her death had been slow, agonizing. She had slipped away over the course of years, losing herself piece by piece to whatever sickness had consumed her, and Travis had watched it happen, powerless to intervene. When she finally stopped breathing, there was no relief, no grief. Just a cold, hollow emptiness that had only deepened in the years since. She had left him alone in this house, and for all he knew, alone in the world.
Travis’ father had left when he was too young to remember. No letters, no explanation—just gone. And his mother, weakened by life’s relentless battering, had never recovered from that betrayal. They had spent years scraping by, clinging to each other like two drowning people in a sea of despair. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough. When she died, Travis lost the only anchor he had, weak as it was.
He hadn’t left the house in months now. He didn’t need to. There was no reason to venture out into a world that had long since abandoned him. The cupboards were empty, but hunger no longer registered as pain. It was just a dull, constant ache, like the ache in his heart, or in his bones. His body, once strong, had withered. His face was gaunt, his skin stretched thin over his skull. His eyes, sunken and lifeless, reflected nothing but the hollow shell he had become.
Travis had once been an artist. There had been a time, long ago, when he had believed in beauty, in creation, in the idea that something good could come from his hands. But those days were a distant, unreachable dream now. His paints had dried up, his brushes disintegrated. The last canvas he had ever worked on—his mother’s portrait—sat in the corner, unfinished. He could never bring himself to complete it. To finish it would be to acknowledge that she was gone, that everything was gone. And that was a truth he couldn’t bear.
So he sat, day after day, night after night, in that same chair, staring out into the rain. He had no visitors, no company but the mice that had long since taken over the kitchen. He could hear them sometimes, scratching in the walls, their tiny lives at least active, at least purposeful. They were better off than he was. At least they had something to live for, even if it was just crumbs. He had nothing.
And then, as if the universe hadn’t done enough to break him, one day the electricity went out. It was a small thing, really, but in the darkness that followed, Travis realized how deep the emptiness truly was. No more lights, no more faint hum of power. Just the black, oppressive silence. The refrigerator stopped working, though it hadn’t held food in years. The few bulbs that had flickered faintly in the corners of his home blinked out for good, leaving him with nothing but the cold, grey light of day or the pitch-black of night.
He tried to sleep, but sleep eluded him now. It had been weeks since he had managed more than a few hours of fitful rest. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw them—his mother’s dead eyes, staring at him from across the room, her body limp and broken, her spirit long since departed. And then, when sleep finally claimed him, his dreams were worse than the waking hours. Dreams of suffocating darkness, of endless, pointless wandering through empty streets, searching for something he could never find.
One night, after hours of lying awake in the cold, silent dark, Travis rose from his bed and went to the kitchen. He stood there, staring at the empty cupboards, his mind numb, his body aching. He had thought about ending it before—thought about it many times—but tonight felt different. Tonight, there was no fear. No hesitation.
He took the old, rusty knife from the drawer. It had been his mother’s, once, back when they still cared about meals, about cooking, about life. He walked back to the living room, to his spot by the window. The rain hadn’t stopped. It never stopped.
He held the knife to his wrist, but he didn’t feel it, didn’t care. His hand was steady now, steadier than it had ever been. This was the only thing that had made sense in years. The only thing left to do.
He cut deep, once, then twice. The blood flowed freely, and for a moment, he felt lighter. But then, as the minutes dragged on, he realized something horrible. The wound was clotting again, just as it had before. His body—this useless, broken shell—was refusing to die. Even now, when there was no reason left to live, it clung on.
He dropped the knife, his hand shaking, and for the first time in years, he screamed. A raw, primal scream of anguish and despair that echoed through the empty house, through the empty streets, through the empty world. But no one heard. No one was left to hear.
The sun rose the next morning, pale and sickly through the rain. Travis sat in the same chair, his wrist bandaged in a filthy rag, his body still alive, still breathing. The pain had returned, dull and relentless. He was trapped here, in this body, in this house, in this life. There was no escape.
And then, the final blow came.
A letter slipped through the door—a rare occurrence in itself. Travis stared at it for a long time before finally forcing himself to stand, to move, to pick it up. His hands trembled as he opened it, and for a moment, he dared to hope. Maybe it was news, a letter from some long-lost relative, someone who cared, someone who remembered he existed.
But it wasn’t. It was a notice, from the town. The tenement was being demolished. He had thirty days to leave.
There was nowhere for him to go. No one left to turn to. He couldn’t leave this place. He couldn’t survive outside these walls.
But the universe didn’t care. The rain continued to fall, washing away what little remained of Middle Plantation. The walls of the house crumbled, the roof sagged. The world was disappearing around him, but Travis remained. Trapped. Alone.
In the end, he never left the tenement. He sat in his chair by the window, watching as the rain swallowed the world whole. The wrecking crew came, days later, and found him there, unmoving, a hollow shell of a man. The walls came down around him, the roof caved in, and still, he sat, as if waiting for something that would never come.
They buried what was left of him in a shallow grave, marked only by a single stone with no name. And in the end, the world continued on, just as it always had.
No one remembered Travis. No one cared.
And the rain kept falling. Forever.