Washed Away

word count:  926
PROMPT: Begin a story with the exact phrase: "I wonder if it will ever stop raining?"


"I wonder if it will ever stop raining?"

Not that rain ordinarily bothered her.  She was forever forgetting to water the flowers in her garden, and a good downpour like this got her off the hook, for a few days at least.

And the sound of the rain pelting against the trees was usually a comfort that made sleeping come more easily.  Though, circumstances being what they were, sleep shouldn’t have been a problem.  If only she could stop the nagging thoughts that were keeping her slumber at bay, the sound of the rain might lull her into resting.

No, the weather was presenting a problem, and she could not see the merits of the rain on this particular day.


Earlier today she had decided to tell her sister, June, the truth.  With only two days to go before the wedding, she had already let it go for far too long.  And June did not take it well.

“You’ve never liked Joseph!  What, did you think I would call off the wedding based on some hunch of yours?”

“June, please, just listen to me!  There is something unnerving about him!  I swear, I have tried to get along with him, tried to love him because I love you, but he is not right!  I don’t expect you to take my word for it, but, for my sake, could you just take a closer look at him before you take such a big step?”

“I know what I’m doing!  I just can’t believe that you would go to these lengths, that you would care so little about my happiness!  Joseph was right, you are jealous!”

This would have been a good time to keep a level head, but the words stung, and impulse took over.  She stomped out of her sister’s house, vowing not to attend the wedding. 

And ran right into Joseph, who had apparently been listening the whole time.  She avoided looking at him, but could feel his hateful stare follow her as she got into her car.

As she backed down the driveway, the first thick drops of the coming storm left large circles on her windshield.


A crack of lightning brought her back to the present, and the predicament she was in.  She didn’t quite remember how she had ended up in Joseph’s pickup truck.  Only that she had tried to get out as the vehicle was speeding down the highway and had been harshly snapped back in as Joseph caught her by the neck of her windbreaker.

After that, her mind had focused not on saving her own life, but on seizing the opportunity to prove to her sister that she had been right all along. 

The locket around her neck; a bridal party gift from June; had broken in the struggle, and she did nothing to stop it from snaking down between the break in the truck’s front seat.  For good measure she pulled a small handful of her hair out from the roots, and surreptitiously stuck the identifying strands deep between the seats as well.

As the truck came to a stop in the woods, she was prepared to fight.  Joseph easily overpowered her, but she was able to spit and scream and claw at him until she felt his hands close around her throat and her body go limp.

He carried her for what seemed like miles, finally dropping her in a stand of trees.  He made a sloppy effort of covering her body with pine boughs, and then turned and walked away.  She thought she heard his truck roar to life in the distance, but the rain was coming down so hard that she could have been mistaken.

This was when she began to assess her situation. 

On the plus side, she had managed to leave evidence of what had happened in Joseph’s truck.  Her newly manicured bridesmaid nails had skin from Joseph’s arms embedded under them.  And she could somehow feel his fingerprint inside the back of her windbreaker, burning the skin on her neck.

But her heart sank as she came to a frightening realization.

No one knew she was missing. 

Her family would not think of her absence as anything but an immature bid at ruining her sister’s wedding.

Nobody would be looking for her.

The wedding would go on.

The storm had probably already washed away Joseph’s tire tracks on the dirt road.

Any scent that a bloodhound might have been able to track had surely vanished by now.

The rivulets of water running down her body were threatening to carry away the hairs that she had pulled from his head, now only loosely clutched in her left fist.

It was only a matter of time before the precious DNA under her fingernails was dislodged as well. 

And though she couldn’t be completely sure (she wasn’t exactly thinking clearly) it seemed as though the fingerprint in her jacket wasn’t as hot on her skin as it had been only moments before.

Even though she was dead, she knew she would not be able to rest until her sister knew the truth.  She also knew that the longer this storm lasted, the more likely it would be that the truth remained hidden.

"I wonder if it will ever stop raining?" June thought to herself as Joseph entered the room.  She turned on the television just in time to hear the weather man promising sunny skies for her wedding day, and she took this as a sign that everything would be alright, despite her sister's misgivings.