Days, maybe weeks ago, I woke up to the sun shining through the wavy glass windows of my house. After stumbling to the kitchen, I opened the packed cupboard; mugs with college logos balanced on mugs adorned with cartoon animals crammed next to mugs with cheerful sayings. My fingers landed on one reading ‘there’s no place like home.’

I drove to work, unaware of how soon I would be returning. Unaware that the sun rose that morning to be deceiving. Unaware that rain laced with acid was building in the clouds. Unaware that I was utterly unprepared for the storm that would soon erupt.

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The blaring alert on everyone’s phones delivered a wave of nausea. Acid rainfall is suspected to begin around 9 p.m. PST. Seek shelter and remain in place until alerted by local protocols. 

Within minutes, an email arrives from management. We’ll be sent home early. A murmur runs through the office. My heart begins to pound as I text my friend Nina, who I normally join during storms. She texts back immediately asking if I can pick up ice cream and bring the sports bra that she loaned me months ago. 

I think back to the first time the acid rain came. I was a teenager and felt powerless; the world had expected this for years. In history class, we learned of the reemergence of sulfur dioxide emissions. Protests broke out. Factory boycotts ensued, but it was too late. With each rainfall, we would wait for a pH rating. In the early days, it was only slightly more acidic than normal rain. We could go outside. By the time I was in middle school, it was as acidic as lemon juice. We were told to avoid the rain, prepare with raincoats and umbrellas, and to shower afterward. That day in high school, the head meteorologist addressed the camera. The rain had reached pH 1; it was no longer safe to go outside. Lemon juice had turned into battery acid. Cars swerved in front of the school, parents frantically calling at their children to run and cover their heads. The rest of the week was canceled. Dad picked me up, and we drove to the elementary school for my brother. We played board games, and our parents distracted us from the reality that this would likely become a consistent part of our lives; that a constant paranoia would loom over the world. Now, there are state departments for monitoring the rainfall. There are safe shelters for those who can’t make it home. There are non-profit workers who wear rainproof suits and deliver food. But there’s no one who can make the rain go away.

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The grocery store bustles with dreadful anticipation. Kids cling onto the edge of carts, riding alongside rows of cereal boxes. Parents grab canned goods, tossing them in the cart two at a time. The bread aisle is decimated. I grab two measly packs of English muffins and wind my way through the store, shoving anything I deem remotely necessary in the cart. I snatch four tubs of chocolate ice cream as a woman glares at me from across the freezer aisle. The checkout lines are tense, feet tapping against the linoleum tiles. Parents, tired of tireless children, tell them to sit still and stop hitting each other. A woman nervously clutches her cart handle, glancing back at the aisles, wondering if one extra can of tomatoes would be wise. 

Items soar through the conveyor belt, clerks trying to rush everyone out of the store so that they can get home. I hurry to my car. 

After the storms became semiannual, I packed a suitcase for my car. I consider momentarily returning home to gather a few more items, but decide it’s not worth it. Nina has enough of my clothes from last time and her sports bra can wait. The rain doesn’t. 

The roads are crowded, and the sky is gray. Horns blare out anxiously and kids press their faces against car windows, clinging to the sight of a rainless sky. I drum on my steering wheel, urging the cars to move. In the distance, smokestacks inhale palpable panic, then exhale. My impatience grows until I’m met by the cause of the traffic: glaring orange road blocks. The highway is closed. I swerve back on the service road as a siren begins to wail in the distance. That one means I have ten minutes. I look at the traffic, my face sinking with dread. It will take too long to get to Nina’s. I’ll barely be able to make it home.

I turn the car around as tears well in my eyes. My stomach fills with nerves. Home. All alone. My mind becomes frenzied. I need to find things to do. Do I have enough food? What if my laptop charger breaks? I should have gotten an extra. What if I lose power? Do I need more activities? Maybe I can order things online. As a distraction, I turn on the radio, bracing myself. The rain is expected to last at least two weeks, but it will more likely be three. An ad for a help hotline airs, reminding people that seclusion has taken lives. The reporter advises everyone to stay home, stay safe, and check on elderly friends and family. He chuckles, then adds one more token of wisdom: “and folks, try not to lose your minds.” 

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I stand on my front porch and take one final deep breath. It smells like rain. Earthy, but laced with something synthetic. Groceries in hand, I look up at the sky. The heavy clouds rumble in return. I step inside and close the door behind me.

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The first few days are easy. I stick to a tight regimen of logging into work until dinner and then watching TV until I fall asleep. But the schedule begins to deteriorate around day four. I go through my checklist of people to call: Nina will still be working, I called my brother yesterday, Dad will already be asleep, so I land on Mom. 

“The storm we had last year was nice; it was like a little break. This will give you time to get organized. You know what they say, a cluttered house is a cluttered mind.” Her voice is familiar, as is the message.

“I’m pretty sure it’s only you who says that, Mom.” 

She sighs, then pauses. “You really should clean out the garage. Smelled like mildew last time I was there.” I roll my eyes, and after hearing about her new vegetable garden and informing her that no, I’m not dating anyone and yes, I know that I’m 34, I tell her that I should make dinner and hang up the phone.

Instead, I wander into the garage. Tubs of childhood memorabilia tower above me. I pull down one clear bin, little stuffed animal faces pressed against the lid, their ears smooshed and their glass eyes glaring into mine. Dried leaves sit in the corner of the garage and the air is tinted with gasoline. I shiver, regretting not grabbing my sweater from upstairs. I look at the bin again and open it. The lid gives easily, tired of bending around the encapsulated creatures. I lift up a cat. Her hair is tufted, and her whiskers are bent. I got her the night that grandpa was in the hospital, but grandpa got better, and she was thrown aside. I pull out a penguin. I carried him around for a few weeks, tucking him in my backpack every day. Then one day, like his furry siblings, he too was packed away. I drag the bin inside, leaving it in the laundry room, a mound of little plush limbs crowded together on top.

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At night I lay in bed and consider a garage sale. I have too much stuff. Unread books crowd my shelves. Clothes are piled up in heaps, some not even mine. The kitchen contains appliances galore: presumptive gifts from distant relatives. Eventually I doze off, imagining myself floating off into space, belongings barreling past me. 

I wake up as something soft presses on my toes. At first I think it’s a pillow that migrated down to the end of the bed. It’s gentle. Then I feel it creep onto my legs. It’s moving, small soft steps getting closer. My eyes open slowly. It’s still dark outside, and the rain is heavier. Lightning strikes, illuminating my room for an instant, long enough for me to see a small army of stuffed animals moving toward me. There are more climbing onto the bed, scaling my bed frame and lunging themselves onto the mattress. They move at an even pace, slowly walking toward my head. I scream and sit up, trying to shove them away. I knock a few off the bed, but a purple plush elephant and a small lion jump on my arms, pressing them down into the mattress. I scream again. They move closer, the cat I held earlier leading the pack. They move up to my chest. I keep fighting, but they ascend onto my neck, piling on my face. My eyes close as a fur paw presses my mouth shut and another one steps on my eyes. I take a breath before something soft inserts two small fur paws into my nose. I fight harder, but as I’m struggling to breathe, it occurs to me, maybe this is a dream. I lose consciousness. 

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I wake up slowly, and then remember: the stuffed animals. Or was that a dream? I look around my room, and there’s no sign of any stuffed creatures. No evil plush cat plotting my death. I get out of bed. The floorboards creak under my toes. I’m still not convinced, so I creep into the laundry room, and there it is: the bin of stuffed animals, none out of place. The purple elephant smiles up at me, his droopy ears worn and faded.

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I sit and watch the rain. It slides down the window glass, each raindrop landing with purpose and then slowly falling down the window. Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like on my skin. 

My eyes drift away from the window as a clump of fur catches my eye. I bend down to examine it, then rub it between my fingers. It’s from one of them. It has to be. I can feel my mind slipping, spiraling into confusion, so I stop. Pause. I’ll go for a run. I drop the fuzz, and as it floats to the ground, I walk to my closet. I change into Nina’s sports bra. I’ve always hidden it in the back of my drawer to avoid the guilt of having still not returned it. The leggings too are not originally mine, but my sister’s. I head to the treadmill in the basement, inherited from my grandmother. 

It’s cold, and my ears begin to ache, but I run, allowing the chilly air to wrap around my body. My lungs burn, but I run faster. The tread bounds underneath my feet as I run faster, imaging that I’m soaring through a snowy mountain trail. My heart hurts, and I run faster, the blood rushing to my aching muscles. 

But it isn’t just my heart. My whole chest feels tight. 

I slow down, jogging, and it gets tighter. I stop, feeling the sports bra. I try to pull it away from my body, but it doesn’t budge. I turn the treadmill down. My legs too don’t feel achy, but tight, like they’re being squeezed. I grasp for the leggings to stretch the fabric away, but it doesn’t pull, as if it lost all its elasticity. As if it’s glued to my skin. My heart pounds, but I’m not sure if it’s in fear or from the run, and my lungs feel like they’ll never get enough air. I step off the treadmill as the sports bra tightens. The leggings too get tighter until I fall to the ground, writhing, my body compressed. I pull myself over to my phone and my fingers linger over my contact list. Who can I call to help? No one can come here. I think through family, friends, coworkers. I consider each person, whether they would be willing to risk the rain for me. 

Eventually, I stand up slowly and my legs feel sore, but not tight. I can walk. I take off my jacket, and when I try to remove the sports bra, it lifts. As quickly as it began, whatever just happened, it stopped. Maybe it really was all in my head. 

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It’s day fourteen. I gaze out the window and wonder when I’ll get to feel the breeze on my skin. I wander to the kitchen, wipe the crumbs off the counter, and screw the lid back on the peanut butter jar. I take my overflowing recycling to the garage. The light takes a second to turn on, but when it does I find that I left my blue recycling bin outside, now doused in acid rain. I hesitate, not wanting to condemn recyclables to a landfill, but I don’t know what else to do. I dump the recycling into the green trash bin. Yogurt bins tumble in followed by egg cartons and crusted glass jars. Papers drift down, landing gently on top. Aluminum cans rattle in as a finale. 

When I return to my computer, the screen won’t turn on. I try to power it on: nothing. I won’t be able to work. I click furiously, smacking the spacebar again and again, but the screen remains black. In frustration, I grab the computer and throw it across the room. It hits the wall, keys falling from the keyboard as it lands on the ground. My vision clouds with anger. I'll just buy a new one. Then I realize, I can’t buy a new one without a computer. 

I’ll paint. I used to love to paint. I spent hours painting a few storms ago. 

I slide between the empty china cabinet and the dining table riddled with over-spending guilt. I race to my room, startled to notice its messiness. I stumble over a stack of old magazines. My guitar, bought during a storm years ago, perches to the side. I grab the metal tubes of paint. Where are the paintbrushes? A Rubik’s Cube on the ground. A yoga mat. Balls of yarn roll in the corner. No paint brushes. My de-stress coloring book. Colored pencils everywhere. Wax drips down the walls from when I thought I would make candles. I can’t find the paintbrushes. I sink down on a mound of clothing, my grip tightening until paint bursts out of the tube. 

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The days blur together, and the house has become my most loyal companion. My only real, tangible companion. I wake up and greet the floorboards, stepping on them gently. My fingers graze the light blue walls as I walk to the kitchen. The thermostat makes the house feel like it’s breathing. I turn it up to a perfect 70 degrees. That’s how the house is happiest. I turn on the kitchen faucet and water rushes through the pipes like blood through a body. Furniture acts like freckles, adding character. Crown molding is like lipstick, and my dining chandelier glistens like a diamond necklace. But there are lesions in the house too: belongings that seem to stare too long. Furniture that trips me. Walls that seem determined to close in.

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Day number who knows?, I move through the living room and into the dining room. There’s a figure standing in the shadow of the curtains. I freeze, but he turns around and moves toward me. 

He’s not a man at all. 

His legs are made of folded spaghetti boxes, and his body is four empty cans balanced together. His yogurt tub head turns as his egg cartons arms gesture toward me. I scream at the betrayed recycling man and bolt toward the front door, but he slides over and stops me, whacking me in the head with his egg carton arm. He hits me again and I fall this time, crumpled on the floor. He jumps on top of me and whips the lid of a canned good out of his chest. I gasp and he pushes its edge into my throat. My breath stops. I grab at his cardboard legs and hit his canned good chest hard enough that he falls back. I get up. A drop of blood runs down my neck.  

I run until I reach the front door. My hand pauses over the knob. I can hear the rain pouring outside and a warning siren blaring in the distance, telling us to stay inside. I look out the window at the gray sky and acidic downpour. I look back at the recycling man reforming and inching closer to me. 

In one swift motion, I swing the door open and step outside. 

The wet drops fall on my head. I hold my arms out and each raindrop stings. I look up at the clouds, feeling the rain coat my skin and hair. I take a deep breath in. Fresh chemical air fills my lungs. I stick my tongue out, twirling around in the downpour. I don’t care when it begins to burn. I run to the street. The wind begins to whistle, like the house calling me back. I run further. I run and run, until I look up and see a man, my neighbor, out of breath and panting outside of his door. The water drenches his scraggly hair. He looks frantic, as if he too escaped a recycling man or an army of stuffed animals. He stumbles out into his yard, letting the rain soak his clothes. 

Our eyes meet, and he smiles.

I smile back.