Soft drops of rain fell. The beginning of a storm. Or a drizzle. Or nothing at all. No one was every really sure out here. Plip-plop. Drops fall gently on exposed skin and sit in almost perfect stasis, but to his addled mind they feel as though they have fallen straight through his skin into his blood stream. Plip-plop. Plip-plop. He chuckles at the feeling and the sound the rain makes.

Nash raises the pickaxe one last time and busts open the stone below him, then hefts it and chucks it into the wheelbarrow. Muffled clang is heard. He grabs the barrow by its handles and begins to push it through the soft earth back up to the town gates. It's hard going, but he doesn't feel it. To him, it's a game. He has to constantly give his hair a shake to get it out of his face. It's collecting into long soppy wet ropes, and it's hard to see. Nash saw a picture of a dog once that could see through the hair over its eyes. He's not that dog.

Finally, he brings the stone to the gates. Little men wait for him. They're building a wall so other little men won't take their food. Nash is the big man helping them move their stones. He's worth three of them. Little burnt orange men stand in the rain, tools held loosely or resting on the grounds. The rain plip-plops all around them. Older, smaller, wrinkly little men sit on porches, dry, smoking pipes and watching the wall take shape. Rain patters gently on the little sheet metal awning above their heads. Tink-tink. Nash dumps the last barrow of rocks and holds out his hand. They give him his payment.

Now, to celebrate. Nash smiles and walks into town, looking for the bar. He walks down the street, rain falling all around him, on his head and his shoulders, trickling down his arms and running down his chest. Plip-plop. Tink-tink. He's lost, but he doesn't care. He prefers to think that he's "exploring". Like Marco Polo or Christopher Columbus, but not going very far at all.

There's a man behind him, but Nash ignores him. Maybe he's going to the bar too and got lost. They're lost together. Kind of funny, since he lives there...

Or maybe he's not lost...

Nash whips around just in time. The little man swings a shovel at Nash's head, trying to knock him out. He's not as accurate as he thinks, and Nash is not unconscious. Just angry. He punches, hard. Again and again. Things break. Crack-crack. Nash doesn't care. He tried to hit him with a shovel! Nash punches again, uppercut to the face, hook to the ribs, straight jab to the stomach. The other man falls and coughs up blood. Cough-cough, plip-plop. Nash doesn't care. He kicks him in the jaw. The man rolls over, moaning through a broken face.

Nash looks at him. Long hair, cut poorly. Cracked, burnt skin. Blood everywhere. Nash thinks about the first man he killed and feels a little remorseful. So many died since them. He was so innocent then. Then Nash thought of why he killed that man, and all the anger comes back. Nash feels no remorse. Good. He kneels over the man and begins to punch. Thud, thud, thud, crack, splatter, thud. Rain and blood fall all around. Plip-plop. Tink-tink.

Nash doesn't stop until his arms are tired. By then, the man's face looks more like ground brahmin inside a shell of rotting tomato. Nash's arms are covered in blood, maybe all up the elbow, he can't tell. He's suddenly fearful. He just killed a man with his bare hands in the middle of a town. He runs, trailing blood until there is no more to trail. Behind him, rain falls, washing clean the corpse with the broken face. Plip-plop.

((OOC: Okay, so. This was a serious departure from my regular style. A present-tense, one-shot, stream-of-consciousness story is not what I normally do for a solo. That said, I think that this turned out rather well.))

This was interesting. It's good to see people trying new things. The plip-plop stuff, I don't know if it worked out as intended. All in all, good to see some experimentation though.