Rain

May 26:
It hasn’t rained in three months. Whole towns worried. We need rain in a little rural town like this. The crops. The reservoir.

June 7:
Marlene cries at night. The girls are worried too. I started going to church.

June 16:
No Rain. Attending church almost every day. God will save us.

June 28:
Please God let it rain.

July 1:
No rain.

July 4:
We couldn’t light off fireworks. Everything too dry. I got out a Latin bible and read from it. No rain.

July 24:
No rain. Four months now. Are we cursed?

August 6:
No rain. I have given up on prayer. Other gods exist do they not? The heathen devils are tricky, but maybe they can help us.

August 18:
Rain dance all night. No rain. I need stronger magic.

August 25:
Killed a calf. Called for rain. Stormclouds on the horizon. Gone by evening without rain.

September 3:
Rain! Sweet rain. It worked. No price is too high for survival.

September 7:
The funeral was a nice little affair.

September 18:
One day of rain isn’t enough.

September 21:
Rain. I was shaking all night after.

September 27:
Rain. God forgive me.

October 1:
Rained today. People are saying the town is cursed. I stopped going to the funerals.

October 9:
Marlene found out. I don’t know how. Maybe there was a reason we set aside are stepped pyramids and knives.
It will rain tomorrow.





Author's Note: 'Creepy' is in the eye of the beholder. But regardless, I hope you enjoyed this.

The descent into madness seems unrealistically fast. Possibly because we skipped over the first three months.

I really didnt want to write a full six months of weekly and bi-weekly notes.

Not that hes "mad" in the "raving lunatic" way. Just...very willing to do what it takes.

And there is the problem.

I suppose i could just space them out more.

The point of microfiction is brevity so changing the dates would work better than adding more. The current posts already contain an entire story.

microfiction =/= laziness

Constructive Critisicm =/= being an asshole
You should probably remember that. I know a lot of modern people only understand critisicm in terms of ass-hatery because of Simon and internet people like Yahtzee but really, it doesnt.


But regardless, there is no reason I cannot expand the time period, so I have done so. It doesnt detract from the work in my eyes and if it improves it in yours then so much the better.

Voidswimmer, please ignore Dodoman. He's a wretched contrarian.

I do appreciate that you depicted insanity as something other than off the wall looniness.

I guess it's just not for me.

I value his opinion I just didnt like how the work looked when it traced a longer period of time (in the bi-weekly notes style) so i compacted it. Changing the dates to represent a longer timespan however does lend some verisimilitude.


Your...human jaw sig...it's hard to not just watch it.
So...look away...

The concept that murder isnt something you can dabble in is very old. MacBeth explores it in depth even. If you kill someone in liturature, eventually you need to kill again to resolve the problem, or kill again to silence a witness.

Realisticly a human in desperation is more and more willing as time goes on to accept extreme measures as neccisary. Once the first step is taken the Sunk-Cost-Fallacy can keep them locked into a course of action.
If one can accept the farmers diary as factual and the sacrifices to Quetzalcoatl really are bringing the rain we can see how he might fall into the trap of deciding he needs to keep killing.

Indeed. I also found the segments detailing the narrator's fervent religious rituals, even before his conversion, highly appropriate. It does a good job of showing that the behavior wasn't a drastic leap into insanity.

I liked it, I just feel like the delivery lacked something... Like, maybe instead of a day-by-day thing, go for a "here's why I did what I did" thing at the very end, explaining about why he did it. It's kind of cliched, with the whole "let me tell you how this madness started", but I think it would work better in this case.

No really Dodoman criticizes things and dislikes things for no apparent reason other than bitterness because he became a teenedager.

I admit it is a tad obscure.

Specificly, the farmer turned to pagan rituals and when killing a calf almost worked he decided to make a sacrifice to the rain god Quetzlcoatl, and finally killed his wife in a ritual because she found out he was killing villagers.

So far only one person was able to piece that all together just reading it, but that suggests the information is included. The specific god he killed people for is the hard part. The clear referance to the aztec and inca sacrifices with the stepped pyramids and daggers (included as a clue) would trigger instantly but only if the person ever had a history lesson about them, or lived in SA or a bordering area. And most people would then need to do some research to figure out which god unless they clearly remembered them. That is a bit of a barrier to casual enjoyment.

I understood that it was a sacrifice to an aztec god, but I didn't get that it was specifically Quetzlcoatl. I guess I just kinda forgot that part of history class. Also, for some reason, I just assumed he had killed his daughter, as opposed to a random villager. I guess maybe because she'd be more valuable? Dunno.
Even though it seems like I didn't exactly get all the details, I understood the story and I really liked it. It's short but effective.