##### Copyright Β© 2023. This is a copyrighted work. Unauthorized use is prohibited. All rights reserved by the author.
My contribution to the
Midnight at the Lost & Found Author Challenge
and yet to the
Halloween Story Contest 2023
, too.
Despite the very scary topics, it is all fantasy, without any reference to real events. It's just a hallucination on Halloween night. Don't try this at home: the actors on stage are all professionals, and for scenes that are too dangerous, specially licensed stuntmen have been hired.
All characters are of legal age.
English is not my mother tongue, please forgive my mistakes.###
INTRO
.
"Look, Martine! It's raining MEN! In the nude, bare as Mother Nature made them! And they're all of age, look at the beard on that one! And, damn, they all have full upright dicks! Blond, dark, big, thin, there's all kinds!"
"I don't want to look, you redhead witch!" hissed Martine, moving away from the large vertical window of the university campus Radio station.
"Don't play the prudish bigot with me, you absurd 20 y.o. virgin! With that white clothes, a putto from some medieval painting. Come and see what happens outside the window!"
.
Chapter 1. The Odd Couple.
.
Great news had affected the Samuel de Champlain University campus in Nova Halifax, on Canada's Atlantic coast. Some months ago, an unknown benefactor had deposited the necessary material for the creation of a Radio Station as a gift, but two conditions were stipulated in the bequest. First, the radio station would only be run by female students over 18 years of age; second, no academic hierarchy could censor news or opinions, as long as national laws were respected and the right of reply granted.
The Radio Headquarters was in an old building with very high ceilings. From a distance it looked like the Addams Family Manor: but all built with red brick. The main difference was the location: close to the football field, bright green, without a swamp full of alligators.
The problem with setting up a radio station is not the location or the technology, but the recruitment of staff. Unfortunately, the web attracted many more girls to personal video production. Almost all the girls started serious, with erudite documentaries on literature or science, then inevitably they discovered there was more money to be made in pornography, and they all became cheap strippers.
Only two girls continued to believe in radio as the medium of the future: Martine and the so-called "Bridget".
In the corridors of the campus, they were called "the Odd Couple", like Lemmon and Matthau in an old movie.
Martine was the typical girl educated in a conservative style. She came from a French-speaking family in Quebec, had three brothers and three sisters, and on any subject always chose extremely cautious positions, avoiding any form of innovation. In his family, it was even forbidden to play cards! Radio, for some reason, was counted among the acceptable technologies. Television, on the other hand, was not, because it objectified the female body. And the Internet was looked upon with suspicion.
"Bridget" was the name the other girl had chosen for herself, when she was, so to speak, "reborn" as a Vegan Witch inspired by some books by Wiccan women writers. You know, the whole repertoire: Moon, Cats, Broom, Tarot, Crystals, and all the rest of the usual stuff. She had chosen that name, Bridget, after the first woman convicted of Witchcraft in Salem. She ate only vegan food and wore only plant fabrics, never leather. However, she did not need leather for shoes: Bridget had obtained permission from the headmaster to walk barefoot around campus at all times of the day, including in classrooms for examinations and assemblies. At first, it caused quite a stir, but then people got used to it (in summer many people walk barefoot on the grass: it is winter that selects the real heroes). She said that this way she felt more contact with Mother Nature, and she disturbed the insects in the meadows less. She didn't even need much fabric, really: Bridget never wore a bra (despite being 20 years old, she had small A-cups), as could be seen from her back, which was always bare. According to some eyewitnesses, the girl never wore panties... but maybe that was just a rumor.
Martine was well-behaved, kind, Virgo by zodiac sign, and a virgin in her intact hymen. Her radio colleague often joked about these things, claiming she was always hysterical because of it.
Bridget was cheeky, good-looking, without hesitation. Cute, with freckles on her dimples and a thick mane of natural red hair that fell gloriously over her black T-shirts of dyed cotton with no artificial dyes. Zodiac sign Leo, and Panther Maneater in bed, so everyone always said.
Martine was constantly washing her hands, with soap or wet wipes. Those who passed by her at the communal washbasin often heard her mumble some rhyme as if to measure the time needed to perform a deep clean. Her nickname on air was "Double M" (Mumblin' Martine). She almost always wore white clothes, because she said they could be washed in very hot water for deeper cleaning and better hygiene.
Bridget only washed when strictly necessary to save water and soap; and her small feet (which were, by the way, very nice to look at) had calloused and dirty soles, as often happens to people who walk barefoot for many months in a row. For her bits of advice on world peace, paganism, and environmentalism, her nickname on air was "Triple V" (Vegan Witch).
The news was for school news during the day, at fixed times. But the real show was after dinner, each evening at 10.30 p.m. Often the Odd Couple would argue on live radio. In a way, the radio's success depended on their strange dialectic. Some students used their voices for a funny Drinking Game: every time Bridget insulted Martine by saying "You Virgin!", everyone had to take a shot. For balance, every time Martine had hissed "Vegan Witch!", another shot.
###
It was a dark and stormy night: the Halloween evening.
There were only people of age on campus. It was raining very, very hard outside: as they say in London, it rains cats and dogs, but that's just a figure of speech.
The internet servers were down, and so was the television: the only means of communication that still worked was the campus radio. Many people were tuned in to the right radio frequency, hoping that the Odd Couple would announce that the rain was about to end: nobody wanted to get their costumes wet before midnight.
###
"We can't read this news, Bridget, please! They're not officially confirmed yet!"
"But what more evidence do you need? Just look out our giant window!"
Martine didn't want to believe what she was seeing, but it was true. It wasn't a hallucination. And everyone was going to see it with their own eyes!
The demure Martine took the microphone. Bridget wanted to snatch it from her hands, but she couldn't.
It was 10 p.m.
After turning on the microphone button, Martine declared, in a metallic voice in the style of official radio announcements:
"Breaking News.
A state-wide weather storm is now in effect.
A considerable amount of rain is expected for this evening, though many citizens have claimed to have seen MORE, than just water, falling from the sky.
More information to come: stay tuned."
Martine disconnected the live broadcast with the button. Automatically a song started: ironically, it was "Here Comes the Sun".
####
The goth Bridget was furious, and fast, too. She looked at her white colleague with contempt and said "You just cannot hide the truth from everyone. Winston Churchill said it, once."
Gripping the handle of her large Witch's Broom, Bridget pushed Martine away from the control panel, turned on the live button, and then announced:
"Welcome back, ladies! ... ahem... And gentlemen, too.
Following on our broadcast "from earlier", so to speak...
it has been CONFIRMED... that today IS... (in fact!) ... RAINING MEN.
the usual sources of information but, based on this morning's forecast, we have to assume that the vast wave of rain is affecting much of North America, from the Atlantic to well beyond the Great Lakes, and possibly even as far as... Alberta, or Seattle, IDK.
Eyewitnesses report that these Men are not harmful... However there is concern about how the Countries will deal with the unexpected flow.
Who are these men? Where are they from? Why do they all look like gorgeous stock photo images?
More information to come."
Bridget switched off the live feed. The music started again but no one was listening. Everyone was turned towards the sky.
Girls and boys of all ages could see that it was raining men from the sky! But what was happening?
.
Chapter 2: Somewhere, Over the Rain: "Bow!".
.
Above the clouds, far above the raindrops, walked two other people: these two were also jokingly referred to by acquaintances as "The Odd Couple."
###
At this point, every reader will think: "Wow! If I had a nickel for every time for every time a Strange Couple is encountered in this tale, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Right?" do not worry, gentle reader. The whole story is fictional, but this chapter is completely lacking in credibility. Where are the sources? Unlike Geology, Meteorology is an exact Science: it is not possible to dismiss a Flood with just a couple of memes.
###
The tall, thin one, wearing a black shirt under a garish red suit, resembled a young Doctor Who. Large sunglasses seemed hardly justified in the darkness of the storm, but perhaps, he did not want to distract people with the snake-like shape of his pupils.
The shorter, plump one, looking blissful and serene, looked more like a blessed version of the talented actor Charlie Sheen. He was dressed in a funny white velvet waistcoat, which made him look like the White Rabbit from Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland".