Echoes in the rain
Experimental Short Story Series #29
Title: Echoes in the Rain
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA)
When Rain Falls, So Do Echoes
Rain, for most, is background noise—a lullaby for the sleepless, a soundtrack to coffee cups and wistful gazes. But for Elina, rain was no ambiance. It was a prophecy. Welcome to blog #29 in our ongoing 60 Experimental Short Stories series, where narrative dares to slip its leash and storytelling becomes a terrain for mind, myth, and madness.
This story pulls you into the thin membrane between fate and free will, where whispers arrive not from ghosts or gods—but from yourself.
The Experimental Story
Echoes in the Rain
The first echo came during a drizzle.
Elina had stepped out without an umbrella—half a rebellion, half a habit. As she crossed the empty park, a voice, faint as a thought and familiar as her breath, laced through the patter of rain: “Don’t text him tonight. It ends badly.”
She stopped. No one was there. Her phone was silent. Her mind, not.
A week later, during a monsoon-soaked morning, it happened again.
“Take the green line today, not the red.”
The green line had a delay. She groaned, ignored it, and took the red. At precisely 8:37 a.m., a fight broke out in her carriage—an ugly, public unravelling with her ex-boyfriend she hadn’t seen in nine months. The echoes had warned her.
With each storm that followed, the voice grew bolder. It told her to decline a job. She obeyed. The company collapsed two months later in a scandal.
It told her to speak kindly to a man in a bookstore. She did. He later saved her from a mugging on a forgotten street.
It wasn’t the voice of a stranger. It was her voice—worn, wiser, sorrow-thick. A version of herself that remembered.
But then the rain grew obsessive. So did the echoes.
They came even when the clouds hadn’t yet gathered. Thunder in a clear sky. Whispers from puddles. The voice grew impatient: “Don’t marry him.”
“Take the train to Berlin.”
“Burn that letter.”
Choices no one else knew she would face.
One night, as the rain came down in sheets, the echo was a scream:
“You stopped listening. You used to trust me.”
Elina shut every window. Dried every corner. Burned her raincoat. Moved to the desert.
No rain. No whispers. Silence.
Until one night, beneath a dry, cloudless sky, she heard a drop land on her roof.
Then another.
And then her own voice:
“You can run, Elina. But even deserts have storms.”
Why This Story Matters
In this haunting entry to our experimental series, we explore the philosophy of time not as a river, but as a conversation—a dialogue between our future regrets and present choices. It plays with temporal causality, self-echoes, and the poetic eeriness of internal guidance that may not be madness, but memory yet to be made.
This story uses structure like weather—unpredictable, emotional, transforming. It doesn't seek answers. It seeks awareness.
60 Stories. Infinite Directions. One Journey.
As we unfold the 29th tale in our 60 Experimental Short Stories series, we reaffirm our belief in fiction’s power to disrupt, disturb, and delight. These stories are more than entertainment—they are invitations to think sideways, to read between realities.
Our loyal readers across continents have turned this blog into a global micro-literary movement. Soon, you’ll hold these tales as a curated eBook, and later as a collector’s edition in print—a chronicle of narrative audacity.
Stay tuned. Share widely. Come back tomorrow. Because tomorrow rains another echo.
Visit: farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Where stories drip, echo, and thunder.
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