There is this and Nothing More

Out of the fourth floor windows at work, a sudden glimpse of the sea. For a moment shifted into dream-memories, of all those night visions of Brighton being flooded by Tsunamis and monstrous waves. The sea looked so high. A great grey and boiling vortex of a sea. A sudden moment of reality-panic -was I dreaming?- and then the reassurance of knowing I was awake. But the sea.... It seemed so high, right up to the railings itself (this no doubt was an optical illusion). I could imagine great waves crashing over inneffectual barriers to flood the city. Smoking a cigarette in the smoking area I was half-waiting for those great grey waves to envelop us all.
The elevated vantage point of the fourth floor in the call centre provides an envious view of Brighton, even in, or should I say, particularly in, the relatively torrential rain we have had today. The mysterious building I can see on top of a hill out of the left hand side window had disappeared into the white void of the rain. An all consuming nothingness, and I still wonder what the building is used for, what or whom it houses. What would it be like to wait there in the upper storey windows, looking out on Brighton from the white, through the rain, through the sinking afternoons..?

Rain masks the sound of footsteps.
Nine years ago, walking back from Al's then flat on Montpelier Road. A thick November rain, heavy with unemployment and the coming winter. Leaving long after midnight. Wrap myself in my coat, light a cigarette.
Through the streets so empty of people. T.S Eliot's 'half-deserted streets'.
The wind was up that night, and the rain too. Great gusts of night-tides. Ripping the few remaining leaves from the trees. Squalls of rain, beholden to their own patterns, the night-rhythms of secrets and the small hours. I came across no-one on my long walk back to my house. Literally no-one, but we'll get to that. At some point, walking through the tangle of streets near Seven Dials I became aware of a sound. Carried by the wind and distorted by the rain, I couldn't quite work out what the noise was. A pub-noise, I thought. Something to do with bars and clubs shutting down for the night. The noise most closely resembled the sound of a large plastic container hitting the ground with some force. I imagined the plastic container to be the size of a large car or a small van. A pub-noise..? No, more a hidden-factory noise. I didn't pay that much attention to it. It was, after all, just another nocturnal sound, something that I wouldn't remember the next day.
Except then, a few streets later, quite a few streets later I heard the sound again; the same pattern of the initial large noise and then a few following smaller echoes. I paused, trying to locate the source of the sound, but apart from the conviction that it was 'a few streets away' I really had no idea.
I continued my walk. Through the wind. Through the rain. There was something absolute about that night. So old, so ancient, so timeless. I crossed the Old Steine, that borderland between the town centre and St James Street and eventually Kemptown where I then lived. I heard the sound again. The same pattern of echoes, the same rhythm, the same level. There was either a similar source for all these noises, or, I considered, the noise, or whatever was making the noise, was following me.
Obviously I didn't really believe that at all. It was an interesting notion though. As I walked on, I heard the noise again, for a fourth time. The idea that it was following me was proving more and more difficult to shake.
Up the long upward rise of Edward Street, past the courts and the job centre, all huge and monolithic structures, and the American Express building, nestled in itself. An air of monetary pre-occupation. I passed a small shop to my right. A tiny shop that never seemed to be open that specialising in the selling of autographs of celebrities. I never seemed tro notice the shop in the day, only on these long walks back long after midnight. Hastily blu-tacked yellowed, greying photographs in the window. One was of Joanna Lumley. Glamorous and smiling, the photograph seemed strangely incongruous in the slightly grubby, tiny window. She masked the darkness of the shop behind her, and I became convinced that the shop-night was leaking out through her eyes that followed me as I passed by.
The rain grew harder, and Edward Street became an almost-equation of the pavement I walked on, the road to my left and houses to my right. Nothing else but this, and the rain, and the wind. The continual rhythm of my walking. I felt like I had been walking this road forever.
Ahead of me there was a man walking the same direction as me. I really couldn't make out any details of him, but he seemed dressed in a light coloured jacket and wore some kind of hat. He was walking really quite slowly but I never seemed to get any closer to him. Like I'm walking behind no-one was the thought that came to mind. No matter how quick I walked, this road-phantom ahead of me seemed to get no closer. I started to think of the photograph of Joanna Lumley's eyes, that sound that was following me, and I felt that there were footsteps in the rain.
The rain hiding footsteps.
(
And with the sudden certainty of a ghost story, it struck me that the man walking ahead of me, in the same direction I was, was actually following me.
Another thought I couldn't shake. It made so much sense, even if it was completely incomprehensible. An inexplicable conviction. I kept up my pace and the man ahead of me must have sped up his for he soon vanished into darkness.
I was soon home. Stood in the hallway leaning against the front door, listening for footsteps, watching for sounds. .
There was the rain and there was nothing more.

A similar rain today, near luxurious in its intensity. Everything faded to monochrome and straight lines and grey sinking to white. Met Em for a coffee at lunchtime. Neros in the North Laine, a man slumped inn a chair, looking half-familiar from somewhere.
Glancing out of the window at the internet cafe, the rain is as consistent as ever, and twilight seems to have fallen early tonight. A dusk you could sleep in, a nightfall of sleep and rain and footsteps and sounds a few streets away that seem to be following you.