The Rain Woman

I cannot forget meeting the Rain Woman. She’d been feasting on my father’s heart, still squatting over the cavity she’d dug out in his chest. Although it was dark, the moon had filled the room, as if it thought it necessary for me to bear witness. Muscles strained in her calves, her muddied grey feet flexing flat on the ground. 

I didn’t speak, enraptured; she didn’t look at me, uninterested. When she had finished eating she collapsed, almost childishly, into a cross-legged position on the ground, and proceeded to lick the blood from the mottled skin of her fingers. I had seen women nude before, of course, but never one so unabashed. I could not stop watching her and her pink-tipped claws, curved like a bird of prey’s. 

I should have been angrier. I should have rushed to avenge him. 

Soon she was sated, and it began to rain. Her hair, fluid and black, dripped down her back and her calves, leaving trailing muddy stains. She opened the window and reached out to the water; it reached for her back.

She was gone.

I sat on the floor and stared down at my father. The Rain Woman had clawed openness into him. It was not something I could have done. 

†

Growing up, nothing could evoke terror better than the prospect of a leak. Everyone was vigilant. As soon as the clouds clustered over, everyone dashed to shut their doors and windows. The slightest drop and the Rain Woman could get in: she’d slither through cracks in the glass or gaps under doors, leaving your house soaking and trembling under the weight of her wet footprints. 

And, if you were particularly unfortunate and she was feeling especially peckish, she might eat your heart.

Such stories were admittedly uncommon, although that did little to comfort the town. In fact, the Rain Woman was also benevolent; she liked old women and small pets. Under her touch, flower-beds and vegetable gardens flourished; she was very useful if your windows needed cleaning. And, although she was often used to scare them, she generally ignored children.

She did not ignore my father.

The doors of our church are old and everyone is constantly worrying about the gaps. The day of his funeral we took black cloths and bound them around every possible entrance. Even the saints staring from the stained glass windows were draped in mourning.

My mother was inconsolable. She was worried that the Rain Woman might become fixated with our family. It had been four years since she had eaten her last heart. But when I recalled her, licking her claws in satiated boredom as I stood petrified, I knew that the obsession was not hers. 

I did not tell her so, of course. That would only have worried her more.

All through the service, water struck the windows, as if threatening to burst through. When I closed my eyes I could see hers, golden and lazy, opening and closing like a lizard’s as she finished her meal. 000

The Rain Woman had my heart already. My greatest fear was that she did not want it.

†

I became unfocused. People worried. It was said that children with their head in the clouds could tempt rain.

I could not deny it.

I wrapped myself in black clothes and closed in, bound-up and water-logged, any frustrated tears or absurd speeches collected before they escaped. Every storm was a torment. I listened to the roar of the clouds bursting, emptying their troubles on the world without a care, and longed to be there. I longed for the Rain Woman.

The Rain Woman probably did not remember me. 

I decided that the only proper thing to do would be to invite her in. I’d have liked such a realisation to be punctuated with something grand—a proper thrashing storm, with thunder and lightning—but that was not to be. A pale, grey, polite drizzle answered my pale, grey, polite prayers. 

I was not in a position to bargain. I cracked open my window and waited.

†

The water pools on my window-sill, and then it pulls upwards. I stand where I am, which seems to surprise her. I do not register any genuine curiosity. 

She does not introduce herself—after all, she requires no introduction. So I break the silence instead.

“My heart is yours; you ate it with my father’s. I invited you here to let you know that you can have it.”

She watches me. I have never heard a sound so loud as the rain while she watches me. And I have never felt relief like screaming, screaming as loud as I can as the Rain Woman shrugs round, grey shoulders.

“I could eat.”

© 2025 Megan Baffoe

About the Author

Megan Baffoe studied English Literature and then Creative Writing at Oxford. She enjoys writing fairytales, fraught family dynamics and unreliable narrators. Her work has been published in venues such as Worlds of Possibility, midnight & indigo and The Mud Season Review.