The Rain Man

Something told him he’d know more, later on, about ecstasy.

He wondered about the man whose soul he'd inherited. Was it the rain man (an especially clear character among Leo's nocturnal receivings) who walked down the muddy, silty-puddled alleyway behind the backyard when the petrichor lingered in the air? Who walked out of town afterward, into the mesquites, where he threw off his clothes, vomited and emptied his bowels and vomited again until, trembling, he was nothing except himself, and contained nothing that was not him, and only then stepped into gullies swollen with muddy torrent and submerged himself and felt the grit and twigs scouring him.

--from The Paraclete