Louise watched out the window as the dark clouds amassed around her house, blackening the sky, blocking all trace of the stars and the moon. A streak of light followed by a rumble of thunder. Then the rains pummeled down, pounding out disjointed tunes on the roof tiles.
She shut the curtains and flicked on the lamp. She stared at herself in the mirror, raising fingers and gently running the tips along the crow's feet that grew horizontally away from her eyes.
'Old, wrinkled and ugly,' she said. She was only thirty-five but had been single since her divorce five-years earlier.
She had signed for countless dating agencies but they had all drawn a complete blank. One of them, Dates Galore, had matched her with a guy that snored whilst he was awake. Another guy that she had met through the agency, confessed to having a heroin addiction. She had withdrawn her subscription, convinced that she was destined to a life of misery. A life of loneliness.
That night in bed, she drifted into dreams of meeting a Mediterranean guy and moving to a desert island with him.
The following morning, sitting in a deck chair in the back yard with a newspaper and a glass of fruit juice, she found herself looking up to the white clouds that hovered above. As she brought her eyes back down she noticed the person standing next to the greenhouse.
Louise dropped her glass of juice and stared open mouthed. The person had no face, no clothes -- no anything. The figure looked as if it had been carved from a cloud -- white mists swirling about within the solid outline of its body. A featureless, expressionless Cloud Person.
Louise gulped, she tried to scream but couldn't - as if somebody had pressed the mute button on her. The Cloud Man (though there was no penis to back her theory) stood motionless. Legs slightly apart, arms hanging by his sides, his fingers stretched out. The Cloud Man tilted his head slightly to the left and just stared through what were slight indentations where a human's eyes would have been. She thought that if he had been given a mouth by whatever created him, it would have been smiling.
Then he was gone, had vanished. Louise sighed. Her stomach fluttered and she released the air that had been trapped. She felt a wave of nausea.
*Oh my God, I'm going mad!*
For the remainder of the day Louise gazed through the window. She studied all the clouds that floated in the sky, observing as they gently blew past her house in the day's breeze.
The following day she was hanging the washing when she felt that somebody was in the garden. She crouched down to place the peg basket on the grass then slowly turned as she rose to her feet. The Cloud Man was standing behind her. Her heart began to bang within its rib prison.
Her eyes glanced to the open back door of her house - then to the Cloud Man. There was no doubt about it now. He was there, in the garden, standing and watching her. But he looked darker than he had the previous day, a grayer complexion.
'Please, whoever, whatever you are, leave me alone... Go away!' she pleaded.
The Cloud Man raised an arm towards her. She ran, the wind sweeping her hair across her face as she trampled bare-footed over the flowerbed and jumped, landing heavily on her right ankle, shrieking in pain then bounding in through the door. She slammed the door and twisted the key. She leaned against the door panting, regaining her composure, before entering the kitchen. Through the window she could see it was still there. Just standing, its head slumped. She couldn't believe this. What the hell was going on?
The Cloud Man lifted his head and once again held an arm in Louise's direction. She stared in disbelief. Then as he took a step forward, she turned and ran for the stairs, jumping them two at a time to reach the top, diving onto her bed and pulling the pillow over her head as she wept.
On feeling the cold breeze against her legs, she sprung up to see her window was open, the moist wind blowing at the curtain. She gazed down to where the Cloud Man had been. He wasn't there any longer. She shut the window, and slipped the bolt across.
For the remainder of the day she stayed in her room trying to find some logic to the day's events. The only exception to this was so she could take her sharpest knife from the kitchen and her ex-husband's gun from the cabinet. She remembered vividly that it was a Walther PPK and Frank had loved it so much because James Bond had once used one.
With all the windows and doors locked, she went to bed. She lay sleepless for some time until exhaustion, mainly brought on by fear, got the better of her .
. She was in a restaurant sitting alone at a table. Then the door opened and somebody entered - it was the Cloud Man. Her initial reaction was of shock - she stood and was about to run. But wearing a tuxedo and carrying a bunch of flowers the Cloud Man no longer seemed threatening.
He sat down and handed her the flowers. She smelled them and then placed them on the table. The Cloud Man sat motionless; again what might have been a smile was carved into his face. Louise was nervous; she knew this could never work.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But I could never love you . you're... you're made of cloud.'
The Cloud Man sprang to his feet, grabbed the flowers and smashed them against the table, beating them until they were shredded to pieces.
'But you're lonely .' he said in a distant voice that echoed around the restaurant. He turned and marched out, slamming the door as he did so, causing the glass to shatter.
Louise awoke and sighed. She squeezed her eyes shut and hoped it was all a dream.
The next morning Louise's hopes were dashed. She walked into the lounge and found that the Cloud Man was standing, gazing in at her from the garden, darker and fatter than he had been.
'Go away!' she screamed. He just stood and stared.
Louise grabbed for the Walther PPK and held it to the window - hoping it might scare him off. The Cloud Man continued to stand, but now his head had slumped again.
'Go away . otherwise I'll blow your brains out!' she warned, as she opened the window enough to fire the gun through. The Cloud Man lifted an arm and began to walk forwards.
'I've warned you!'
She aimed for his head and was about to fire when she had an attack of fright, her fingers seized up and she felt totally helpless. I can't just shoot him in the head, she thought. But she had to react quickly as he was only a few meters away and showed no sign of stopping. She lowered the Walter PPK to his stomach and roared one last warning.
'I'm gonna shoot, you sonofabitch!'
She fired - the shot passed through his stomach leaving an oval hole. She breathed deeply as she watched the Cloud Man pause and gaze down at the hole. Her first thought was that the bullet hadn't caused him much pain. She was right.
But it did have an affect because he began to change - his color growing ever grayer and his body now seemed tense, tightly compact and rigid. He appeared to be trembling and as he raised his head a dark gash of a snarl had replaced the smile. She dropped the gun and it landed in the flowerbed out of her reach. She knew for certain that she had really pissed him off.
Louise thrust the curtains shut, checked the door was locked then ran back up into her bedroom. Shutting the curtains then sitting on the end of the bed and clutching the knife. Goosebumps springing up over her body, sweat glistening on her forehead.
The rain began to pound down outside. Like it had the night before she had first seen the Cloud Man. Her mind racing, terrified, confused.
*What am I going to do?* She stared at the phone. Could she? *No of course not, what could I say? There's a psychopath chasing me.oh and by the way, he's made out of cloud. Jesus!*
Listening to the beat of the rain, she tried to focus her thoughts, her injured ankle throbbing, and swelling purple.
She got to her feet, relaxing her fingers on the knife handle to release the tension from her joints, then grasping hold again as she slowly drew the curtain back. He wasn't there - then he was . only raindrop-infested glass between them, no more than twelve inches.
Though he had no face, no expression, she felt pain from within the hollows that might have been eyes. She backed off slowly, keeping her eyes open and upon the Cloud Man, waiting, praying that he would not move, that he would just stand and stare. She could see light through the bullet hole she had caused. He raised both his hands at once. She thought he would pound on the glass. She was stunned by what he actually did. He fired rainwater from his fingertips like a villain from a comic book. The rain shot from the tips and exploded against the glass - the dark clouds in the sky seemed to blacken, the rain scything down around where the Cloud Man stood, growing darker. Louise grabbed for the phone - she had no choice . she just wouldn't mention anything about the potential intruder being a cloud with supernatural powers. There was no dial tone. She looked to the Cloud Man . if he had lips, they would now be twisting evilly up his cloud face.
Louise ran for the door and out onto the landing. She had to escape.
Her car keys were hanging on the hook in the downstairs hall. She walked slowly down the stairs, into the hall and took the key. The door was straight ahead; she knew he would be behind it. She put the chain gently across then as slowly as she could, pulled the door, it rattled as it opened. There was a six-inch gap between the door and the wall where the chain held firm. Outside, hail now rammed into the ground, she could see it bouncing up off the doorstep. She edged her face closer to the airy hole, and then retracted suddenly.
*No time to be shy!*
She flung the chain off and charged out, wildly waving the knife, slashing and slicing thin air as she spiraled about trying to see the Cloud Man, find where he lurked. He wasn't anywhere to be seen.
The black clouds were multiplying above, firing down the shots of hail that burned and stung Louise's skin. She thrust the key into the lock, looking over each shoulder as she did, praying that he would not come up behind her. She opened the door - the Cloud Man was sitting in the driver's seat. He turned his head and looked at her, his dark cloud hands resting on the steering wheel. Louise lurched back and fell into a cold puddle.
As she gazed up, soaked through, she watched the Cloud Man climb from the car and lean over her. She spun, leapt and sprinted back into the house - a lighting bolt exploded by her feet, burning and blistering her ankle. She twisted her head round as she scaled the stairs. There was a charcoaled piece of carpet from which smoke spiraled - then the dark gray Cloud Man charged in, stopped, lifted his head to see Louise on the stairs and fired another streak of lightning, this one exploded on the stair railing, the wood erupted in flame.
The Cloud Man sprinted up the stairs; Louise could hear his footstep just behind her, he was so close that she could almost feel his breaths . if he had breaths. She slammed the bedroom door and turned the key, slumping to the floor, weeping uncontrollably, still with the knife in her hand, clutching so hard she felt it were an abnormal extension to her own body and that she would never again be able to let go. Her breaths were frantic, her chest aching, her ankles and lower legs bloody and blistered.
Outside, the sky was so black it might have been the middle of the night, the rain and hail toppled down, adding a thunderous chorus of sound to the scene.
Then another explosion as a lightning bolt hit and shattered the bedroom door, the wood engulfed in flames as the Cloud Man stepped in and grabbed Louise's legs. He forced her to the ground, pulling the knife from her hand and throwing it onto the floor. He put his weight over her - as if trying to suffocate her with his body mass. She tried to fight but he was too strong - his dark gray arms solid and pulsing with muscle.
Suddenly she was soaked with water as it spilled from his body, drenching her, drowning her.
She spluttered and screamed, kicking hard, but it was useless, she was pinned to the floor and the air was being crushed from her lungs. Her chest began to constrict and the world around her became hazy . then as dizziness took hold she remembered seeing the Cloud Man, now white like bone and fluffy like cotton wool, lift away from her and fly back up and merge with the other white clouds.
She awoke with her mum and dad towering over her. They shook her. She was lying in a pool of water.
'Darling, are you okay?' her dad asked.
'Yes, I think so.'
'What happened here?' her mum screamed, gazing around at the debris of the charcoaled door, examining the scolding on her daughter's legs. Louise didn't answer.
'Let's get you to hospital,' her dad suggested.
It had been three months since the Cloud Man had visited Louise. She rarely went out any longer. The only time she even contemplated leaving the house was when the sky was all but clear of clouds. On overcast days she would keep the windows shut - when it rained she would scrunch up in a ball under her bed covers.
The doctor had said she would get over the shock eventually. She hadn't told them about the Cloud Man, she claimed that an intruder carrying a flamethrower had attacked her. They were shocked by this claim. The idea that such a man might be wandering the streets was terrifying. She was just glad they hadn't locked her in a rubber room. When she had made the claim, she realized how ridiculous it sounded.
The police had stepped up their efforts but no suspects had been apprehended.
Louise was walking to the shop. It was a blue-skied day, only two clouds floated in the sky. As she continued, she watched the clouds intently, just in case anything, anyone, started to float down towards her.
That, however, was not her main concern. She was far more concerned that she had not had her period since the visit -- and now her stomach had begun to bulge.
Copyright © 2003 by Steve Goldsmith