The Coming Cloud

A fictional story based around a true event that happened in the Souris Valley almost a decade ago.

Was it twenty below the doughnut? Was it twelve below? Either way, it really didn't matter. It was just really cold outside, bitterly cold to say it succinctly.

"It's not as cold as the reception I'd receive at home," she ventured to nobody specifically. It would be colder than the stubble left on a durum field after the harvest.

She harvested more than emotional turmoil during her life on this rolling rock. A long list names and a few diseases had called her system home.

And her support system would inexorably explode and then implode. All around her in style of a warm September day, like that certain one the year before.

All the friends she alienated, all the men she chased away, all the family she abandoned, all the money she frittered away like free time. It was all gone, never to return her way.

And she did it to herself. Call it a self-destructive streak, call it an undiscovered complex, call it what you wish, she was on a train track toward death.

Her train track had been heavy steel, sturdy and unswerving all throughout her life. It could carry her distances that may have been flat and easy to travel through, or through rocky, rough terrain that would take more time and energy to plow through.

But it would get her from one point to the other.

And then she reached the age of reason.

Then the track, the tough steel began to weaken horribly. That train, that load she carried called her life couldn't make it as far as it once could.

As a teenager, she spent a night in jail after being caught pounding the liquid that so terrified Wayne Wheeler and rocking the plant that so demonized Randolph Hearst.

And like the planet she strived and survived on, the rock rolled far down the hill.

She flunked out of college and she lost her part-time job. Every urge that led to vice pinched her: consumer, chemical, and carnal. Active as grocery store clerk during the day and as a barmaid during the evening, she barely strived and she barely survived.

But the vices sustained her through it all.

And the runaway train finally crashed when the rails could not take the heavy emotional and physical loads anymore. Horribly violated after a night with the wrong man and a bag of nose candy, she wound up in a warm hospital bed with a balloon in her nose and an intravenous tube feeding her arm antibiotics.

That night was the night she commenced on new track building.

She eventually moved away from that sort of destructive lifestyle and the city that provided easy access to it. She reestablished the support system and she climbed all of the dozen steps that led away from her trifecta of addictions. She tried to live her life one step at a time, one decision at a time, and one moment at a time.

One unbreakable bit at a time.

But, life is never as generous as we want it to be.

And for her, two out of three was never an appalling outcome.

One night after a long shift pushing peanuts, smokes, and gasoline, she went home with another one of the wrong men. One flirtation in one unbreakable moment led to the most erotically charged experience in an unbreakable chain of moments.

And she left that man reevaluating everything she believed.

Lost in a cloud of confusion was she.

The rock was rolling.

The train was derailing.

The haze was coming.

And the crash would be spectacular.

Sometimes, actions truly say more than words ever could.

The crashing sounds came from the western verge of her field of vision. Metal on metal crunched together like a million tin cans in that one unbreakable moment. The crash could be heard for miles in every direction, but the fallout would be felt on a farther radius.

Over the western verge came the demonic entity, a cloud that could destroy your ability to see, taste, smell, and feel all the good things in life. The maddening mist hit her eyes, hit her mouth, hit her nose and hit her skin with an unparalleled malice. There wasn't a wet towel within reach, or a bathtub to lie down in. In that moment, that one unbreakable moment, every other moment she worried about in her life meant nothing at all.

She wasn't just scarred by the accident, she was mutilated.

All the drugs, all the abusive men, all the worthless sexual encounters, all that emotional pain was a pittance compared to the physical pain she now suffered. It was far harder now than the last time she was hospitalized. She had two deplorable occupations and neither provided the health insurance she would so badly need.

It was now beyond the derailment she had suffered years before.

Her life was now a twisted, mangled wreckage, like the train that the waste disposal workers and government officials would encounter in the coming daylight.

The rescue people found her lying on the pavement next to her vehicle, just outside the house of the newest random, insincere encounter, writhing and whining in thorough, unqualified pain.

At the hospital, she was placed in the intensive care unit. Her clothing was gently removed, yet chunks of skin came off with the flimsy cotton blend. Her eyes were permanently stricken with blindness and her lungs were forever charred, the tissue forever scarred.

The man in her life, the one who loved her wholly, without condition, was unsure how or why she ended up in that ghastly condition. He just looked on, holding vigil as the doctors did what they could to save her life.

She knew why she ended up here.

It was because of the train derailment called her life.

As for the final outcome, she was clueless.

Why was she living at this point?

Was it for another chance to ride the rails or to have the last rites administered?

The cloud of confusion was frozen, almost unbreakable in the silence of her mind.

The cloud of death and despair outside eventually gave way to the cloud of emotional turmoil and bitter dissent that would stay in the city for years afterward.

And for her, the cloud of confusion would stay forever unbreakable.

The brain died without her permission.

And the coming cloud wafted into the mists of history.

Reviews

[Hello, Goodbye]

Great Piece.. You have a curious melodic way of telling a story with engaging imagery that is captivating. I'm sure that I could write one paragraph that told the main points of your entire story but it would be boring in its bare skeleton state.. you add a great amount of colorful detail and imagery that expresses not only the movements but the accompanying emotions also. Kudos on the controlled way of ending the story.. it wound down quite nicely.

[Blue Moon Ice Cream]

The comparison to a train was well written. A bit confusing at first, but it soon became clear that it was a metaphor, not real life. You did a good job of developing her story. For me, it was a lot to read without dialogue or action, but enjoyable nevertheless.