The Cloud by J.S. Douglas

Happy writing prompt day!

My friend Eva gave me the following prompt:

A little boy riding a pogo stick in his driveway, and snow (or something that looks like snow) starts falling on a sunny day.

She has given me a snow-related prompt before and, one day, I will bring my old prompt-inspired short stories over from my old blog and share them with you all.

This one was inspired by both the fact that I write eldritch/Lovecraftian fiction and that I’ve been reading quite a bit about sensory issues, autism, and gestalt language processing. This story is not inspired by anyone in particular, just inspired by the idea that we all experience the world differently, and while a person may show the world one side of themselves, they likely are experiencing a greater depth of emotion and complexity of thought than an outside observer could ever realize.

I hope you enjoy the story!

The Cloud

by J.S. Douglas

Click, swish, click, swish. The sound filled the muggy summer air. 

Jacob bounced up and down, hopping on his pogo stick across the driveway. His sweaty hair rustled in the stillness, creating an artificial breeze and lifting it off his scalp. 

29, 30, 31, 32, 33… Jacob counted, focusing on the physicality of his bouncing. The closeness of the air indoors, combined with the incessant buzzing of his mother’s old AC, had been driving him up the wall. Better to be out here, in the Sunday quiet. He was glad his neighbors were religious. They were currently crammed into church pews, not bugging him while he was trying to focus. Not distracting him from the blood pounding in his ears, the click and swish of the stick, and his counting.

As he watched the gray asphalt beneath him move by, he felt something icy hit his cheek. 

100, he thought, 101, 102… 

More ice-cold wetness hit his head, his neck, the back of his shirt. Wet spots peppered the ground. Once sticky with his own sweat, his clothes were now wet in a way he could not stand. Wet like a sprinkler had hit him. Wet and itchy and achy on his skin. 

He took a deep breath and hopped off the pogo stick. 

In the nose, out the mouth, he told himself, picking up the stick and jogging to the covered stoop in front of his small home. 

Under the cover now, he pulled off his damp shirt and used it to vigorously rub his head, evening out the cold and hot sensations until his hair felt more neutral. Relatively comfortable in his own skin once again, he focused on the world around him.

“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,” he sang, watching white flakes drift down out of a clear blue sky. “Oh, the weather outside is frightful,” he continued, staring and trying to think. He crooned the song as he stared, the words flowing automatically as his mind raced.

Snow? In August? 

Still singing, he poked his head out from under cover and looked straight up into the flurry. 

While the sky around his home was blindingly blue, the atmosphere immediately above his house was filled with thunder-gray clouds.

Cold peppered his face as he saw two black tentacles writhe inside the mass.

His voice got louder as his heart reverberated in his chest, pumping blood through his ears faster than he thought possible. Shouting the lyric of “Let it Snow” at the looming black above, he stared up, trying to spot those writhing tentacles again. Hoping he wouldn’t see them. That it was all in his imagination. 

Suddenly, the clouds shifted, returning his patch of earth to hot sticky stillness.

Jacob’s eyes tracked the clouds. His mouth whispered the words to “Let it Snow,” the song’s rhythm soothing his galloping heart. The cloudy column moved away with purpose, though there was no wind. He watched until the thunderous mass disappeared over the horizon. He watched until his mom came out of the house with a dry shirt, a popsicle, and a hand towel. 

“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,” he told his mom.

She smiled. 

“I could go for some snow, too, Jakey. Maybe the popsicle will cool you down.”

Jacob looked for the clouds again, but they were gone, and there was no way for him to tell his mom what he’d seen. He sighed and licked the rapidly warming popsicle. 

The End

I hope you enjoyed the story! See you next week with a new one!