Cloud Girl: A Short Story

An idea was tracing through the back of her mind, and so she thought to try and best and quickly she could manifest how she felt. Several minutes minutes of failure of preforming such mental acrobatics propelled Katie towards the decisive choice of going to her closet. As she opened the mirror door, Katie gazed into her own ocean green eyes, and revealing a bounty of tired clothing nobody really wore. Her slender arm reached a slender hand to grasp an engraved brown leather booklet.

She looked down at the coffee table to see a brown box filled with a few things. On top, she could see some family photos in gold color frames. “Thank you,” she said to him. She walked over to her father’s chair and sat down. She became aware of an uneasy feeling around him and wanted as far away from him as possible. It may have come from her dad complaining about him for a long time. She was now wishing for her uncle to show

She walks to the centermost oak tree near Mason Hall, she finally has found the perfect shady spot on an 80-degree day. She passes the boy from her Psychology class and gives him a small smile. She’s taking a journey to a jungle she doesn’t normally observe, a place where many humans and animals inhabit. There isn’t a breeze and the air feels drier than usual. The Diag seems unfriendly today, as she sits down she’s nervous of her surroundings. She plants herself on a somewhat clean patch of grass and pulls out her shiny laptop. She is reading “Werner Herzog’s Conquest of the Useless” for her freshman English class. As she dives her way into the reading she starts to think about where she is, what is going on around her, and the journey that she is on. A bushy red squirrel approaches her, she’s confused why it’s coming so close and quickly gets up to escape its presence. “Why in the world is this squirrel so close to me” she thinks to herself. The girl moves from the tree but as she get up she starts to notice specific details she hasn’t before.

She decided to look down for the rest of the walk after getting glared at by a passerby. As she was watching her feet and skipping over the cracks in the pavement, something had yanked the back of her jacket. Whipping around, Becca saw a shambled family. They were tan and soaking wet; their cardboard home shaped the background of the frightening portrait Becca was faced with. A wave of angry words, desperate words confronted her, echoing without meaning her mind. The mother of the two children fell to her knees weeping, pleading for something Becca would never exactly know. The daughter, the girl Becca realized pulled her jacket, stared at her. Dark chocolate colored eyes were melting with the heat of her pain and her brittle lips smoked with the speed of her pleading words. Becca was being pulled away unknowingly when she heard a familiar rumble coming from the pit of the girl’s stomach. And just as soon as the encounter had happened, it was over. Concern replaced the sound of desperation and she let her family know she was fine. She went back to looking at her feet. In a couple of minutes, Becca’s family arrived at the

A shadow casted itself over the tattered menu in Addison’s hand as she shifts her gaze to the figure standing over her. An overwhelming sensation embodies her as she meets the spellbinding green eyes that stare back. The bottle green eyes that dance with gold flecks were once her grounding point yet now look so alien. Her gaze drifts along his features, taking in each of them as though he was a painting she was seeing for the first time. A painting that had been so carefully crafted yet seemed so effortless with his slightly crooked nose and flawlessly tousled hair. A small smirk playfully tugs at the corner of his lips as he slides into the battered booth seat across from her.

The hum of the air conditioner was drowned out by the radio, blasting the music just a touch too loud. The singing accompanying the radio was slightly sharp, her brother’s voice straining itself to be heard over the music. She rested her head on the window, eyes following the pavement markings as they raced by. The same trees had lined the highway on either side for the past two hours, and if it weren’t for the sign they drove past welcoming them to North Carolina, there would have been no indication they’d moved at all. The music quieted, and an instruction was given robotically from her father’s phone.

“Nicole! Guess what,” my friend Melodie screamed from across the street, “Someone stole a painting at the Louvre. Come here it’s in the paper.” She hurriedly gestured for me to cross the street. I sighed disappointedly as I trudged across the street, pulling my furry coat around myself tighter. I glared at my slightly short friend; her short light brown hair was violently whipping around her head. Her light blue eyes were practically glowing.

“Hey, Amy…,” he greeted me, pressing a few buttons rapidly. “No… NO! Ah, crud! I was this close - this close!” He held up his hand, holding his thumb and index finger centimeters apart. Now, that he was facing me, I noticed that aside from the blonde hair, he looked a lot like me - same eyes, same frame, same nose. “What?” he asked me, noticing me staring. Startled, I muttered, “N-nothing. How was, uh, school?”

I looked around the familiar room. Faces of neighbors, friends, people I’ve grown accustomed to seeing here every day. All except one. A girl, sitting at the counter with her computer open and fingers typing away. I don’t remember walking over to her, but I remember talking to her. She turned towards me, and I caught my breath. She was beautiful. With fair skin her amber eyes shone brightly. Her brown hair faded into a blonde,

The digital clock that hung on the wall adjacent to her read that it was nearing six in the morning; she had gotten through the night without being paged back to work. A low groan escaped Lauren's barely parted lips and she rubbed her eyes, trying to clear them of their hazy vision. Her mind was a foggy mess of an open field with towering weeds that swayed back and forth to a violent wind while she stood, unable to transcend to the other side, isolated and wailing. She was drowning in that uncanny state of consciousness—not quite awake yet not quite asleep—and her thoughts were laxly rising from the depths of an infinite

Once he walked inside, he went straight to the mystery aisle. After looking through several books, he finally picked one. This book was quite thick and was royal purple in color. The title of the book was And Then There Were None. Christopher bought the book and rushed back home and then into his bedroom. It was on his bed that he started to read this intriguing book. As he was reading, he noticed that some words had been penciled in the margin of the book. The gentle and neat handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind. He then became engrossed with this person’s thoughts rather than the words from the book itself. In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner's name, Melody Foster. With much time and effort, he finally located her address. He learned that she lived in a city four hours away. He wrote a letter to her and introduced himself. During the next four months, the two grew fonder of each other. Christopher slowly began falling in love with Melody. He asked her for a picture of herself, but she respectfully declined. Her reasoning was that if he were to love her, he should love her for her personality and not her looks. This drove Christopher mad. He wanted to be able to put a face to the person that he now had fallen in love with. Christopher could not wait any longer, so he asked her when she could meet him in person. She agreed and suggested they should meet at a mall in two

As they walked to where Thomas Jackson stood after descending the stairs, Allie watched his eyes. You could usually tell a lot about a person from their eyes. Had she not heard someone say that the eyes were the windows to the soul -- but of course, she had also heard someone else say they were but the reflection of the world around them?

That ten minutes of missed sleep became her reality. That dream that made no sense became her nightly companion… and it showed. Visible on her features, carved into those creases and worn under her eyes like purple badges of horror. Testament to the way in which her life was slowly circling down that drain of her own psychosis.

Refocusing, she continued to scan the yard, thinking furiously she caught her breath; her eyes flew back to Minnijon locking on his hat, his pointed hat. Pointed and sharp, don’t forget sharp Amelia. She thought of a Stephen King story she read once, well to be honest more then once, and an idea came to her. Immediately she discarded it shaking her head with a small sad smile. But she filed it away anyway; a last resort maybe.

Today was no different. She lay tucked under the warm sheets of her bed, staring up into the abyss of creative potential that made up her ceiling. It was blurry and vague since she had left her glasses on the nightstand beside her bed, but that made it all the more interesting. She could imagine all of the little intricacies, all of the details, without having to have every crack enforced into her head from reality.