Behind the Clouds

Forest, had been tired today. Too much work, not enough rest was fast catching up to him. The drive home had been an effort to stay awake. He had arrived home and checked on Albert, the resident house plant, and gone to bed early.

Now it was four in the morning and he was wide awake. Albert was probably still sleeping. He decides to take a stroll around the yard in the moonlight. It was a full moon, and the cool night air might help toggle sleep mode again.

As he steps outside, he notices a slight breeze blowing. It’s gentle and seems to ebb and flow. The moonlight is both bright and then gone, as clouds drift lazily by in the night sky.

There isn’t enough cloud cover to portent rain, but the clouds are large and almost ominous. Their shapes are random and strange. Forest turns the corner of the house and strolls down the side yard, taking deep breaths of the cool night air.

The Clouds

Forest reaches the back corner of the house and turns left, entering the backyard. The horizon view from this perspective is similar to the rest of the sky except for one particular cloud.

He steps in a gopher hole and very nearly twists his ankle, and almost falls. The gopher hole was easy to miss because of what he saw at the edge of that cloud. He shakes his head and blinks, looking again, but it wasn’t there now.

He continues watching the oddly shaped cloud as he rounds the corner of the house on this side. Watching it gives him uncanny feelings of being watched in return.

It is more than feeling, he is being watched, his primal instincts are in a state of alarm, and he barely resists the urge to run to the door.

Albert’s Accident

Later that morning Forest is still shaken. He napped the remaining hours of his sleep, because he kept tossing and turning. The memory of what he had seen in the clouds, still fresh in his thoughts.

He stumbles sleepily into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. What he had seen, and that instinctive feeling of being watched, had shaken him. Likewise, he felt that he had stumbled onto something, that wasn’t for him to know.

He pours the coffee and takes an eye opening sip. He could have imagined the whole thing, however, he hadn’t imagined his instincts responding as they did. What the hell was that thing? And what the double hell was it doing behind the clouds?

Sipping his coffee, while he steps to the window and peers outside, he notices it is another cloudy day. The clouds are large and oddly distorted, as he watches them drift lazily in the sky. He needed to get ready for work.

Setting his coffee down, he decides to get Albert his morning beverage, he fills a glass with water. At least Albert would understand the weirdness he has experienced recently.

He stops cold when he sees his resident friend Albert’s condition. Albert had an accident, and is now upside down. Planted upside down. Albert’s roots are where his leaves used to be, and are undisturbed in any other way. Albert is now a houseplant grown in reverse.