Where Clouds Should Cry

Pitter patter. Pitter patter, sounded the rain against the windshield. The raindrops raced each other down, down to their imminent death as the wind roared and the sky swirled.

* * *

 It is universally known, that unless you are fully innocent, you cannot ever live without guilt. The problem for most of us is just that, we are never fully innocent. Our thoughts crawl with anger and contempt, as do our souls, as they often rage with hatred. We all wish that we could be fully innocent, but then that would mean there would be no reason for us to seek refuge or a means of escape, saving per say.

 As we are human, most of us at least are, we will always need just that. Saving. We are like clouds, I suppose, with many colours and depths; they change and morph into different shapes as time goes by. They move on with the wind and shed tears when provoked, just like us. And like us, they always have one problem; figuring out where they should cry.

                                                        * * *

 I was around 9 at the time. A generally quiet girl, but I had enough thoughts to fill the entire sky and back. Questions would often slosh through my head as well, such as, “Why would he do such a thing?”. “Perhaps mother did something wrong?”. “Did we do something wrong.” However, I never voiced any of them, fearing that it would arouse a storm of emotions that mother was allowing to brew within her. That would just make everything messy, and messy was…well it was messy.

 When mother had divorced father, she had told us never to correspond with him.

“A bad man will always be a bad man, no matter what other miracles time can perform,” she would say.

 I listened to her. My brother and sister in turn, listened. But when the letter arrived, when it swiftly landed on the door mat, that all changed. All at once mother’s opinion on father didn’t seem to matter all that much. We had made a promise, yet most of the time, promises are made to be broken. Or was it rules are meant to be broken? Either way, something was made to be broken.

 “Murder wasn’t on today’s to-do list,” grumbled Conon as he drove the truck over a massive muddy puddle.

 “It’s not on anyone’s, you tosser,” snapped Dana as she shifted in the backseat.

 The rain was belting against the windows, causing the road to turn into a watery mud; the isolated road that we were on wound through fields of lustrous green grass. However, you couldn’t make that out, not then with the weather being as it was.

 “No…no it's on mine, just not until a little further down the line,” he said.

 “Of course, you would say something like that, wouldn’t you?” Dana replied, rolling her eyes.

 Her short blonde-brown hair was wet at the edges and her coat made an annoying shuffling sounds whenever she moved, which was quite often.

 “Are you certain you know where you’re going?” I asked Conon.

 He was the worst out of the three of us at navigation, yet he always insisted on driving, giving us the stale line of “I’m the oldest and I’m a man. It’s my job to.” He obviously felt inferior having one of his sisters drive him round. I always thought that it was for appearances; Dana had added onto that idea by assuming that he didn’t want anyone to believe that he was drunk or tipsy, therefore he was unable to drive.

 “Of course, I know where I’m going,” he snapped. “If any of us were to remember where our old place would be, it would be me. After all I’m-

 “The oldest, yes we know,” I sighed. He could exasperate me beyond belief at times.

 He tossed me a scowl full of annoyance, which I returned.

 “Keep your eyes on the blooming road!”, yelled Dana, shoving her head between the two front seats.

 “And you keep your blooming bum on your seat!”, Conon yelled back.

 Dana muttered something under her breath, however, to her credit, didn’t even bother sitting all the way back. Besides, it was highly unlikely that we would encounter any coppers on a road like that.

 “Golly, I’m starving,” groaned Conon.

 “Yes, we can tell,” commented Dana. “You always get so irritated when you’re hungry.”

 “Unfortunately for you, you don’t need to be hungry to be irritated,” he said.

 “Alright, alright! Don’t go ripping each other’s heads off. I brought food,” I interjected.

 “You brought food?”, questioned Dana sarcastically.

 I sighed. No, I hadn’t brought food.

 “Alright, alright. Don’t go ripping each other’s heads off. Dana brought food.”

 Within a few minutes, sandwiches had been handed out by the queen herself. Beautifully fluffy, rustic bread cut into gorgeous thick slices with a generous layer of delicious plum jam. The one sure remedy for any squabble or tension was Dana’s food. She was an expert in that department, at least one of us had to be.

 “Eris?” she said, with a mouthful of sandwich. “Can you read the letter out again?”

 I put the remainder of my food into its brown paper and pulled out the envelope that I had been keeping in my jacket pocket. I wiped the crumbs off of my mouth with the back of my hand and cleared my thoughts.

“Dear Conon, Eris and Dana,

It has been far too long since our paths have crossed. I-

 “Can I have another one?” interrupted Conon, putting his hand back between the two front seats. He opened and closed it, centimeters away from Dana’s face.

 “Conon!”, I snapped. “Can’t you wait?”

 A look of confusion crossed his face as he brought his hand back to find it wet.

 “What is this? Why is it er…wet?”

 “It’s called saliva, you tosser. Now be quiet so I can listen to what Eris is saying,” Dana responded.

 “Ew. Ew. Ew….ew. Ew,” he repeated, wiping his hand across his trousers as if he was trying to scrape his skin off.

 “Keep your eyes on the road!”, shouted Dana over the pelting rain.

 I reached to pick up my sandwich again but was disappointed when I felt Dana’s pat on my shoulder, signalling me to continue. Under normal circumstances, I would have probably snapped at her, but considering the context of the letter, I thought it best not to.

“Dear Conon, Eris and Dana,

It has been far too long since our paths have crossed. I was forbidden to ever write you, and you know little of how deeply that has hurt me over the past decade. If I am correct, Conon, you are now aged 21.”

 “Yes, but doesn’t ever act like it,” muttered Dana under her breath.

“You have become a man and I am curious as to where your interests now lie. You used to be so fascinated by the science behind-

 “Oh, for goodness sake!” Conon interrupted. “He couldn’t have written without all that ´you’ve grown up` mush? Could you please jump ahead, I can’t listen to that again! ´Oh, how you’ve grown'. ´Oh, how I’ve missed out on it`. It’s the man’s own fault for not being careful about where he had his affairs.”

 I sighed. He wasn’t wrong. All that fluff was a little odious, in my opinion. If he had really wanted to be a part of our upbringing, then perhaps he should have been more faithful to his wife.

 “Alright,” I said; skimming over the unwanted sections until I had reached the main section.

 “I am aware of the fact that it is short notice, but I find that I must ask you to meet me at our old house, outside the village, there is something very important I must discuss with you-

 Bang! Thunder shook the ground, followed by a surge of veiny light that illuminated the clouds. Oh, how they were crying.

“Be there at 16:00pm on the 30th of January, which is the following Sunday. I hear that your mother will be otherwise occupied then, so you should have no issue in coming.

Sincerely yours,

Gail Palmer.”

 “The man won’t even sign off as father,” grunted Conon. “At least the bugger knows where he stands.”

 “How does he know where mother will be?”, asked Dana in a tone coated with unease.

 I watched as the rain trickled down the window. One drop at a time. One trickle after another. I felt goosebumps break out all across my body as my appetite fled like a tide washing away sandy footprints.

 “I don’t know,” I whispered.

 But I did.

 “What on earth does he want to talk about?”, she asked.

 My hand went slack, and I took a shaky breath in and out, my eyes focusing on the movement of the truck. Up and down. Back and forth.

 “I don’t know.”

 But I did.

 “I for one can’t understand him,” said Conon. His hand jerking from side to side with each turn of the road. “But I suppose I’m too curious to really care about any meaning behind his words.”

 “Curiosity killed the cat,” noted Dana.

 “It’s a good thing, then, that cats have nine lives,” he laughed, feigning cockiness. His eyes were a glazed over grey.

 Father couldn’t possibly do that, could he?

 My mind was splitting with the ponding of the rain, which was now on par with that of my heart. My stomach had turned into a raging sea, full of little ships that’s sails had turned into needles.

 “Stop the car,” I whispered.

 “What?” Conon’s head snapped towards me.

 “Stop the car,” I croaked.

 He slammed his foot on the breaks, throwing us all forward, however I didn’t have time to worry about the little pain that had shot up my neck. I shoved the half-eaten sandwich onto Conon’s lap and threw the letter onto the floor as I flung the door open.

 I was immediately greeted with a hearty dose of icy buckets of rain. I could feel my jacket absorbing it and my hair clung to my neck as it got instantly soaked; my boots go drenched in the watery mud as I ran as fast as I could to the side of the road. I bent over, gagging and eventually emptied my insides out followed by coughs and all sorts of animal like sounds as I kneeled in the mud. The smell crawled up my nostrils, it was repulsive! I didn’t stay to dwell on that, though, I made my way back into the truck, eagerly removing myself from the downpour.

 “Eris, you blooming bugger!”, laughed Dana before going completely serious. “What do you know?”

* * *

 It would have been the understatement of the century to say that I was nervous, I was well past that. The looks on my bother and sister’s faces were mirroring how I was feeling, except theirs was infused with a note of anger.

 There was no way around it. I knew that now. I had no idea how I could have possibly gone on naïvely believing they wouldn’t find out, yet in all reality, I myself had only just discovered the true reason behind my correspondence with Father. No. With Gail.

 “Tell me what your life looks like, dear Eris. What do you do? How do you spend your time? I long to get to know you better.”

Lies. He wanted to know when mother would be gone and when she would be back.

 “Your mother never gave me the chance to fully explain what had really happened, my truth of the story. She spread rumours about me that ruined my career. That ruined my life.”

Lies. Lies, lies, lies.

 “Eris?”, warned Conan with an edge to his voice.

 “We have to turn round,” I breathed.

 I leaned my head back against the head of my seat, closing my eyes and exhaling deeply. My hair was most likely a black, soggy nest of a bun, but I didn’t care. I had to save my energy for one purpose and one alone.

Killing Gail Palmer.