Black Cloud
A cloud is a continually evolving aspect of nature.
It's funny really. My parents were hippies. Yes, I'm talking straight up hippies. They listened to psychedelic rock, embraced the sexual revolution, and mostly likely tripped on cannabis, LSD and magic mushrooms to explore "altered states of consciousness."
So it's really no surprise they named me Cloud.
It gets better. When I was seven, my first signs of magic showed.
I turned my raven hair white because I didn't want to be a black cloud. Black clouds were scary. Aram, my father, freaked out big time. He was so terrified he tried to kick me out. Some hippie. What happened to peace and smoking pot and all that shit? I mean, come on, I was fucking seven. What child seven years old could survive on the streets?
Crystal, my mother, was more accepting. She loved me for it, thought I was something special. Achieved something great, she told me.
A few months after my twelfth birthday, Aram was hit by a bus and died on impact.
Crystal was devastated. She wasn't her ditsy hippie self anymore. Reality hit her like, well that bus that smashed into Aram. She thought it best to move from our little hippie commune in Oregon (United States) all the way to her old home in England. I wasn't too thrilled. Honestly, I could've cared less for Aram. I hated him. He treated me like shit whenever Crystal wasn't around. One time he even hit me. Leave it to hi, to ruin my life even after he was six feet under.
I hated England too. Everyone was so fancy and posh. The first thing Crystal did when we arrived was apply for a job as secretary at a bank; apparently she went to college before her hippie phase. Apparently she had been normal at one point in her life. She started wearing these stupid pencil skirts and plain blouses. I missed the old Crystal, the one who wore long floral print skirts and bare feet; half shirts that showed off her flat stomach and piercing. I didn't think it could get any worse until she enrolled me in a school that required me to wear a uniform that consisted of an itchy skirt, knee socks, shoes, and an ugly grey shirt. My black curls were slicked back in a tight ponytail everyday instead of running wild and free like back in Oregon. She made me made take on her maiden last name, because us hippies didn't really have last names and she wasn't aware of Aramʼs. So by default we took on her father's; Black.
Cloud Black; exactly what I didn't want to be.