Glow Hanging Clouds by Shaymaa Abusalih

Carlos rubbed his aching eyes for the third time in the past five minutes. His eyelids had grown a shade darker than the rest of his lovely face. His thick eyebrows crushed together as he tried to focus on his work and his slightly chapped lips were twisted in a grimace as he took another sip of poorly-made coffee.

A headache was beginning to pang inside his head like a gong the more he worked. Nothing made sense in this place. He had never been so curios, so clueless, so captivated by anything before and it was beginning to wear him down. None of it was possible.

"Hey, Carlos?" Just then, a fellow scientist poked his head around the door. There was a smile on his face, though not a genuine smile. It was the kind of crooked, uncomfortable smile a child makes when they know they've just done something wrong, like throwing their father's wallet into a wishing well rather than "just a few coins". A pit was already forming in Carlos's stomach.

"Yes, what is it?" he asked in his silky, sultry voice.

"You might want to come see this."

With that, his colleague pulled his head back behind the office door.

Carlos sighed, taking a moment to run his hands through the luscious cascade of midnight that was his hair – the streaks of silver around his ears like the stream of light that chases falling stars. Smooth and wavy and absolutely, clearly and certainly the most perfect hair this town had ever laid eyes on. Every lock fell into its final resting spot – flawless. He thought he was about due for a haircut by now. It was becoming such a hassle.

He pushed away from his desk and rode his wheely chair to the door. His lab coat whipped around him as he went to go see what all the hubbub was about.

Every scientist on his research team was standing outside under the protection of an awning. They all stared up at the sky, baffled, horrified. Carlos looked up too and then all around.

From one end of the street to the other, every inch was covered in snow. Snow in the dessert? Impossible. But it was. There it was, gleaming softly in the light of the sun.

"Are you getting any readings on this?" Carlos asked the nearest team member. But it seemed he was the only one with a voice in the entire troop. They were speechless, shocked into complete stillness. They didn't even blink.

Carlos sighed again, wishing he had formed a team with a little more backbone than this. He checked the readings himself to find that the temperature still read above a hundred degrees. The snow wasn't melting.

Hesitantly, one foot and then the other, Carlos stepped out from under the awning, wrapping his lab coat tightly around himself. The fresh fallen snow crunched beneath his sneakers and began to seep into the fabric, making his socks unbearably soggy. He lifted his enchantingly brown eyes to take a better look at the sky.

A massive cloud was tumbling overhead. It churned the sky with flashes of various colors. Orange, violet, indigo, green, yellow and then back again. Lighting tangled itself around the cloud like fluorescent veins but there was no thunder. Only a low, solitary whistle. The kind your television might make from time to time, the kind that was suddenly there in your ear when things were just too quiet.

Carlos stared at it for a very long time, waiting for it to pass. It didn't. It only stared back. Then, drifting softly down towards him was a single flake of snow. When it was just at eye level, he reached out to catch it. A pain shot through him just as soon as he did and with a gasp, he pulled back a pricked finger. A bead of delicious red was forming at the tip of it.

For a moment, he stood wordlessly, looking down at his finger until the bead dripped a little ways down and onto the snow at his feet.

Of course, there was no scientific explanation for this, no plausible hypothesis to be formed, but Carlos felt himself smile down at his bloodied finger and scoff.

"Frost bite."

Never had anything so ridiculous made so much sense. For once, something in this godforsaken town, made sense.

"What do you think it is?" the perky blonde that sat next to Lee asked.

Lee would have asked that very same question if she had wanted but what was the use? Sitting next to a perky blonde could make anyone invisible and unheard, even if it wasn't Lee. But the fact was that the perky blonde had finally asked the question that had been on everyone's minds when they rushed out of their classrooms and out to the front of the school to stare up at the sky.

Glowing, flashing, pulsing with shifting colors was a massive cloud. Its colors were cast on their curious faces, shining in their dead eyes. Except for Lee's.

While her classmates and her teachers stood still and blank-faced, turning from one color to the next with the cloud. Becoming the cloud. Lee stood at the front of the crowd as her usual pale, uninteresting self.

There were whispers all around her. The girls huddled closer to one another, concerned painted across their heavily caked faces. They batted their thick, sticky eyelashes at the sky, their ruby red lips puckered with fear.

Some of the boys started to snicker and nudge one another, daring friend and foe alike to be brave and make a fool of themselves.

Staring up at the cloud with a frown on her face, Lee could just make out a low whistle drifting down to them. And in that whistle, there was a voice.

All…hail…

Lee was just about to make out the rest when a boy from the junior class let out a screech of joy and thrust his hands into the air. He plowed through the crowd, laughing hysterically and headed straight towards the cloud. And flailing his arms, a big, goofy smile on his face, the boy uttered his last words, or rather, word.

"YOLO!"

As soon as the dreadfully overused acronym left his lips, the cloud spat out a bolt of lightning. It hit him at the very top of his had as though it were Thor's hammer itself. Then, he was quiet. Then, he was still. And then, he was very much dead.

The crowd scattered like a disrupted queue of ants. And though they pushed and shoved and knocked Lee right over, onto her knees, she could only stare at the boy lying in the street. She had never seen someone die before. She thought it was just some silly thing they said when people decided to move away or avoid picking up the phone whenever a telemarketer called. But this was real. This was death. Terrible in its realness. In its terrible quickness.

And it was there, on hands and knees that Lee realized her greatest fear. She didn't want to die. No one did. But what she feared was dying while everyone stood there and never watched, never noticed, never even cared.

Twelve men from council security stood at attention in front of the Post Office. Occasionally, one would turn to the other and say something and the other would reply with a bored voice. There were fidgets and yawns and the grooming of fingernails as they stood with their guns slung uselessly over their shoulders.

Just across the street, hiding in a bush was the Apache Tracker.

The men knew it was the Apache tracker because poking out of the top of the bush were a set of gleaming feathers, tangled and twisted in the branches. As well as the slow rumbled of some nonsense chant.

"Hey-ya-ho-ho. Hey-ya-ho-ho."

He had been squatting there for about a half hour now and they decided that if they just ignored him then maybe, he'd go away.

"Hey-ya-ho-ho."

There was a game onto tonight.

Yeah?

Did the other see last night's game?

There was a shake of the head.

That was a shame.

"Hey-ya-ho-ho."

There was thought of taking the wife and kids out camping this weekend.

Yeah?

Maybe the other would like to come with, it could be fun.

There was another shake of the head.

That was a real shame.

"Hey-ya-ho-ho. Ho-ho-hey!"

The Apache Tracker suddenly burst from his "hiding place", his feather headdress disheveled and his face scratched up slightly by the branches. His final exclamation had worked and the twelve men lay sprawled on the ground, unconscious.

"Victory." the Apache Tracker muttered triumphantly to himself.

He looked around before running across the street and slipping into the unlocked doors of the Post Office.

Once inside, he held an arm in front of his face to block the foul smell wafting in the air around him. It was the smell of bad meat not cooked fully on a barbeque. It was far from appetizing.

He scanned the Post Office, searching for clues. He stepped carefully through the thousands of envelopes and packages scattered about the floor, not wanting to damage any of the contents inside. The mail boxes were all open but not by key. It seemed they had been blown open by a thousand small charges or perhaps, one extremely powerful charge. Either one was plausible.

Still, none of the mail had burned. Only the mailboxes and whatever unfortunate flesh had been inside the Office when the charge went off.

The Apache tracker mumbled some nonsense to himself, scratching his poorly-shaven chin. Then, looking up at the far wall just behind the help desk, he saw it. The clue he had been looking for. Scrawled in sharp, bloody strokes were the words "More to come".

The Tracker mimed the shape of a camera and "took" a picture of the wall, then realizing that the model camera he imagined he had couldn't upload photos to the internet, he stowed it away, puffed up his chest and announced to the empty post office, "I must tell everyone!"

School had been cancelled for the rest of the week in memoriam of Everett Pool, the boy who sacrificed his life for the sake of discovery. And though he died without fully understanding the nature of the Glow Cloud, it was not in vain. Now the citizens of NightVale could sleep comfortably knowing that the cloud was most certainly dangerous and that approaching it meant immediate death.

With her bright, red headphones clamped over her ears, Lee paced quickly down the streets, never stopping, looking back or looking up until she got home. She stumbled in through the front door and shut it behind her, finally taking a moment to breathe properly. She closed her eyes and tried to listen to Cecil's voice – not what he was saying, just the sound of it.

Soon, she was calm enough to stand without having to lean on the door and went into the kitchen where her grandmother was baking as she always did.

The angels collected around Grandma Josie as she stirred a bowl of batter in the crook of her arm.

"You see, the secret is, you want to mix clockwise first and then counterclockwise." she told them.

Lee slipped her backpack off of her shoulder and one headphone away from her ear. She watched her grandmother patiently, glancing a few times at the angels who paid no mind to her either. Lee was old enough to know that when one thought of things like death, one needed someone to talk to. Who better than her own grandmother?

This was Lee's chance to say something, anything at all, but she couldn't find her voice as she looked at her grandmother, knowing she was just a stranger to her. She just stood there, silent as an existentially challenged church mouse.

"Well, I'm just getting ready to take this to the questioning over at the elementary school." her grandmother said quite suddenly. It seemed to be aimed at one of the angels. "You know these people, they're always so eager to have one of my treats and I never disappoint."

Lee continued to watch and listen – her grandmother in one ear and Cecil in the other. They were all she had and even they wouldn't notice if she were gone.

Grandma Josie poured the mixed batter into a pan and turned to the nearest angel with an expectant smile. It stretched out a radiant limb and pointed at the raw paste. There was a fierce glow, so intense that Lee shielded her eyes and when it died down, there sat on the counter a fully baked pumpkin spice cake.

"Thank you, dear." Josie told the angel, giving it a gentle pat on the shoulder. "We best be off now. Punctuality, punctuality, punctuality."

Another angel had the honor of carrying the hot pan in its bare hands. It was unbothered by the heat.

They all filed out the door behind Josie, who marched with her chin up and an umbrella clenched in her hand.

Lee felt her voice rising in her throat. She had to tell her grandmother what she was feeling. She just had to. Right now, before it was too late.

She chased her out onto the walkway in front of the house and in a voice that was horse and quiet from little use, she spoke.

"I'm afraid of dying." she called to her grandmother. The troop came to a halt and Josie along with her angels all turned and looked at Lee, who stood quiet uncomfortably on her own. But she went on. "I saw a boy die today. I saw him die and now I'm afraid. What should I do?"

Grandma Josie said nothing for a long while. She was confused but then, amused. She opened up her umbrella and recited in a voice proud and practiced, "If you see something, say nothing. Drink to forget."

And with that, she turned on her heels and marched on, hunched over under her little, worn umbrella, her back glowing white from the angels and her face multicolored from the cloud. She hadn't really seen Lee. She only thought she had heard something. Lee was that thing that went away after a few shakes of the head.

With her heavy heart and a rock in her stomach Lee shuffled back toward the door and there she sat alone. She looked up at the sky and wondered why it was after all these years of not caring that people didn't care that she suddenly did. It was just the way things were, but now she felt as though it shouldn't be. She cared for herself because no one else would. Deep down, she cared enough to think that she deserved to be remembered, to be thought about and to be loved. Never before had she thought this way and she thought so often.

It could be said that witnessing the death of Everett Pool was necessary. For, it had sparked a realization in Lee of her importance and in turn proved his own. It was here that thoughts would turn to questions and eventually, a burning curiosity, a need for answers. This moment would be the beginning to Lee's journey of uncovering the truth. But for now, she would remain unsure and afraid as she sat on the front steps of her grandmother's house.

Some time had passed as she listened on. Then, a thought occurred to her. On impulse, she ran back inside, grabbed an umbrella and ran as fast as her thin legs could carry her toward downtown NightVale. She only wanted to someone to talk to and she could only think of the one person that talked to her the most.

The Glow Cloud was hanging above the city as she sprinted onwards toward the radio station.

"What's he saying?" Carlos asked, turning away from the window.

Edgar, an intern, was sitting attentively by the radio, his chin resting on crossed arms as he leaned on the tabletop.

"They know." Edgar mumbled. "He said 'grab an umbrella'."

"You've got to be kidding me." Carlos sighed, looking back outside. "It's too dangerous to be outside."

"Well, it's a good thing we're in here, isn't it?" the intern smiled, drunk with sleep deprivation.

With a limp-wristed hand, he aimed for the top of his head and scratched it. His eyes drooped as he massaged his aching head. He was far too tired to be concerned and each thud of some dead thing hitting the rooftop was strangely calming and slowly lulling him to sleep.

"Ed, we need to get these people off the streets. I mean, look at them, they're just wandering around out there."

The science monitoring station had been set up on a small plateau, overlooking the city. It was a short walk down from here to the radio station, but the distance seemed to stretch on forever in this weather. The air was thick and the ever-changing lights of the Glow Cloud stained everything below it. Soon, mingling with the passersby in the streets and the colors were the twisted, mangled and rotting corpses of dead animals of all sorts.

There was no telling what else the Glow Cloud had to offer, what they'd be up against and Carlos, his glistening brown eyes heavy with worry, could only think of how dreadfully stupid it was for the townspeople to go about their daily lives when there was such clear and present danger. How could Cecil do that? He didn't seem that clueless. Carlos thought he would have at least some regard for his fellow townsfolk.

He huffed and his rich lips pressed into a thin line, the slight fuzz on his upper lip was more noticeable. He scratched his scruffy chin in frustration before peeling off his lab coat and holding it over his head for cover – it wouldn't do much good if he were unlucky enough to have a carcass fall on him, but there was comfort in not being completely exposed.

"I'm going down to the radio station." Carlos announced the Edgar without noticing the intern had dozed off after not having slept for more than an hour last night.

Carlos, perfect Carlos, the scientist, rushed out into the psychedelic cascade, lab coat billowing over his head and glasses slipping down to the tip of his round nose. His strong, square jaw was clenched and his eyes determined. He looked absolutely ridiculous. But that didn't matter right now. What mattered was keeping the people of this insane, impossible town safe, no matter how bizarre or oblivious they seemed to be.

A thought occurred to Carlos as he ran down the steep incline leading toward the town. His legs flung out, one in front of the other in an effort to keep from falling.

Perhaps, taking an umbrella wouldn't have been such a bad idea.

Lee's lungs were starting to ache by the time she reached the radio station. The road leading from the trailer park into the city had been blocked by three of the council's slow plows – an investment that, in the end, paid off. Slowly but surely, the slow plows were pushing carcass after carcass down the road towards the Eternal Animal Pyre, just on the other side of town at Mission Grove Park. The smell and sound was terrible and Lee could just make out the dark billow of smoke rising and colliding with the Glow Cloud in the sky.

The lights seemed to pulse more quickly now, engulfing the whole city – stretching as far as the eye could see.

The eyes above could see everything.

Taking a moment to catch her breath, Lee looked across the street to the radio station. A window nearly stretching from one end of the wall to the other gave her a full view of the broadcasting booth. And there he was, the man behind the radio speaker, the man with the lullabies in his voice, the man who she had always looked upon with such wonder, ever since she was a little girl.

She listened on to the reports, a smile coming to her face. The rise in her cheeks made the headphone scoot a fraction upwards on her ears.

She used to come here often, just to watch for a while before heading home. She'd stay and smile and then wait for the weather report. It was her favorite part. And then, her small smile would grow into a little giggle as Cecil spun and bounced and danced in his chair to the music. She would dance too. But not anymore.

The roads had mostly been cleaned with the exception of a flattened rat that had most likely been run over this morning rather than falling from the sky. Lee opened her umbrella and held it over her, wiggling her toes inside her sneakers as she watched Cecil go about his work.

The movement of his lips was slightly off sync with what she was hearing as though there were in two separate parts of time. His hair was blonde but a washed out sort of blond – sandy in color from all the sunlight and on most occasions was combed upward into a tiny spike that reflected an evenly formed widow's peak. He had a slim, smart jaw and high cheek bones that made dimples in two different places on each cheek when he smiled. She liked when he smiled. It was an honest smile and she always felt it was somehow aimed toward her. His long neck stretched out of a collared shirt the color of a plum skin and his slender arms, pale, stuck out of his rolled up sleeves. His fingers were weaved together as they always were and his thumb moved up and down with each word he spoke. From behind blocky glasses, two teal eyes stared at an imagined audience. His eyebrows, two shades darker than the hair on his head were lifted in surprise at the latest news he was announcing. As he spoke from pink lips, the rich hum of his voice floated into the microphone – Lee could almost see it. He too wore a pair of headphones, big and black, consuming nearly half of his face.

Lee could notice everything about him if she wanted and sometimes, she did, but decided against it. He had enough admirers as it was. The last thing he needed was another sixteen year old girl spending hours of her time looking at him.

She couldn't wait for the weather though and afterwards, get her chance to talk to him.

As surprising as it may seem, this wasn't the first time Lee came to talk to him about something. She had come to this very spot many times before, thinking of what she was going to say. In her head, she would say it all while watching Cecil in his booth. To her, it was the same as talking and the same as him listening. Then, when everything was figuratively said and done, she would wait for the show to end – sometimes past sunset, others an hour before, depending on the time of year – and for Cecil to start his walk home from the station.

Each and every time he noticed her was the first time for him. Cecil was the only person in this entire city that noticed Lee. She knew of no one else that could. And though it never lasted, it was enough.

She would watch as he'd either slip into his coat or drape it over his arm. He had a book bag that he carried with him at all times, slung over his shoulders but never once had she seen him open it. Then, closing the blinds to the booth window and locking up the place, he'd turn and see her waiting silently across the street.

"Hello there." he would say with a smile. And she'd give a slight wave. "Were you waiting for me?"

Lee would nod. This always brought a pleased look to his face. With that, he'd look both ways and cross the street to meet her on the other side.

He'd shake her hand and say, leaning downward a bit so they were somewhat at level with each other, "I'm Cecil, it's nice to meet you."

He'd expect for Lee to tell him her own name, but she never did. She couldn't. For a girl of little words she was at a loss for them in his presence. She was satisfied enough with being seen alone, to be heard would have been a little too overwhelming.

Cecil would then look down the road and then to her.

"Would it be too much to ask you to join me on my walk home?" he would say in a voice almost embarrassed, almost guilty. "It's a pretty far walk and it gets pretty lonely."

Lee would reply with a smile and they'd set off together.

He would talk about everything and anything that was on his mind and ask her questions that she could answer with a nod or a shake of the head. He never hesitated to give her a compliment – her headphones, shoes, hair or clothes, even her face that was "as pleasant as a fairy's". And she'd attempt to compliment him on many of the same things by pointing at them.

Those walks were the best moments of her life, but never of his. Cecil never remembered her, never remembered the walks and the talking that he did. But he would always ask for her company and she would always give it. Until, it began to wear on her. For, what good was being noticed if you were never remembered?

Today would be different because it didn't matter to Lee. She just wanted that brief moment of happiness and maybe then, this heaviness inside her would finally fall away.

But in the midst of all her thinking, Lee noticed that Cecil's eyebrows had furrowed, his eyes had narrowed and his hands curled into fists on either side of him. Then, creeping up from the collar of his plum shirt and twisting up to his jaw were what looked like tattoos of some sort. Tattoos of tentacles come to life on his skin, weaving in and out of sight, slithering down his arms and wrapping around each thumb. All the goodness, the warmth was gone from his voice. There was only an emptiness – a dark, endless tone that stung her ears.

The Glow Cloud does not need to converse with us. It does not feel as we tiny humans feel. It has no need for thoughts or feelings of love. The Glow Cloud simply is. All hail the mighty Glow Cloud. All hail...

Lee felt herself trembling where she stood and then being swept up into strong arms and carried away. Her umbrella clattered onto the sidewalk and as she bounced, curled up against some stranger's chest, she looked back to the station, terrified and sick with worry.

She had almost uttered Cecil's name when her breath caught in her throat at the sight of a lion – the very same lion reported to have been on the roof of the White Sand Ice Cream Shop. It was very much alive and its two golden eyes glowed with hunger as it stared straight into Lee's doe-eyed gaze. The fur on its mouth was stained brown with chocolate and red with…something else.

"It would've charged right at me." Lee thought to herself. "I would have been dead."

It was then that she looked up at the stranger who had snatched her up so smoothly and was now running at a steady pace, well ahead of the lion. She needn't look at his face to know exactly who this man was. For, on the top of his head was a headdress of feathers, bobbing up and down as he ran.

The Apache Tracker.

"Ish-kay-nay." he said.

Lee wouldn't know how to respond to that even if she wanted to.

His hard, dark eyes met hers. "Ish-kay-nay good, yes?"

So, she was Ish-kay-nay, that much she understood but what it meant, she had no clue. She didn't really like it. Lee had always been open to the idea of a nickname but she hoped it would be something she'd actually like to be called. And had he asked her if she was good? She had nearly died. That didn't seem good. And there was a lion chasing after them. That didn't seem anywhere close to good.

As thankful as she was, Lee couldn't help but frown up at the man who had just saved her life.

He strode onward, his legs pushing away the ground beneath him and with a smile, gave a reply to his own question. "Ish-kay-nay is good."

Cecil was right. This guy was an asshole.

Carlos had nearly made it to the radio station when it started raining cats and dogs. He had nearly been pummeled by a Dachshund, a Pit Bull and a Siamese cat before finally taking refuge under the awning of the bus stop. He sighed, squinted up at the sky as it pulsed more violently with color and vibrate with a foreign sort of tune. Most of the citizens had sense enough to start clearing out of the streets, but there was still a chance that many would try and simply ignore the whole disaster while they made a quick stop at the grocery store.

He'd never make it to the station on foot. Perhaps, the bus would be here soon.

And so there he waited. And waited. For the bus. In the rain.

With Lee in tow, the Apache Tracker ran on until they came to the Dog Park. Eerie and quiet, save the whispers that seeped from the obsidian walls is where the Tracker stopped in his tracks and turned to face the lion.

Lee tensed in his arm, clutching the front of his shirt, urging him with wide, terrified eyes to keep running, but he wouldn't. He stared straight ahead, looking imminent death in the face.

Lee tried to squirm out of his arms and keep running on her own, but his grip was tight and firm. She started to tremble so hard she felt spikes in her blood.

"Anat-zont-tee." the Apache Tracker hissed.

Again, Lee hadn't the slightest clue what he was saying or if it even meant anything at all. But whatever gibberish he was spewing was enough for the lion to understand.

It skidded to a halt. Its fierce, golden eyes went blank and quite mechanically, the lion turned toward the towering, black walls of the Dog Park and slowly strode toward it. It coiled up before making an impressive leap upwards and over the wall in one smooth arc. There weren't even whispers. There wasn't even a hum in the sky above. Everything was quiet. Everything was alright.

With a proud nod, the Apache Tracker started walking back towards the city, showing no sign of letting Lee walk herself. And while she sat there, awkwardly curled up in his arms, she noticed the sky had cleared and was no longer flashing or humming or tossing carcasses down at the city. Instead, the Glow Cloud floated onwards into the distance, over the endless stretch of dessert that surrounded them. The stars were peeking out from under their endless void of sheets.

Looking straight ahead, the Tracker started to explain to Lee how he had shown up so conveniently when she had been in danger without knowing at the time. He had been tracking down a dragon by the name of Hiram McDaniels who had come from another world. Apparently, a door to this world had been opened in the Post Office – the one he had broken into with Indian magics – and McDaniels went on a rampage, killing and eating every worker that had clocked in that morning. The mass homicide was apparently being covered up by the council, who claimed it was nothing more than a case of speeding and identity fraud. The Tracker had set out to find him and whoever gave him entrance to this world in order to find answers. He mentioned something about evil deities and being cursed with the skin of the white man, that the dragon was the key to many answers and that he felt the magics were strong in him again now that he had started his quest.

And the more he rambled on, the more comfortable Lee began to feel in his arms. It was familiar, this feeling. Not just of being noticed and talked to but held tight in someone's arms, feeling small in them.

Looking up at the Apache Tracker, Lee saw a man who had faced what would have surely been death and simply told it to go away. There was a budding sense of admiration toward this man, this strange and slightly crazed man. And Lee wanted him to listen because she finally had someone who could.

"I'm afraid of dying." she told him, her voice so weak and small. "I'm afraid of dying without anyone knowing I'm dead."

The Tracker was no longer staring at the road ahead but down at Lee Harper. Small, silent, brave, Lee Harper. Ish-kay-nay. She would have looked like her father, if he knew her father. And had her mother's eyes, if she had ever existed.

He stared a long while, his face barely seen and took a deep breath in the cool darkness.

"Ish-kay-nay will become a part of the earth. And the earth will know. And Ish-kay-nay will never die. Good?"

Lee took a moment to think about this and the weight was gone from her chest and Cecil's voice was in her ears, gentle and true again, saying goodnight. Her eyes began to close against the night and just before she drifted into a thoughtless sleep, she pressed her face against the Tracker's hard, warm chest and whispered, "Good."