Dark clouds are what John would see over the heads of people whose time was near. He wasn’t sure why or how he got what some people would call a gift he just knew that it plagued him. Some would say that John was gifted to see that someone was going to die soon but he felt cursed because he was unable to do anything about it. Although he could see that they were going to die soon he couldn’t see anything about the particulars. As he walked through the streets there were typically a handful of clouds casting shadows over unsuspecting people as they went through their day. They could be sick or get in an accident, the method of their death wasn’t sure, but what was, is that when he saw the cloud floating over someone’s head that they were going to die very soon. Typically, within a couple of days.
It had gotten to the point that he would no longer even try to warn people about their impending doom; all it had served to do in the past was to instill fear or have people spend their last days thinking that he was some kind of lunatic. In the best-case scenarios people would ask him how they were going to die but when he couldn’t tell them they dismissed him. The last time he had tried to warn a woman that he knew that she was going to die soon she became uncomfortable, panicked, and tried to run away from him across the street. She was so focused on getting away from him when she stepped out into the street, she didn’t even see the bus until it smacked right into her, launching her body into the busy intersection. John wondered if he hadn’t tried to stop that one maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he was the contributing factor to that led to this death and after that incident he gave up on trying to warn others.
Lately John had done a surprisingly good job of ignoring those dark clouds. Following his normal routine, he stopped to get coffee on his way to work. Maybe he spent more than he should at that little coffee shop, but he thought that starting his day off something nice helped get through everything that he had to see. On his way out he saw a little girl who looked to be about eight years old with big glasses that reminded him of Harry Potter. The little girl smiled at him, but the smile was overshadowed by the dark cloud that hovered over her. John made an attempt at a smile back at the girl as he held the latte in his hand and saw the little girl enveloped the shadow of a cloud. Unsure if she already knew about the fate that was going to befall her. John was so focused on the little girl that he didn’t notice the coffee shop door swing open. The door slammed into both his hand and face smashing his coffee cup as well as his nose. The burning hot coffee spilled down his hand and body and for a moment dulled the pain of the door hitting him.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry” The woman’s voice rang out. John thought about how sweet her voice sounded despite the burning of the coffee he was feeling run down his body.
“Don’t worry about it” John said, checking his nose to see if he was bleeding. When he looked at the woman who had hit him with the door he was stunned again. She was fairly tall with jet black hair and blue eyes. Her face was lightly peppered with freckles and after John laid eyes on her he forgot all about the bloody nose and burning coffee.
“Here, let me help you with that” The woman grabbed some napkins and placed them under John’s nose.
“I’m alright, its not the first run-in that I’ve had with a door. Probably won’t be my last either” John said.
“Hopefully the other times went better for you” The woman replied.
“Yeah, this is the first time one of them drew blood” John said. The woman laughed with a smile that felt like it could light up the darkest room.
“I’m Julie” The woman said.
“I’m John, nice to meet you” John replied.
They met for drinks, and then dinner, bowling, golf carts, a trip to the mountains, and all the other things that couples do. The last eight months seemed to fly by and everything in John’s life was going well, very well. John was quite sure that she was the one, he had never met someone like Julie before. She was like a breeze that pushed all those clouds he used to see out of view. They were still there but he was too busy enjoying his time with Julie to still notice them. That was until one day he came home and found her sitting on his couch. He had given her a key to his place, and it was normal for her to hang out at his place on Friday after work until he got back home. As she sat there her bright smile was dimmed by the dark cloud that hovered over her. John started to panic, dropping his keys on the ground next to the table, he rushed over to her.
“Is something wrong? Are you sick?” John asked.
“No, I’m fine. Why do you ask?” Julie replied.
“Nothing it’s just, I’m worried about you” John said in a serious tone.
“Well, you have nothing to worry about, I’m fine. I had my annual check up and even got my flu shot so there’s nothing to worry about” Julie said. John could hear her words, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking out at the dark cloud that was hovering over her head. He knew what it meant but he also wasn’t ready to lose Julie. He thought that if he could just keep her alive over the next couple of days maybe this would be the one person that he could save. He just didn’t know how, or if he could even tell her what he knew. No one had ever believed him before when he tried to tell them about what he saw. John could see that Julie noticed the look of desperation on his face.
“Really, what is it? What’s going on with you?” Julie asked. John paused for another moment.
“It’s just, I want to spend as much time with you as I can” John said with his voice turning somber. It wasn’t a tone that Julie recognized from him, but she couldn’t help but feel like it was a little sweet. She placed her arms around his neck and told him that she loved him and that the last few months had made her happier than she could remember in a long time. John could feel the warmth from her cheek as she squeezed his neck tighter, but he could also feel the darkness hovering over him. A reminder that somehow soon the love that he was feeling would be taken away from him. This was the moment he cursed his gift the most, if he had never known he would have simply enjoyed the last moments with Julie. Whatever happens to her would still have hurt but all the time that he had with her would have been perfect.
“I’m just going to run to my place and grab some things; I’ll be back in half an hour, OK?” Julie said, looking up at John with those bright eyes that shimmered like a diamond. John looked down at her and thought that maybe he should drive her, or maybe he should try to convince her to stay there. Then he remembered the last time he tried to intervene in someone’s death, about how he had been the one who caused the woman to go off into the street and maybe that the shadows he saw hovering over these people had something to do with him. He smiled back at Julie and simply said.
“Hurry back OK, but be careful” As John spoke, he brushed the hair from the side of Julie’s face and kissed her like it could be the last time he would ever see her.
“Looks like someone’s in a mood” Julie said as she chuckled. She hopped up from the couch and grabbed her keys from the table next to the door. “Think you’ll be ok without me for thirty minutes?” She asked looking back at John. Before he could answer she dropped to her knees to pick up the keys that he had dropped in front of the door “Probably not” Julie answered with another smile.
“Yeah, probably not” John said looking back at Julie. And then she walked out the door. John pulled out his phone and started to text her to be safe and let him know when she got back to her apartment but then he thought about what if that caused her death? Maybe she tries to text him back and gets into a car accident, so he tosses his phone on the counter. He stands up and walks to the kitchen only to think that he should keep his phone close. It is possible that something happens, and she tries to call him and because he did not answer his phone it causes her death. He wanted to try everything but at the same time worried that trying anything would cause the thing that he feared the most. He picked up his phone anyway and thought that he would keep it close. Just holding onto it shouldn’t do any harm to Julie.
It had been fifteen minutes; she should be back at her place by now. He looked at his phone and saw nothing but social media notifications. Julie hadn’t said anything yet but why would she? She was only going to be grabbing a few things from her place that wasn’t far. She should be back in about ten more minutes or so. John sat back down on the couch and turned on the T.V, hoping that it would take his attention off of the clock. He would flip through a few channels and be pleasantly surprised when Julie walked back in though the door. He tried to find something to watch but nothing could take his mind off of that dark cloud that was floating over Julie’s head. The sinister darkness that he was gifted with seeing, knowing that tragedy was going to strike but also not being able to do anything about it. John sat on his couch with a remote in his hand feeling a weakness that he had never felt before. This was the first person that he was close to, the first person that he loved that he had ever seen the cloud over. It was easier to distance himself from the others. Generally, they were strangers and after all the failed attempts that he had gone through, he figured that it was better just not to get involved.
John spent so much time thinking about the past that he didn’t realize that Julie had been gone for an hour now. He thought that she should be back by now. He went and picked up his phone again but saw nothing from Julie. John tried to protect himself from the worst thoughts. Trying to convince himself that maybe she stopped by a store somewhere to grab something. He looked down at his phone again and still saw nothing from her. He opened up his home screen that was a picture of the two of them lying together in bed that he took one morning. There wasn’t a message from her but there was something that he was tagged in. It was someone who marked themselves as safe from the Moreland apartment building explosion. John looked at his screen as his shaky finger struggled to find its way to the notification. It was the same apartment building that Julie had lived in. The explosion had just happened about an hour ago and there were quite a few casualties.
There was some information about the incident that was already posted. There had been a gas leak in the building. When Julie had gone back to her apartment she had smelled something but before she could realize what it was, she was smelling she turned on the hallway light which had a faulty bulb. Her apartment was the one that had the gas leak and had slowly been filling up with gas for hours. The faulty seal around her bulb had ignited the gas and all that Julie saw was a flash as the intense heat enveloped her. The force of the explosion had thrown her body back and over the balcony of her apartment causing her to land on her car in the parking lot. Her phone screen lay cracked on the other side of the parking lot but started to ring as John tried to call her after he heard about the incident.
John ran out the door and started to make his way over to Julie’s apartment. Maybe she was safe and had gotten there after the explosion. When he got to her apartment, he could see the firetrucks and police cars littering the parking lot. Half of her apartment building was gone. What little hope John had that she was not caught in the blast had vanished when he saw that the chunk missing from the building was where her apartment was. The police had already blocked off the area around the apartment, but he was able to stop one of the officers who was in the area to ask if they had seen Julie. When the officer told John that they were not able to disclose the identity of the casualty, he had a look on his face that told John that one of the bodies they had found matched her description.
John stumbled away from the officer and fell to his with tears dripping down from his face. He felt guilt, shame, and anger as his knees continued to dig into the asphalt. He pulled out his phone one last time and again felt bittersweet when he looked at his home screen picture. He tried to call Julie one last time and paused as he heard her phone ringing. Crawling over to the phone that had be thrown under a car he saw the scattered screen but could barely make out his name on the incoming call. John sat under the streetlight, now sobbing uncontrollably. As he clutched the phone close to his chest, he looked around to see that now he was in the dark. John looked up to expecting to see a streetlight that had gone out but all that he saw over him was his own dark spot. As John sat on the ground he continued to stare at his own dark cloud.