{"id":955,"date":"2018-02-19T18:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T18:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/?p=955"},"modified":"2022-10-26T12:22:02","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T12:22:02","slug":"a-cloud-passing-an-angry-man-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/a-cloud-passing-an-angry-man-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cloud Passing (an angry man) part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Joe Stanley<\/span><\/p>\n

ii<\/p>\n

THE DAY HAD BEEN A STRANGE ONE. He woke to an empty house and feared that his angry words might have driven Bianca away. But even the refuge of work presented him with oddness. His boss hadn’t come in, or at least no one had seen him, and yet his car was parked outside.<\/span><\/p>\n

A suspicion, one impossible to put into words, was gnawing away at him. By lunch, he was concerned enough to call the police. The detectives that came to interview him about his boss could sense his apprehension and promptly started treating him as their main suspect.<\/span><\/p>\n

He found himself grilled for hours down at the station. Their inability to locate his wife only furthered their idea. At first, his fear and guilt held him in check, but their relentless questions, with the implications which attended them, were finally too much, and his anger began to blaze.<\/span><\/p>\n

They wound him up, tighter and tighter, and when they stepped from the room he thought of the ball and began to press it down, once more. Somehow, it was even easier this time and the ball popped like a soap-bubble on the grass.<\/span><\/p>\n

He even overlooked that they had left him waiting for two hours before another officer turned him loose. Still, this was serious business. The little trip downtown might cost him his job. He was sure the promotion could be forgotten. And Bianca might be filing for divorce at that moment.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time he parked in front of his dark and quiet house, he was as angry as he had even been. Stomping up the sidewalk, the neighbor’s dog went wild like always, charging the fence in a ridiculous display of aggression.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every damned day. You see me every damned day. You know who I am. You know I live here and we go through this every damned day… Who the Hell would want such a pathetic, mop-like, turd-gobbling noise factory for a pet…<\/span><\/p>\n

The ball was back and growing. As he visualized it shrinking away, he muttered.<\/span>
\n “I hate that God-damned dog.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The ball popped and his anger was gone. The dog, however, went away with it. Its dirty white fur went gray, as though a cloud passed between them. Then it faded and the dog was gone… simply gone. There wasn’t even a whimper or a yelp to mark its passing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The truth now was dawning on him. Somehow, his boss, his wife, the detectives and now the dog… They had all just vanished shortly after making him mad.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some might have reveled in such a power. It was, in fact, exactly what he had been wishing for the whole time he was wishing his anger away. To make the anger disappear was only treating the symptom, now he was treating the cause.<\/span><\/p>\n

And with this came the dilemma. For though he was a patient and polite man, the results were as bitter and vile as if he had hacked them to pieces, or torn them apart with his bare hands. It was not that he lacked the desire to be cruel, only that his will had heretofore been too weak.<\/span><\/p>\n

William Walker realized that it was not the world he hated, but that he hated himself. He might have walked away from a thankless job or a loveless marriage, but he had stayed. He had stayed and his anger, his endless boiling anger, had finally spilled over and escaped the confines of his self-control.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tears filled his eyes as the guilt overcame him. He spoke the last few words he would speak in this world.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I hate myse…”<\/span><\/p>\n

To him, the world blurred for a moment, as with the passing of a cloud. Then everything began to fade away, leaving only a bleak and endless gray all around.<\/span><\/p>\n

William Walker vanished from this world, going where the others had gone. He was swallowed by his own anger, to hear for all eternity furious voices and the endless barking of a dog.<\/span><\/p>\n

-end-<\/span><\/p>\n

back to previous episode<\/a><\/p>\n

forward to next episode<\/a><\/p>\n

back to list of stories<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Joe Stanley ii THE DAY HAD BEEN A STRANGE ONE. He woke to an empty house and feared that his angry words might have driven Bianca away. But even the refuge of work presented him with oddness. His boss hadn’t come in, or at least no one had seen him, and yet his car […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[174,8],"class_list":["post-955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-joe-stanley","tag-a-cloud-passing-an-angry-man","tag-joe-stanley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=955"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2852,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions\/2852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}