Deadline for Writers. 12 Short Stories in 12 Months – May– Prompt: Cloud– Word Count: 1800.

This is the first of these assignments that I’m really not happy with. I ran out of time, so it’s no where near as edited or refined as I would like. However, I made the deadline, so it is what it is…

“Ah, I love this one.”

Alicia watched the scene fondly. The moisture in her pupils threatened to break free and dampen her cheeks, but time had hardened its resolve.

She was looking through her late mother’s eyes—at herself, age six, screaming with glee, wrapped in an oversized winter coat as she dashed along the beach, chased by a playful tormentor.

“Alicia! I’m going to get you!”

The sound of her mother’s voice still hit hard, even now, years after the accident. Alicia didn’t remember the details—she’d been only twelve—but even nineteen years later, the grief still lingered. At least she had the memories.

She often spent whole days inside her mother’s memory files. Alicia felt lucky to live in a time when memories could be extracted and stored directly in the cloud—no devices, no cameras—just pure neural capture. And luckier still that her mother had done it.

Now, Alicia lived in those memories, stored in the HoloCloud, rendered in full sensory immersion. It wasn’t cheap, but it let her walk through her mother’s world, feel her breath, see through her eyes. Some called it unhealthy. A refusal to grieve. But they didn’t understand. How could they? As long as she had these memories, her mother wasn’t truly gone.

In fact, she spent so much time looking through her eyes, it sometimes felt as if she was her mother. Almost enough to bring her back.

Alicia gestured into the air, flicking through holographic files a few feet away: her ninth birthday. Her first day of secondary school. Her mother’s wedding day.

She loved that one—seeing her parents so young and in love—but it was always tinged with regret. She didn’t really know her father now. Sometimes she wondered if she’d even recognize him. Possibly stout, maybe greying. That’s if he was still alive, of course.

She played the wedding again. Her father stared back at her, mesmerized, as she walked down the aisle. She returned the look lovingly, as she had a hundred times before, but this time—

Something was different.

Halfway down the aisle, she turned her gaze left. Rows of smiling faces… and then, one man. Jet-black hair, still as stone, with an almost unnatural gaze drawing her mother’s eyes like a magnet. Alicia tried to focus on his face, but the scene stalled and pixellated, the sound glitched horribly as the virtual procession spewed back into the real world.

Error trying to read. File corrupted. Error code 8695-DF54-45FB.

Alicia groaned in frustration. This was happening far too often now. Yes, her HoloCloud display unit was a few years old, but for the money she paid it wasn’t good enough.

She looked around, the room was completely dark, nothing betraying the current time of day, and she became aware of her aches and cramps. Her body felt soft and showed the inevitable signs of inactivity. It felt weighed down, heavy, tingling with a kind of phantom touch, feeling almost broken. She hated this world.

She rebooted the system – a few flicks of her wrist and pawing the air a few times – and found herself running along the beach again.

“Alicia! I’m going to get you!”

She giggled with delight as her mother caught her in her arms. She had lived this memory a thousand times, the cold winter wind blowing her mother’s hair across her vision as it battered her daughters smiling face, a face emanating nothing but warmth despite the blustery sea breeze…

“Hey!”

Alicia jumped as they swung around. This wasn’t the memory. Not another corruption, surely? A man was marching briskly towards them with purpose, as the mother glanced back at her daughter.

“Mummy, who’s that man?”

“I don’t know sweetheart.”

Her mother’s voice. Real, yet wrong. Alicia’s pulse quickened – she had read about this. Sick individuals hacking into people memories, just for laughs, infecting the files… that must be what’s going on here. Any minute it’d crash. Perhaps another reboot would sort it.

Her mother glanced back at the man. Alicia gasped.

It was him. The man from the wedding.

He was staring right at them, almost skeletal, opening his mouth to speak-

“ALICIA!!!’

Alicia screamed and shut the unit down. Her gasping, panicked breath reverberated around the dark silence of her living room. Her dark world. There was nothing here. Nobody here. And yet… a beeping. She checked her unit, but it didn’t seem to be coming from that. She couldn’t even tell if it was in the room.

Ignoring it, she rebooted again, desperately hoping that it would work. She daren’t open her favourites, just in case, so started flicking through some archived files.

Then she saw it. A memory she had never seen.

Accident.

Her virtual fingers hovered over the image. She had always wanted to know what had happened, but… was it really something she wanted to see? And why hadn’t she noticed it until now? Could it be the hack? How would they know?

She gestured, and immediately she was behind her mother’s eyes again.

They were in the car, her as her mother, and the young twelve-year-old Alicia next to her. Strange… she had no personal memory of this. She smiled at her daughter, then turned to the road ahead—

The truck slammed into them with apocalyptic force. Glass exploded inward, shards slicing through air and skin as an acoustic hell ripped through their eardrums. Screams turned to static. Alicia’s body jolted forward, ribcage crushed against the steering wheel, lungs emptied in a single punch of agony. She heard the crunch of her own bones. The car seemed to crumple like foil.

Alicia tried to move, but her limbs disobeyed. Her vision blurred, ears ringing with a high, unbearable tone. Her daughter’s face, or her face, swam into view —blood streaked down from her nose, her lips moving in a scream Alicia couldn’t hear.

A muddled silence throbbed in her head as the world blurred. She momentarily focused on her twelve-year-old self, still silently shrieking. Some people came, they opened the passenger door, “My daughter,” Alicia muttered with her mother’s voice, tasting copper on her tongue, “Get her out, please save her…”. She looked OK, Alicia told herself, a little bloodied, but the daughter looked fine. She continued to scream as the people helped her out of the car, but all Alicia could hear still was that muffled high-pitched tone.

But then, a knock.

A loud knocking on the driver’s door. She heard it clearly, despite the rest of the world being so foggy. Alicia peered up, half dazed, but knew who it was even before looking. He was there again. The man. Dark-haired. Pale. Watching her with eyes too deep to read.

He opened the door and led her out of the car. She felt no pain, and moved easily, despite the dull ache throbbing through her body.

“You need to come with me,” the man was pulling her now, not aggressively, but suggesting she had no further options, “It is time, Alicia”.

She stared into his eyes, his dark almost gaunt features burrowing deep into her. There was an uneasiness to his demeanour, as if he meant her harm, but not to hurt her. He moved like mist. Nobody else seemed to notice either of them as they wandered slowly away from the wreckage.

“Who are you?” she cried, “What is wrong with you?! How messed up do you have to be to screw with people’s memories?!”

The man ignored her questions.

“You’re spending too much time here Alicia,” he said, “we need to get you back into the real world now. It’s time to move on.”

“I’m not Alicia,” she replied, realising the man was directly addressing her, “Alicia’s my daughter, they got her out of the car… my mother’s name was… was…”

She couldn’t remember.

“And I’ve got you, Alicia,” he replied calmly, “Look.”

Alicia looked back at the wreckage. Her mother – she – slumped over the steering wheel. How could that be? This was her mother’s memory, how could she be looking at herself?

“Mum!”

The cry didn’t come from inside her. It came from behind. From the child. The young Alicia who was now running towards them.

Confusion took hold as Alicia realised who was with her, holding her hand tightly as they ran down the road. He looked just as he had at the wedding, when she gazed at him lovingly down the aisle.

“Alicia!” the man who appeared to be her father called, “Alicia, we’re here! We’re here! Me and Skye, we’re both here!”

Skye?

‘Who’s Skye?” her mother’s voice asked.

The girl sobbed. “Mum, please, it’s me, Skye… please wake up, please…”

“Alicia! It’s me, Darren,” the man – her father – called. “You’re confused, you’re spending too much time in the HoloCloud, but we’re here, in the real world, we’re waiting for you to return with the light… just come back and turn on the light.”

The girl calling herself Skye spoke like an adult trapped in a child’s voice.

“You know, deep down, I know you do. You know that this isn’t real.” Skye grabbed her mother with both arms, “The dark room, where nothing ever happens? You sit and decay, flicking through your memories… you need to open your eyes and see! We’re here mum, we’re here, please, just wake up! Come back to the light!”

“Your name is Alicia!”, Alicia screamed back at her, “You’re my daughter! Me! Alicia! Why are you doing this to me?! Why?!…”

Skye collapsed, sobbing. “They’re going to turn it off. Please, Mum. Please. Come back… stop going into those memories, please, come back to the light.”

The dark man took Alicia by the shoulder and pulled her around to face him.

“Go back to the dark, Alicia” the man said, “We are coming now. It is time.”

Alicia stared back at the gaunt, almost lifeless face. “Who are you?”

“ALICIA!!!”

It all cut out.

The hologram dissipated instantly. The room was dark and deathly silent, but then, slowly, Alicia began to hear multiple footsteps getting closer. She didn’t move.

The beeping was louder.

Perhaps she should get up and open the curtains, let the light in. If she felt the warm sun on her face, or the sound of a bustling city, then she would know for sure she was back in the real world. But she hated this world, and her seemingly broken body.

Alicia took a deep breath, waved her heads in the air, and she was once again back on that beautiful, blustery beach, smiling her mother’s smile.

“Alicia! I’m going to get you!”

Somewhere, in a real still-dark world, a knock echoed.

But Alicia was already gone.

Smiling. Running.

Lost in a memory that didn’t need any answers.