Earth Giants and Cloud Creatures

1

The sky was falling. Well, more accurately, water was falling from the sky, but it slapped Mitchel Ryan's face in tiny droplets that stung him just enough for him to notice. He'd collapsed onto his lawn just outside the back door to his unit in the early hours of the morning when the task of turning the key in his security screen had proved impossible and he'd thrown his keys in a very defeatist way so far that he hadn't been able to find them.

"Wha ja change my fukn locks too di ja? Bitch," had been Mitchel's final words slurred into the crisp morning ether. Haunted by the loneliness that resides in drinking away the last few dollars to one's name whilst replaying in his mind the memories of his freshly failed relationship with Regina Bells, Mitchel had exercised a half-arsed attempt to search for his keys before slumping to the ground next to his back door. It was at this point that he'd passed out.

A few hours later, his neighbour, Mrs Hoar, had been somewhat alarmed when she'd gone to hang out her washing and found Mitchel's limp, dirtied body lying in the grassless patch of ground that her dog Henry had fashioned for himself. She'd rushed over as quickly as an eighty-four year old woman could move herself and peered down at him, searching for a sign that he was alive. She'd kicked him hard in his side and he'd let out an unconscious "grmpf". So, her fears relieved, she'd grabbed a towel from her laundry and lain it over drunken Mitchel's body - not only to warm him on this cool morning but also to hide his pantless bottom half.

"The hell did he do with his pants anyway?" she'd thought to herself as she'd yanked his hand out from the crotch of his boxer shorts and dropped it appropriately at his side. Taking one final pitying look at him from above, she'd finished her washing and gone back into her unit, leaving him to wake and move himself indoors.

Now, as the water droplets began to sting more regularly, Mitchel contorted his face. Putting pressure on one of his eyelids to stay shut, he slowly raised the other to the brightness of the overcast morning and the whiteness of the cloud-filled sky. With vision, came pain and his head immediately ached, each brain cell beating him from within.

Mitchel sat up and took a look around. Still smelling of dog, he screwed up his nose and jerked his head from one side to the other.

"Henry, get away!" Mitchel garbled in a threatening way to the absent dog. He rubbed his hands through his hair and then lifted the towel from his legs revealing his morning erection poking out from the fly of his boxers. It was an unfortunate and cruel coupling that Mitchel and his penis endured. One might expect a man of such length to be naturally gifted in the ways of seduction, but Mitchel was no Cassanova and seldom did his penis have the opportunity to flex its muscle. Regina had been one of only a handful of admirers of Mitchel's penis, so the break-up had devastated both it and Mitchel in equal proportions.

Looking across to the water tank nearby, Mitchel caught sight of his jeans and crawled over. He grabbed them and reefed them on and then stood and wiped some of the mud from his clothes. Still there was that pungent smell of dog and he began to realise that he probably couldn't blame Henry so much for this.

The rain began to pour more heavily and Mitchel raised his hands to his face and saw that he was covered in what was quickly becoming mud. He grabbed for the handle to the screen door and realised he was locked out but, checking the pockets at his sides, he found nothing. What had he done with his keys?

Mitchel attempted to remember the events of the previous night. He'd been sat at a bar, drowning memories. There'd been a lot of drinking in the past two weeks, but the end of his relationship with Regina Bells had been sufficient justification for that. This particular level of self-destruction, however, stood out as unusual and Mitchel remembered that something had occurred yesterday that had deepened his suffering and ultimately led to this point.