Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Frankie vs. the Alien Clouds Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

FRANKIE VS. THE ALIEN CLOUDS

Frankie Watkins crawled into the snow fort he’d dug at the bottom of a hill not far from his home, minding the four candles he’d lit to turn the ceiling into ice while shedding a little light. His ankles and wrists were fiercely cold. He hadn’t gotten a new snowsuit since before his parents died and he became the man of the house. Once seated and comfy, he unzipped the snowsuit far enough to reach inside, his hand momentarily catching on the torn lining. He pulled out a stiff magazine and blew a puff of white insulation from the corner.

His big sister gave him the business all the time about reading science fiction, saying things like aren’t you too old for that junk, and there’s no such thing as aliens, and what kind of name is Stardate for a magazine? Well, she wasn’t here, so he could read what he liked…still, he could guess what she’d say if she knew he’d wiggled into the snowsuit he’d had since his big-time growth spurt shortly after his thirteenth birthday and then dug out a fort, all so that he could read silly stories by candlelight.

“Fooey to you, Jean. Jeany, Jeany, bo-beanie, banana nana mo-meanie,” he said and flipped to the page he’d creased as a bookmark. He got four words into the story when he heard a great bang, which was something because the fort made everything sound like a punch to a throw pillow. He dropped the magazine and crawled out the way he’d crawled in.

Smoke, or possibly steam, rose from back near the house. His first thought was fire. His second thought was of Jean. His third thought was that somebody ought to go see.

“Me! I should go see,” he said and started off, trudging through the knee-deep snow.

He climbed the hill, one he and Jean had spent many hours riding during winters past, and looked down the gentle valley to the home and the barn. That grey haze was rising from behind the barn, but it wasn’t dissipating like smoke or steam. It roiled in on itself, undulating and writhing.

Frankie dropped to his tummy and watched in wide-eyed, horrific fascination as the cloud began rolling toward the house before detouring a bit and shrinking. It tightened as it settled over the plug-in Santa Claus on the front lawn. The cloud began to vibrate and a great yellow light flared within. The cloud then sucked into itself, a total vacuum. Next to the short plastic Santa was a slightly taller Santa, though not plastic. It took slow, practicing steps up the walkway toward the front door—the one only unwanted guests ever used.

Frankie made cones with his hands and pretended they were binoculars. He watched this wee Santa climb the three stairs and knock on the door. He began to wonder just how convincing this Santa was. Would Jean know it was a…a what?

The door of the home opened. Jean and Santa stood face to face. A moment later, she stepped aside and the wee Santa stepped inside.

“What are you?” Frankie said.

The barn loomed, as if flashing a homing beacon at him. He nodded once and pushed to his feet. He squatted low as he ran, arms out like he’d seen men do on TV shows about burglaries and movies where army men had to cross no man’s land. He reached the barn a little short of breath but otherwise fine. He scanned behind him and then the yard: all clear. He pushed inside the swinging barn door and had to pause a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, though not for as long as would be normal on a bright winter afternoon.

The roof had a great big hole in it. On the floor, amid the rubble of a crash landing, was a small vehicle. It had a ring around its shining red body. It was entirely metal, though he had no way of knowing which type of metal. The only word that came to his mind then was fancy, this was fancy metal. It had two small protrusions that had to be its wings. The body was slim and came to a point at its nose. He reached out and touched the surface. It was warm. He knocked on the vessel the same way the wee Santa had against the front door of his home.

Seconds passed and Frankie was about to give the craft a shove, perhaps even grab it by the small wing and see how heavy it was, when an array of holes appeared, like those at the top of the pepper shaker. A puff of grey cloud floated free. The cloud hovered a foot from the vessel. Two more sets of holes came into existence on the perfect metal surface, shooting two more cloud puffs free. The surface smoothed out without any suggestion that the vent holes had ever been there.

“What the heck?” Frankie said.

The clouds began roiling and vibrating. Frankie took a couple steps back. The clouds bolted toward him. Instinctively, he put up his arms to cover his head as his feet continued moving him away from the vessel. Two of the clouds settled over his hands, strobing yellow flashes, and the third settled over his puffball Ski-Doo toque.

“Get offa me!” Frankie screamed, swinging his arms and headbanging to a tune of terror. “Git! Git!” He kept backstepping, even as the motion of his head and arms was making him dizzy and disorientated. “Help!”

Suddenly, as quickly as the clouds came, they left, sucking into themselves. Frankie straightened, confused, and looked to his feet. There were two pink hands and a black puffball Ski-Doo toque. The hands shot up to eye level, making fists, while the hat started to wriggle across the snow, toward Frankie’s boots.

Frankie shook his head, said, “I…I…What—?”

The hands flared: jab, straight, hook, uppercut. Blood flew from Frankie’s nose and lip. He was on his ass and had little understanding of what exactly had happened. The toque was draped over the toes of his left boot, and began chewing into the rubber.

The hands flew down on the stunned young man and circled his throat. He began gagging as he tugged against fingers that were identical to his own, though weren’t quite as strong, as they couldn’t put any weight behind them. He got the right hand off and tossed it, followed by the left, this time slamming it down against the cleared driveway in front of the barn. He took a deep breath and screamed. The toque had made it through his boot, loose threads were sewing themselves into his flesh. The right fist was coming at him again and he cocked back his left arm before winging the left hand at its brethren. They struck in air and went spiraling off like a maple seed in an autumn storm.

“Now, you!” he shouted at the toque.

He yanked at the thing, the threads busting and the material peeling. He got the image of the time he’d bandaged an infected ankle and forgot about it for days, and when he went to clean it—finally—the cotton came away with a crust of gooey yellow scab. The hat came free with a final wet reeee! and he tossed it into the snow.

“Uh oh.”

The hands had amalgamated and were now a ten-fingered floating monstrosity. Frankie pushed upright and hobbled toward the house. The super hand was hot behind him and the only hope he had was the gusts that always rolled down the hill and pushed between the house and the barn.

He saw the blustering snow and felt the cutting wind, had to close his eyes to the painful burn. He kept on pushing toward the house, limping his bum foot, and didn’t dare a glance behind him. After five steps he was through the bluster route—an A-1 place to toss a kite in the summertime—and to the edge of the roll-up garage door. He continued to the man door and did look back then. The hand had followed the toque’s route, struggling along the ground, but making it.

“Dang it,” Frankie said and turned to survey the garage.

There was the family ride: a Buick Roadmaster with woodgrain walls and navy-blue paint. Next to it were the barbeque—hauled inside for the season—and a shelf of this, that, and the other. A camping knife seemed the deadliest, but was that right? The bug spray, maybe? The little torch lighter his sister used whenever she snuck out for a little bit of pot? What about the—Frankie nearly toppled when the toque bit into the calf of his snowsuit. He tipped forward into the everything shelves. The knife fell and the aerosol can of Off: Deep Woods rolled against his arm. The super hand punched the back of his head and his open mouth nailed the wall, chipping one of his front teeth.

“Bugger!” Frankie shouted.

He grabbed the little torch and spun as he lit, bringing the bug spray up and pressing the button. The hand was so close and lit so violently that Frankie’s eyebrows instantly disappeared from his face, leaving only smokey, melted smears. The super hand sizzled and hissed, the cloud of its being was obviously flammable.

“Got you now—ow!”

Frankie lifted his leg and looked back over his shoulder. The toque had bore through his snowsuit. Blindly, he brought the bug spray down behind him and lit the torch. The polyester of his snowsuit began to burn and melt, but that was fine and dandy as a bag of candy because the alien toque burst into a writhing ball of flaming gas before it disappeared.

Frankie swatted at his hot leg to put out any embers. “Jean,” he said when he recalled his sister and stomped on into their home. “Jean?”

“In here,” she said, sounding a bit off.

Frankie stepped through the kitchen and around the corner to the living room. Jean sat on a couch across from an identical Jean. The pair stared at one another.

“Jean?” Frankie said.

Both Jeans turned their heads and said, “Yeah.”

Frankie squinted, he knew all about this trick. He lifted the aerosol can and the torch. “One of you ain’t my sister.”

Both pointed at the Jean opposite.

“She came in like Santa.”

“No! She did!”

Frankie thought, got to be something one would know that the other wouldn’t… He nodded once and picked the Jean to his left. He lowered the aerosol and the lighter and leaned his face into hers. He opened his mouth and wriggled his tongue against her tongue. She pushed him away.

“Uck! Brothers and sisters don’t do that!”

Frankie lifted the aerosol can and the lighter and burned her. She lit like a February Christmas tree in a hobo barrel. The black puff of smoke created a streak up the wall and to the ceiling.

“Thank goodness,” the remaining Jean said.

Frankie nodded. He’d read enough about aliens to know that they studied social behaviors and norms of the planets they invaded, would assume Frankie and his sister didn’t enjoy a smooch now and then. But…how could he be certain about this other Jean? What if there’d been two big clouds, or they’d joined together to enter the home as Santa. He spun and spied his sister.

To heck with it, he thought, he had to be certain. He brought up the aerosol can and the lighter and sprayed just above Jean’s head, assuming the cloud hiding behind the visage would catch. Jean’s hair caught and lit like a candlewick—Vidal Sassoon, Ĺoréal, Alberto, Rave Ultra Hold, all words he could read on the bathroom counter. Jean screamed.

“I’m so sor—” a wide-eyed Frankie began, but the rest of Jean went up in a flash of fire. “Oh. Oh, no,” he said then as he spun a full circle, looking for a body crumpled and stashed, or maybe a pile of bones. He went to the living room closet, only three feet from the door Jean had answered and had let that wee Santa inside. A logical first place to check.

There was Jean, folded like a yogi master. The only girl he’d ever gotten to second base with. He closed her eyes and imagined the fine brush of her almost invisible moustache and the scent of her sweat when they went on cheese binges.

He thought of all the other girls in the world who might kiss him someday. What if there were more of those shapeshifting clouds? Turning those girls into corpses!

—

For lack of another option, Frankie—who had only a beginner’s permit—rolled the Roadmaster into town. He was jerky and more than a little nervous. He reached the first set of stoplights. The town was inexplicably quiet.

“Where is…” he trailed, spying three of the cloud alien vessels parked down the alley between the hardware store and the drop-in clinic. “Oh, no.”

Frankie burned through the red light, a camera snapping pictures of his license plate, pictures that would never have their day in court. More of the visitor ships were on lawns, in driveways, on the rooftop of the cop shop. Inflatable snowmen and inflatable Santas and inflatable Ninja Turtles walked around, live and fleshy.

Frankie looked at the fuel gauge. Half a tank. Maybe he’d stop in the next town, and if that didn’t work, the one after that. He had the bug spray and the lighter, and his knowledge, it wasn’t much but maybe it was enough.

The sun was falling fast and Frankie chased it, heading west on Highway #1, thinking he might just be a hero when this was all done, might himself end up in the pages of some sci-fi rag big sisters like his simply refused to understand.

XX