Addicted to Clouds by Mark Stanski

Addicted to Clouds by Mark Stanski

Jade Saunders descended, naked except for her crucifix, through a vast, feathery cloud, letting the moisture on her skin begin to dry in the sunlight. She loved to fly like this, totally exposed. She’d fly without a care on her mind, unless she chanced to sight a passing plane, or find herself skimming too low to a suburban stretch or a tall skyline. She loved to dart across the country, a human comet. But flying made her yearn for the only other high that brought her just as near to Heaven on Earth, the drug she couldn’t turn from: Elysium.

Before, basking naked in the myriad cloudscapes and climates of the world had been joy enough. But in time she began passing the windows of passenger planes slowly enough for one passenger, then another, to sight her and raise a chatter to alert more spectators. On giving in to that thrill, she would descend to pass the tallest skyscrapers of the city she was visiting. She made sure the people who saw her could make no mistake: it was a woman passing them from where they watched in the highest storeys. And when she’d give in to that, she would take hit after hit from her vapour pen soon after she landed.

One of the last times she used, she’d let people die.

One hundred feet below her, a large passenger plane would soon begin a descent to Vancouver International Airport. She considered serving up the travellers a marvel. She thought of the wrenching high to follow, remembered the guilt, and let the plane descend unmolested.

Frustrated, Jade landed by her backpack and the circle of red chalk she’d spread to help her sight it from the air over the woods. A few kilometers away she was sharing a bungalow with her partner, Daniela Stone, in Burnaby, BC. Daniela had recruited her a year ago to help her fight the Devil’s superheroes: the Infernals. By the time Jade had dressed in her jeans, boots, and T-shirt, she was desperate to get high—to compensate for denying herself the thrill of exposure. She nearly took a draw from her vapour pen but resisted.

Her Narcotics Anonymous meeting was two hours away. She’d gone to the last meeting high and was determined to make this one clean. Stone was trying to help her abstain, but she wasn’t the inspiration her uncle had been. Since Jade had lost him last year in the fight against the Infernal, she’d found purpose with Daniela. But she’d been using off and on, sometimes constantly, for weeks at a time. Jade had stopped believing she could finally find her way free of the drug or the exhibitionist episodes that always precipitated her drug use.

Jade came through the door to find Daniela at her laptop, reading news articles and updating a file she was keeping on family planning doctors in the Greater Vancouver Area. Daniela was sure an Infernal was murdering the doctors at abortion clinics throughout the region. The victims had been torn apart by someone making a bloody statement.

“Jade, going to your meeting?”

“Yeah,” Jade told her. “I’m going.”

“Are you clean this time?” Daniela asked, not looking up from the screen.

Daniela always seemed to know when she was high even when the people at NA and her supervisor at the Eastside Women’s Centre didn’t.

“I’m clean, but it fucking sucks,” Jade said, a note of spite in her voice.

“You’ve been flying past planes again,” Daniela said.

“I wish, but no,” Jade told her, flopping down onto the couch in their small living room.

“You know it always leaves you wanting to get high. You need to talk at the meeting today. Share something. Tell everyone about the flying and urge that comes after.”

“That’ll go over great. And how many people are going to want to sponsor me after I tell them buzzing airplanes in the nude makes me want to use?” Jade said, getting right back up off the couch.

Daniela turned her office chair around to face her and checked Jade’s eyes. “I know what you’ll sound like. But you’ll be heard, even if no one believes you’re superhuman. You’ll hear yourself being heard. And that’s what makes the change.”

“If I get a sponsor, she’s just going to sound like you but not as smart. They’re like a cult at NA.”

“My mom was addicted to cocaine while I was growing up, and by the time I was sixteen, she was clean. She talked at meetings, and she listened.”

“I said I was going to the meeting. So, are you any closer to finding the Infernal?” Jade asked.

“Yes. Doctor Ellen Phelps has an appointment at 8.45. The police think she’ll be targeted since she’s been outspoken about going ahead with her bookings. The VPD has twelve units parked nearby and the Emergency Response Team is standing by in the neighbourhood. I’m heading over there now.”

“The killer might move anytime. They’re probably more than able to deal with the police.”

“Yes. that’s why you need to keep your cellphone on at the meeting,” Daniela said.

“The killer is probably too much for you, too. I’m coming along.”

“You could, but if you go back to using, you could let someone down again, like in LA, right?”

Jade had put a psychic monitor—it worked like a bug that transmitted the extreme emotions of the person on whom she placed it—on a criminal lawyer. The lawyer had gotten death threats for representing a pornographer who made videos that had outraged Christian and women’s rights groups throughout the state and the country. Jade had gotten high on the day the killer had struck. The elation she experienced while high had blocked the emotions of the lawyer when the killer showed at her home; the lawyer had been torn limb from limb. While it happened Jade had been exultant, flying like a heedless angel over the skies of LA. Jade had vowed repeate

dly never to use again, but she’d failed every time.

“You thi

nk I don’t know that? You think I’m ever going to get any distance from LA ever? I need this. I need to be at that clinic.”

“You’re a liability, Jade. Depending on you could get me killed. Get others killed. You have to stop this addiction or you’re no use to me, no matter how powerful you think you are. Go to your meeting. I’ll text if the killer moves.”

Jade felt a wave of nausea in her stomach thinking back to LA. What did it matter that she had saved Daniela’s life a year earlier in New York and beaten Imperator, the Infernal no PowerTrip deputy could stop? Jade felt a pitching—a deep unease. She felt bound to use again, and soon.

Her uncle David, the late, celebrated Bishop David Saunders, had filled Jade’s life: volunteering at the shelter, the food bank, and her part-time job as a secretary at Ascension Parish. Uncle David had tried to leave her no time for thinking about weed or the lift she got from her powers that always triggered the urge for the drug. Jade had seldom used then, but she would still sometimes steal away in the night sky after one of her volunteer commitments or work. Daniela was no Uncle David. Jade had been strong for him, happy for him, and that felt unfair to Daniela, who’d shared her mission with her.

“I’ll go to the meeting, then. I won’t let you down again, I swear it,” she said, not really believing it.

“I know you won’t. Getting clean time under you and getting these urges further and further behind you is everything, okay?”

“Okay,” Jade said. Daniela pulled her trenchcoat over the blue and maroon uniform of the Human League, the constabulary sworn to fight rogue superheroes with just high-tech weapons, their professional training, and bravery. Jade watched Daniela walk to the van toward what was likely a fight she couldn’t win alone. As she drove away, Jade sat and waited. She thought of that rising feeling in her head and chest that would divert her most desperate boredom and loneliness like the forest fire it was. After thirty minutes of denying herself a draw on her pen, she took her satchel and started the half-hour walk to St Chad’s, an understated Anglican church with a small hall for masses where the NA group met. Along the way, she thought of taking one good puff to see her through the boring cult-like recitations from the Basic Text, or bible, of this support group she needed.

& & &

The NA group was large—so large that not everyone got a chance to speak. Jade kept rehearsing what she’d prepared to say on the walk down and determined to get herself to share something—anything. She’d arrived clean, and that had been hard.

Jade recognized several regulars: John, a weathered-looking man in his forties wearing a suit, had been clean for over a year. An older woman in her fifties sat a few seats from Jade in the circle of stackable chairs; she’d been clean for twenty years of comfortable suburban life in Kitsilano but relapsed. Trisha, one of the youngest members, had yet to speak but always had a haunted expression. She wore torn jeans, had dyed auburn hair with black roots, and sported lots of eyeshadow and mascara. Next to Trisha was her kitbag containing a bass guitar, judging by its size. She looked cocked and ready to speak, judging by the way she relentlessly teased her long hair and bounced her thighs rapidly on the cheap plastic seat. She looked as uncomfortable as Jade felt.

The readings from the Basic Text happened almost without Jade noticing, she was so tense with the desire to speak. To do something about her addiction. Daniela told her speaking would help her lose the urge to use; Daniela wouldn’t waste Jade’s time. And something had to work or Jade would use again. She was sure of that, too.

On the walk down, she’d tried to think of some analogy for her superhumanity she could share. She wanted to be taken for an addict, not a person with delusions of grandeur. Most large cities had had an encounter with a superhuman, but to claim to be one was still like claiming to be a member of the royal family. She thought about saying she was a cop who’d been in a firefight. She thought of claiming to be a surgeon who’d saved lives. Anything other than that she could toss an ultra-class haul truck across a skyline and arrive in time to catch it. But would any story besides her own mean anything to her, mean anything for helping her stop wanting to use?

John stood up. “The floor is open for sharing.”

Jade chirped, “I’m Jade and I’m an ad—” but realized she was talking over Trisha. She nodded at Trisha and opened her palm in apology. Damn. Well, she hadn’t even known what on Earth she was going to share. Her mind raced for something real to say and determined to talk next. She was about to run over her intended opening again when she noticed Trisha was crying as she spoke.

“I’m fighting the hardest fight of my life,” Trisha said. “Nobody’s going to believe me, but I’ve signed with a major music label; I’m going to be touring thirty cities in Canada and the US with Angmar headlining. And it’s going to make me use—I know it. I get so lifted when I perform; I feel like, well—I feel like I can fly. And when I finish a show, I feel it all come to this rushing, empty end and I feel like I’m nothing. And I use to fill myself back up.”

Jade forgot her need to speak. Trisha went on, about starting to use to feel special, like she had something in her music despite playing dives and getting no traction with any labels. Soon enough, she was using all the time, struggling to pay her rent, and her closest friends and family weren’t speaking to her.

“I know using without success; with it, it’s going to end my life. And I don’t believe in any ‘higher power’ to help me stop, so maybe I don’t belong in this group. Maybe this record deal is just the last chapter of my junkie life,” Trisha said, sitting down like a witness who’d been ripped apart on the stand. Her black concert T-shirt was wet with tears. Silence followed instead of the next addict darting in. Jade didn’t wait.

“I’m Jade and I’m an addict. I’m also the woman who beat Imperator’s ass down in New York last year. I can crack a mountain with a scream, and with a whisper I can make a gangster drop her gun. But I can’t stop taking my drug of choice. Every. Fucking. Day. Not even to be there for my partner when she’s risking her life against some superpowered serial killer in a costume. My partner keeps trusting me to have her back, but I keep going back to my drug…” Jade waited. Was anyone believing a word of what she said?

“I know what it’s like to feel empty after an enormous natural high. You have nowhere to go after that rocket ride except down into an abyss. And so I use to fill it. And it’s going to cost someone their fucking life. It has before. And I still use, because the void is so awful,” Jade said, her voice quavering as she sat.

Jade never looked at Trisha as she spoke, but as she sat Trisha stared at her. Jade had compared her addiction to Trisha’s without intending to. That felt unfair to do to anyone, but the words had just come as though she weren’t the one speaking them. Everyone stared at her. It felt like she’d been believed, at least about how crazy addicted she was. No one in the group spoke, not for a long time. It became agonizing, waiting for someone to follow her. John broke the silence, maybe just to get the group sharing again.

Jade tried to listen to him, to the several others who followed, but she could only think of what Trisha had said. Trisha’s experience had been the analogy she might have used for her own addiction. She’d opened herself to ridicule and incredulity. And somewhere in her chest, something hard and coiled up tight loosened.

John called the meeting to a close, and people began to stack chairs, form small groups, and chat. Many people regarded Jade, but Jade looked straight ahead at Trisha, who held her gaze but then looked away sharply and down.

Several people moved to approach Jade. She nodded at three different people who made for her with warm, solicitous looks on their faces as Trisha stood and shouldered her kitbag. Jade smiled at the people coming at her but made for Trisha, trying not to beeline, fearing Trisha would dart before Jade could engage her.

“Hi,” Jade said to her.

“Hi,” Trisha said, eyes full of wonder despite her spent look. She looked down at the ground after a second, then made herself return Jade’s eye contact.

“I don’t think I was going to share anything real until you spoke first.”

“I didn’t think anyone would even believe a loser like me had a record deal,” Trisha said.

“You’re not a loser. We’ve just got a problem. And you don’t have to go it alone. You know? I didn’t think I could talk about my real problem until you talked about yours. I guess I relate to you.”

“You’re really the woman who beat Imperator.”

“You believe that. That I’m her,” Jade said.

“Yeah, I do. Besides, you have the height and build,” she said, smiling. Jade smiled back and though the two said nothing more, the silence was warm and thick.

“Can I hug you?” Jade asked, breaking the silence. Trisha nodded. She opened her arms almost as fast as she nodded. Jade knelt low enough to hug the young woman and felt her small hand touch the skin on the back of her neck. As their skin touched, Jade planted a psychic monitor on her. The monitor glowed on Trisha’s chest, a golden cross only Jade could see.

“Can I give you my number?” Trisha asked.

“Yes. Totally. You can call me anytime.” Jade took out her smartphone and keyed in Trisha’s number. “There, just texted you.”

“Okay, thanks. Thanks, Jade. Maybe we get each other a little, huh?”

“Maybe we do. Yeah.”

“How lame does that sound? Saying I get a superhero.” Trisha said.

“I feel the same, saying I get a rising rock star touring with Angmar.”

“Next week?” Trisha said, smiling.

“Next week,” Jade said.

& & &

The sun was setting at six-forty. It was cold for late November and Jade sat in the van with Daniela.

“What are you smiling about?” Daniela said.

“The meeting was really something. I guess I must’ve said something crazy real. It didn’t fall through the floor.”

Daniela squeezed Jade’s broad shoulder hard. “You’re Miss Punctual today. You’re just on time. We’ll talk about the group.” If she lived, Jade felt from Daniela. Daniela thought she might die every time she suited up to fight some superhero. It didn’t matter that Jade was ahead of her in every fight since they’d met, keeping her safe from the lesser superhumans. Danila expected to die anyhow. Jade had a monitor on her, always. She watched Daniela, who panned her gaze across the avenue, the clinic entrance, and at the undercover cops in vehicles parked along the alley. She could do this for eight hours, and had before.

Back at the van, a plainclothes cop with the VPD that Daniela had pointed out to Jade earlier got out of his car and approached them. He was in his forties, clean-shaven, and dressed casually with a bulletproof vest under his overcoat.

“Hanging tight? Is this your friend?” the man asked.

“Jade. She’s the one I said would be here. She’s up to this Infernal or any others that show to back her up. She’s made to fight them.”

“So, you’re the one who beat Imperator. Glad you’re here.” The man paused. “Ma’am, I’m going to instruct you as I did your friend to act with caution and ensure you don’t endanger lives, my people’s or anyone else we’re here to protect. Is that clear?”

Jade nodded earnestly at the man.

“With a little luck, Superintendent, if the Infernal moves, we’ll deal with them before a single boot hits the asphalt. My friend is that fast,” Daniela said.

The man nodded as he turned his gaze from Daniela and down the avenue. He walked slowly back to his car a few parking spaces south of the clinic like a man who expected a bomb to go off any second.

By seven Jade was tempted to text Trisha, but it was too soon to not be desperate or weird. She hadn’t realized she’d been friendless and lonely for almost a year. Her legs and arms wanted to move; she wanted to get out and walk. Jade studied Daniela’s roving gaze to try to see what she was combing for. She excused herself to use the Port-O-Let a few car lengths down the avenue. Six steps from the van she realized she was planning to take a puff. Daniela wouldn’t see it in her eyes if she had just one. She put her hand into her satchel and felt the pen, then realized Daniela might have seen her do it. Damn.

She entered the Port-O-Let and fished it out. The pen cartridge was half full of gold-coloured Elysium oil, enough to keep her high for a few days. Daniela might not know if she only had one puff. Something in her had shifted in the meeting; she’d taken the first step in stopping the Elysium. She hadn’t become addicted in one day; she wouldn’t go clean all in one session either. There was no way she was going to stop the Elysium for good after just one epiphany in NA. And being high wouldn’t keep her from flattening the Infernal if they showed.

Jade put the pen to her lips and anticipated the rush of euphoria and the sick feeling that accompanied it.

Before she could draw on the pen, she felt a spike of exhilaration from Trisha. She was looking forward to using later, as Jade was, and something else—she was about to perform. Jade thought back to her words. It’s going to end my life. Was Trisha afraid of overdosing? Elysium didn’t work that way, but plenty of drugs could kill you if you went too far. If Jade inhaled, the monitor on Trisha would be silenced by the Elysium high. She took the pen from her lips, put it back in her satchel, and walked back to the van.

By 8.15, Jade was cresting on waves of elation from Trisha. She was playing a big venue, the biggest she’d ever played. She was having the time of her life. Jade smiled as the tide of Trisha’s joy lapped at the edges of her mind, mixing with her own excitement at anticipating a fight she knew she could win. A fight maybe only she could win. Jade fiddled with her satchel. Trisha was feeling like she was more than human. And Jade itched to feel it too, right then—that sense that she was a god among gods.

“I’m going over to talk to the superintendent. I’ll be back in a few. Stay sharp,” Daniela said. As soon as Daniela was a few car lengths away, Jade took the pen out and her hands began to shake. She was never going to escape the hold Elysium had on her—not if she was thinking of inhaling some now. Trisha’s feeling of joy soared, so high and fast Jade knew it for a drug rush. Jade put the tip of the pen to her lips. The high would take the guilt away, wash away the failure to deny herself. She pressed the button on the pen to start the oil burning. Jade felt a plummeting sense, to be about to take the puff that would end her tie to Trisha. If she inhaled deep, she’d fly far from this feeling—that she was choosing to be damned. To escape everything, even Trisha and the danger she might be in. She took the pen away and looked up to the dark sky. “Please, not now. Not again. Please,” Jade said.

Suddenly, the surfeit of happiness in Trisha began to drain like blood rushing from a cut artery. A creeping dread and terror moved into Jade’s mind from Trisha. Trisha moved into a different place—unhinged from the joy she had felt before. Jade felt a spike of terror in Trisha: she feared for her life, but feared living even more.

Jade crushed the pen and dropped it through her open window to the road.

Trisha’s surroundings and location came to Jade with a sickening sense of doom. Metrotown Station. Jade was going to jump in front of the train. Daniela returned, opened the door, sat in the driver’s seat and shut it. She shook her: “Jade, what’s wrong?”

“I have to go! Now!” Jade told her. Daniela’s jaw fell open.

“What?” Daniela said.

“Sorry!” Jade said, opening the door, leaving the car, and launching herself hard into the night sky. She was over the low rises of New Westminster in seconds, scarcely aware of the buffeting winds. She shot across the district into Burnaby over Metrotown station and flew though the south tunnel entrance and past the slowing train. Near the southmost end of the platform, Trisha had dropped onto the tracks. She was terrified and desperate to undo her decision. She looked frantically towards the platform, searching for the ladder, and, panicking, ran for the side. She tripped hard onto the tracks. Jade felt an awful note of despair from Trisha, who knew then she was going to die.

Jade reached her a few heartbeats ahead of the train, hooked her left arm under Trisha’s knees and her right under her upper back. Trisha clung tightly. Jade launched away from the braking train carrying Trisha toward the opposite tunnel entrance and out over a nearby parkette. Trisha shook in her arms as Jade descended slowly onto the grass besides a bench and line of conifers. Several onlookers pointed and filled the green space with loud exclamations and chatter.

Trisha clung to Jade like a frightened cat, and Jade let her hold on, squeezing her tight in her arms for long enough for a small crowd to form around them, fingers to point, and babble to start to turn into solicitations from the denizens of the parkette. Jade gently peeled the young woman from her and set her down on the grass. Daniela might be in trouble. Jade knelt on one knee and put her hands on the sitting woman’s shoulders and squeezed them.

“You are loved, Trisha. Please don’t let yourself go there again. Please. And if you ever get that desperate again, you pray. To someone. Something. And you text me. I’ll text you soon. Very soon.” Jade kissed her on the cheek and hugged her tight for far too long. Daniela’s monitor droned a low alarm; she was about to fight.

“You never think when you’re growing up that you’ll be the person under the wheels, slowing everyone’s commute.”

“Trisha! Don’t think that way! Think on better times. Ever better times. Especially if you can’t see or even feel them. And it’s reasonable. And it’s desperate. We do come though, stronger—even us.” Trisha looked like she’d seen the face of God. Jade leapt into the sky. She could feel a queer feeling from Trisha—strong but nothing she had a word for. Jade shot up and across twenty neighbourhoods, and back down into New Westminster on the sloping avenue in front of the clinic.

From across the avenue in front of the clinic, police assault rifles clacked as a lupine monster marched heedless on all fours toward the clinic entrance where Daniela waited, sword and pistol in hand, barring the way. She fired at the creature, who shuddered with each shot from the high-tech weapon but still marched toward her. Jade landed hard in front of the monster just a few feet from Daniela, who readied a strike with her sword. The Infernal looked like a giant wolf but for intelligent eyes and long, muscular limbs; the forelimbs looked more human than lupine. The monster was six feet tall on all fours.

“Stop!” Jade said to the creature. The creature stopped, but its brows arched and its eyes regained their purpose. The monster raised an arm to claw down at her. Jade flew into it with punch to its mouth that broke bones. The Infernal shrieked, a bestial sound that suggested a voice that could form words. Jade took the creature’s head in both hands and crushed it, blood spraying her face and chest. The creature collapsed into her, and she stepped away from it, letting it hit the ground and splay in a mound of fur and gore.

& & &

Jade hadn’t gotten to any breakfast. She was several espressos in by eight in the morning. Daniela wasn’t up yet, and the drive home from the clinic had been silent: Jade kept her eyes down and texted Trisha; Daniela kept her eyes on her driving. After a four-hour sleep, Jade was up and texting Trisha again. She was looking for a therapist in between texting Jade. She said she’d been trying praying and that she liked something about it, weird as it felt.

By the time Daniela emerged from her bedroom in her housecoat, Jade was replying to a twelfth long message from Trisha. It had been the only one in which she’d thanked Jade for saving her life. Daniela said nothing, went into the kitchen, and turned on the kettle. Jade sent her reply as Daniela returned with a streaming cup of Earl Grey, the scent filling the living room.

“Did you meet someone at NA?” Daniela asked her, sitting next to Jade on the short couch instead of the wicker loveseat she preferred. She touched Jade’s hip with hers as she sat.

“Yes. She’s why I had to leave last night. It was life or death. It really, really was,” Jade said. The shame and guilt must have shown on her face because Daniela’s expression softened.

“I knew it was important, but good lord I don’t know what I was going to do with that thing if you had been any longer coming back,” she said, shaking her head. “Was it one of your monitors?”

“Yes, on the girl—woman I should call her—that I met at NA. She almost killed herself last night. I got there just in time to stop it.”

“You almost used last night, when you went to the Port-O-Let. Didn’t you? And again when I went to talk to the superintendent.”

Jade felt a lump in her throat stop her answering right away. “Yes. Both times.”

“What kept you from using?”

“It would creep you out,” Jade told her. “Anything about prayer creeps you the fuck out. And I didn’t get high. And then the monitor started blaring. If I’d used, I wouldn’t have felt a thing and Trisha—the woman I met—would have died.” Jade’s face flushed so intensely she felt like it would pop and her eyes spilled hot tears.

“But you didn’t use. And so you saved her. And me, and a lot of people last night.” Daniela took her by the shoulder. “Keep praying. Keep texting your new friend. And the meetings—whatever town we’re in, you keep going.”

“Daniela?”

“Yeah?”

Jade tried to form a question but just kept crying.

“Why do I keep betting on you?” Daniela asked her.

Jade nodded.

“Because you’re your uncle’s niece. And you’re going to walk all the way free one day. I need you to, that’s why.”

“Okay,” Jade said. A text came in from Trisha followed by two more, the last one a question. The question she’d been waiting for but had been unable to answer before now.

[Why are you my friend?]—Trish

Jade texted though her finger’s ached:

[Because you’re a hero and you’re going to be free. Because I need you to be.]—Jade

Jade took a deep breath and let it out. Then she turned to Daniela and squeezed her hard.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Mark Stanski 2025