The Mist

It was one in the morning and it was dark outside, street lamps like the ember of cigarettes 

casting orange auras over small areas and illuminating bus stop glass but leaving the rest of 

the street covered in darkness. It was almost perfectly silent but for a small annoying dog 

bark sound in the distance. A circling mist appeared; a collection of all different elements and 

complex molecular structures, and the wind blew and mixed its vapours and compressed and 

stretched them out jumbling them all together and around and around, and just by chance, and 

really quite the event of incalculable odds, a human was formed. 

 It really was the most incalculable of odds, for not only was a human formed but textiles to 

stretch and cover and fully clothe their skin, and language and motor and coordination skills 

were also woven into the brain of the once vapour to make this person a rather conventional 

looking being for the times. Whatever the hell that meant. As the narrative slipped from 3rd

 

person to 1st person and this unique entity looked at its fingers it couldn’t quite comprehend 

what had just happened. Something similar to the representation of a question mark was 

drawing itself within their brain. 

It started to walk a bit. Its thoughts were more coherent than as a mist and it could feel the 

channels of thoughts flowing through its brain trying to understand what had happened. It 

enjoyed the clarity of thought to that of being a vapour but much preferred moving as the 

breeze than using its new legs to move around. It looked up hypnotised by a street light a 

little while, and when looking back at the street could not see as much as before, it did not 

like that, the interaction between the two did not feel pleasing, like the street light had taken 

something away from them whilst they had been staring at it. The eyes readjusted and the 

street came back into view and it decided to follow the stimulus of the small annoying dog 

barking sound and felt rewarded as it got louder with each step forward. It was making 

progress, if progress could even be defined as the barking getting louder, maybe the dog was 

dangerous and getting louder was not the sound of progress at all but moving closer to 

danger, but the human was not aware of such things as danger and so it felt like progress for 

them, or in some way good at least. 

They eventually reached the dog sound behind slats of fencing and the human being peaked 

an eyeball to view the sound-making creature, and the dog also sensed something new and 

moved closer to investigate it’s presence. The human crouched down to touch the creature 

and it licked the ends of its fingers and playfully nibbled on their ends. The human giggled 

with the sensation and realised that this creature was somehow similar; unlike the street lights 

this was a reciprocal interaction of some kind, a shared sense of emotional backwards and forwardsing, the dog was getting something from investigating it’s fingers and in return the 

sensations of the licks and nibbles delighted the human being, who had never felt anything 

like it before. 

They were more similar than the human was to the street light, for the street light by 

comparison had been quite selfish, but this still raised more questions than it answered… For 

the human at least… for the dog the whole situation was quite mundane. 

“What are you?” 

The dog did not reply. Maybe it did not know either, the same as the human did not know, 

formed by the same freakishness of coincidences that caused the human to be formed and be 

perplexed by its complexity of beingness from non existence into existence. 

“Do you know what I am?” 

The dog again did not answer, instead it carried on licking at the fingers, that seemed enough 

for the dog. 

There was a distant rhythm of a beat which the human had felt before as a vapour and they 

decided to move towards its sound. It could not make sense of it but it felt familiar and it was 

pleasing. It got louder and other sounds started coming into focus but it chose to focus in 

solely on the rhythmic beating as it became more elaborate and sweet to the ear. 

 It did not notice the sound that was approaching behind that made a loud honk and 

screeched, and the human turned around to see another human inside a massive kind of street 

light looking kind of vehicle that moved rapidly towards the human being. The person looked 

frightened inside the street light and it was not apparent why until the street light collided 

with the human and it hurt. It’s head thunked the pavement and hot blood seeped out onto its 

coldness, and the human could feel that they were becoming a vapour again. 

Had the human got to where the music was playing maybe they would have been regretful at 

this outcome, of what was being left unexperienced. But they had at least enjoyed the 

experience of the dog licking and nibbling at their fingers, and the feint sound of the music, 

so their experience as a human being felt adequate, and they slipped peacefully away back 

into the mist. 

Reviews

[Starmountainkid]

Nice story, I enjoyed reading it. I think it's well written. According to quantum uncertainty a human being could be formed out of mist given enough time. Maybe there's been enough time already. Anyway, good story!

[James Walpole]

Thanks glad you liked it, I wrote it with post structuralism in mind as it was for a womans events and I found the subject of post structural feminism quite interesting ( found out aboutwhilst reading up on feminism in order to not offend anyone!)