Earth by the Ankles

When Henry took his card from the ATM, the ground shifted.  He was thrown against the shop wall and began to slide up, scraping his palms on the bricks as he fell towards the roof.
    

He grabbed at anything, clawing desperately for a hold.  His fingers caught the edge of the thin shelf above the cash dispenser, knuckles under shock, and then he was hanging, legs swinging, over a drop into infinity.
    

Groaning, dizzy, his mind still spinning, Henry glanced over his shoulder.  Down in the sky, things were plummeting to the clouds; people and cars, busses, dogs and cats, prams, bikes.  He saw a vast, rippling sheet of foamy silver--possibly the lake from the park--and found himself trying to imagine what the sea must look like.
    

Then reality struck him as his fingers, sweaty now, began to slip.
    

Knowing that he could not hold on for much longer, Henry began to scream, ‘Help! Somebody help me!’  The electronic doors beside the ATM opened a fraction.  Hands appeared in the gap to force them apart.
    

‘I’m here,’ he shouted, when faces craned from the doorway.  A number of arms caught a hold on his belt and jacket, hoisting him into the shop.
    

‘You all right, son?’
    

‘There you go.’
    

‘Easy.’
    

‘You’re safe now.’
    

Henry saw a big man say to someone, ‘Help me shut the doors.’
    

He looked around, and at the sight before him gasped and reeled back.
    

‘Wow, it’s okay, son,’ said the big man, gripping his shoulder and placing a hand on his chest.
    

Henry, still pressed against the glass, managed to choke, ‘What just happened? What’s going on?’
    

‘No idea, son.’  The big man shrugged.  ‘We were all in here…’  He indicated the others; a middle-aged man, a girl around Henry’s age, and a woman in the shop’s blue uniform.  ‘…and next thing we know, we’re lying on the floor--or the ceiling--packets of food are falling left and right. This feller…’  His eyes shifted to the middle-aged man, who dabbed  at a gash on his forehead.

‘Stan.’
    

‘Stan here got hit by a tin.’
    

Henry gulped dryly, nodding.  He turned and looked down through the glass doors, murmured blankly,  ‘Things were falling outside, too. Everything. Cars. People…’
    

Behind him, Stan went pale.  ‘Falling where?’
    

‘I don’t know.’
    

‘Where?’
    

Stan took a step forward but the big man pulled him back.
    

‘Take it easy, will ye?’
    

‘Falling where?’
    

Henry said, ‘Into the sky.’
    

Stan’s eyes lost their focus.  ‘Catherine was… walking to work…’  And then he flipped, kicking, shouting, ‘Catherine! Oh my god, Catherine!’
    

The big man tried to hold him, but Stan threw himself at the door, wrenched it open and ran outside, plunging from sight.  He did not scream.
    

Henry stumbled to a corner, where he leant against the wall and threw up.  The girl came to him.
    

‘Are you okay?’
    

‘No.’
    

‘I don’t know what’s going on.  None of us do.’
    

Henry wiped a sleeve across his mouth.  He blushed, devastated she had seen him vomit.  Then he laughed, amazed at himself for worrying about something so trivial in the same hour as the world being turned upside down.
    

She asked, ‘What’s so funny?’
    

‘Nothing, I… It’s nothing. What’s your name?’
    

‘Chloe.’
    

‘I’m Henry.’
    

He did not know what to do except offer his hand, which she shook.  For a moment neither of them spoke, until Henry said, ‘Poor guy.’
    

‘Who’s that?’
    

‘Stan.’
    

‘Oh, right. Yeah, poor guy.’  After a pause, she said, ‘My family are all at home right now. I’m praying they’re okay--indoors, I mean.’
    

‘Same here. My parents live in London.’
    

‘Right.’
    

‘This whole… situation, is unreal,’ said Henry.  ‘Things were falling up… or down… but now, up is down, and down is up…’
    

‘I don’t get it.’
    

‘Me neither.’
    

When they turned back to the other two, the man was saying to the till woman, ‘Millions will have dropped, but the same amount’ll be trapped somewhere, just like us.’
    

Henry cleared his throat.  ‘I’m sorry, what’s your name?’
    

‘Gareth. And this is Shell. Your’s?’
    

‘Henry, and Chloe.’
    

‘I was just saying,’ Gareth went on, ‘that there’ll be millions of people cut off from one another.  At work, or in their homes.’
    

‘Most people will be in work,’ said Henry, checking his watch.
    

‘What’ll the government do?’ said Shell.
    

Gareth shrugged.  ‘What can they do? The electricity is…’ He tried a light-switch.  ‘Yeah, out.’
    

‘Our mobiles!’ said Henry, scrabbling in his jeans pocket for his phone.
    

‘Already tried them,’ said Chloe, holding up her own.
    

Henry checked his screen.  No service.
    

Gareth asked Shell, ‘Was there anyone in next door?’
    

‘The laundrette?  I don‘t know.  There’s no way through, anyway.’
    

Gareth went to the far wall.  A shelf had torn itself from the floor and was leaning against it.  He heaved it out of the way and pressed his ear to the wall.
    

‘I can‘t hear anything.’
    

‘Of all the places to be stuck, though, this’s probably the best,’ said Henry.
    

‘The food,’ said Chloe, nodding.  ‘A lot of people will starve to death.  If they’re cut off.’
    

Henry cast around the shop, at the piles of produce lying scattered on the ceiling tiles.  ‘This stuff will last ages.’
    

‘We can’t open anything,’ said Shell.  ‘The manager--’
    

‘Has probably left the hemisphere,’ said Chloe.
    

‘Right… right okay.’
    

Suddenly everything began to rattle and shake.  The air around them rumbled--grinding, wrenching, grating.  They ran to the door and looked out.
   

The block of flats across the street was torn up from its foundations, showers of brick and mortar descending to the clouds like dusty rain.  Great slabs of concrete crumbled, lengths of iron twisted as the entire building broke free and fell.  Henry could see people in the windows.
Were they screaming?  He looked away.
    

Gareth had sat down and was reading a newspaper.
    

Henry felt his heart race.  ‘What are you doing?’
    

Gareth glanced up.  ‘Killing time.  Nothing we can do now ‘cept wait.’
    

‘Wait for who, exactly?’
    

The big man smirked.  ‘Gordon Brown riding Pegasus.’
    

Henry stared at him a second longer.  Then he sat and took the nearest paper, flicking noisily through.
    

‘Hmm, how interesting!’ he said, scrutinising every page.  ‘Look here: house prices at all time low, film-star suicide, Roman treasures unearthed--’
    

Chloe bit her lip.  ‘Henry…’
    

‘Wait, there’s more: dangerous colourings in Chinese sweets, bottomless crater found in desert, blinking red lights in sky.’  He leapt up and flung the newspaper to the floor.  He grabbed a shelf and tried to pull it down.  When it would not budge, he kicked a mound of crisp packets, sending them everywhere.
    

‘Blah blah, who gives a flying fuck!’ he yelled.  ‘The world’s been turned upside down!’
    

‘The earth’s round, you know?’
    

‘What?’
    

He glared at Chloe, but she stood her ground and nodded, speaking carefully, as if addressing a slow child.  ‘The theory that it’s flat got disproved years ago.  Hadn’t you heard?’
    

‘So bloody what?’  Henry glowered at her, but his anger seeped from him.  He felt small, like a balloon blown up too big and popped.
    

‘So we can’t be upside down.’
    

Henry took a deep breath.  He stuffed his trembling hands in his pockets.  He paced up and down an isle.
    

Gareth murmured, ‘Upside down…’
    

‘Ridiculous,’ said Chloe, forcing a laugh.  ‘How can you turn a sphere upside down?’
    

‘No, I know that.  I mean, if the planet’s gravity was counteracted by something in space, pulling things up and out from the surface?’
    

‘Then we’d be torn apart by the two forces,’ said Henry.  ‘Or stretched like a pirate on the rack.’  They looked at him but he did not look at them.
    

‘All right,’ said Gareth.  ‘What if gravity was switched off then--replaced by a pull from space?’
    

‘You can’t just turn it off,’ said Chloe.
    

A scream sounded from the other side of the shop.  Henry half jumped out of his skin.  Chloe and Gareth ran to where Shell was standing, a hand over her mouth, the other pointing at the floor.
    

Henry looked over Chloe’s shoulder at the body lying on its back.  Gareth knelt and moved the rubble of bread loaves--covering an old woman, her neck bent.
    

Shell was quivering, mumbling, ‘I saw her come in.  I forgot.’
    

Chloe led her away.
    

Henry stammered, ‘We… should…’
    

‘Cover her, yeah,’ said Gareth, removing his coat.  ‘This’ll have to do for now.’

*

It was dark out.  Gareth turned to Henry and said, ‘What time you make it, son?’
    

Henry pulled back his sleeve.  ‘Almost half ten.’
    

They were sat in a rough circle near the glass doors.
    

Chloe had, in the last quarter of an hour, picked up and cast aside a dozen gossip magazines.  Gareth, frowning deeply, was tackling a sudoku puzzle, while Shell had been plucking scratch-cards from a reel and scraping them with a key.  Henry had long since exhausted any interest he might have had in the games on his mobile phone.
    

With a sigh, Shell glanced up and asked no one in particular, ‘How long d’you think we’ll have to wait?’
    

Gareth groaned and put the sudoku down, leaned back, rubbing his eyes.  ‘Who knows? Days. Weeks.’
    

‘Months, even,’ said Henry.
    

Chloe reached for another magazine.  ‘I wonder what happened to all the stuff already in the air?  Like the planes and helicopters?  And the birds.’
    

Henry, gazing out of the window, mumbled, ‘Can’t see any birds.’
    

‘I don’t want to sound defeatist,’ said Gareth, taking up his sudoku again.  ‘But I can’t see how we can be rescued.’  Shell seemed about to argue so he pressed on.  ‘Think of it this way: all the aeroplanes and everything in the air--assuming their systems weren’t fried when the gravity changed--can’t do anything but fly around until their fuel runs out. And the ones on the ground will obviously be gone.’
    

‘Not all of them,’ said Chloe.  ‘What about the ones sitting in hangars?’
    

‘Well there’s those, but the people in the hangars won’t have food or water.’
    

‘So in short,’ said Henry, ‘we’re buggered?’
    

Gareth scowled, but then his face went slack and he sighed.  ‘That’s how it looks, son.’
    

‘We should wait and see, eh?’ said Shell.  ‘You never know.’
    

‘I’m going to try and get some sleep,’ said Henry, walking away from them.
    

He heard Shell add, ‘Yep. Someone will be along sooner or later.’
    

Not likely.  Henry lay down on his side, covering himself as best he could with his jacket.
    

But sleep would not come.
    

Hours later he sat up and brushed aside his fringe.  Gareth was stretched out on his back, hands cradling his head.  Shell was curled up next to the broken till.
    

With moonlight filtering in through the glass, the whole scene came to his eyes in black and white; silver and blue discernable in the darkest and brightest places.
    

Over on his left, he saw Chloe was still awake.  She had no coat--being dressed in jeans and a baggy jumper--and was sitting up, hugging her knees.
    

Henry thought she might be attractive, with some proper clothes and a bit of make-up.  She was probably a student at the university.  Was she cold?
    

He stood and went to her, whispering, ‘Here,’ and holding out his jacket.
    

She smiled thanks and wrapped it around herself.  She held one side open and patted the floor beside her.  Henry shrugged and nodded, then shuffled in and pulled the offered half of the coat over his shoulder.
    

He felt his face go hot, aware of how close they were sitting, aware of her smell.  Not perfume.  More like fabric softener.  Neither of them spoke, instead choosing to stare out of the doors.  Henry could see the sky, and wondered what had happened to all the people who were gone.
    

He pictured a crowd of them floating through space, bathed in astral light and warmed by the sun, all laughing, joking, swimming amongst the stars, free from the hassles and stress of life on earth.
    

It was a stupid thought, but it made him smile.
    

‘What?’ Chloe whispered without turning her head.
    

‘Nothing.  Just dreaming.’
    

‘Were you asleep?’
    

‘No.’
    

‘There’s no way I can sleep tonight,’ she said.  ‘I keep thinking about that thing in the news.’
    

‘The red lights in the sky?’
    

‘No, that crater-hole-whatever in the desert.  I was reading it before.  The article says something came from the sky, and punched so far into the ground that they’re having trouble working out just how deep it goes.’
    

‘The hole?’
    

‘Yeah.  The article calls it bottomless.  I was thinking; what if something hit the planet’s core and messed up gravity?’
    

‘Nah,’ said Henry.  ‘There’s no way a meteor could go that deep.’
    

‘What if it wasn’t a meteor?’
    

‘There’s nothing much else I can think of that falls from space.  And if I remember right, they found that hole a few days ago.  Surely something would’ve happened to the gravity then, rather than now?’
    

Chloe yawned.  ‘I suppose.’
    

‘If you ask me, I’d say God’s finally seen us for what we’re worth.  He’s taken earth by the ankles, to shake for every last bit of change.’
    

It was growing light now.  The patch of sky visible through the doors was on fire.
    

‘Dawn already?’ said Henry, checking his watch.
    

It was 3:30am.
    

Chloe rose and walked forward as if in trance, placing her hands on the glass and staring out.
    

‘That’s not the sun,’ she whispered.
    

‘What is it then?’
    

‘Someone’s there.  And everything’s red.’

Bio: Richard Bell lives (for now) and writes in Cheshire, UK. His stories have appeared in Neonbeam, Hackwriters, Skive, Fickle Muses, Midwest Literary Magazine, The Absent Willow Review and Anastomoo Handwritten. Three more are forthcoming; in Foundling Review, Word Riot and Black Lantern.