MINDSLIP

3 Falling

Meanwhile at 8:15am, Allan is on his way to meet a client near Bristol

Allan panicked, scrabbled around, trying to grasp something, anything, anything to stop himself falling. What had happened? He must have blacked out and driven off the motorway flyover.

He grabbed a handle above his head. He closed his eyes. He was still falling. Why had there been no impact? How could he be falling? He'd been driving his car a few seconds earlier. Whatever he was gripping was falling with him. Was it the grab handle above the door? Seemed too large. He opened his eyes. A wave of nausea struck him, and he resisted the need to retch. Closed his eyes. Where was he? Squinting, he saw the handle. It was white plastic. Everything around him was white or anodised aluminium. He was still falling. The car must be falling with him. No flyover was this high. Had the car fallen into a sinkhole? He'd heard of sinkholes being deep, but this was interminable. Surely it had been tens of seconds now? Bloody hell, when he hit bottom he'd be killed. He gripped the handle even more fiercely and opened his eyes again.

What he saw was all wrong. This wasn't his car by any stretch of the imagination. It was more like the interior of a van. Electronics surrounded him inside some sort of sterile room, or like the internal layout of one of those police surveillance vans in American movies, but even more chaotic. Why was he falling? Everything was white, but with cupboards and drawers and handles and wires and boxes fitted to the walls and cylinders and gauges and electronics and lights above, below, all around him. The sickness rose anew, and he screwed up his eyes. Someone was screaming somewhere. Why was someone screaming? Who was screaming? He'd been alone in his car.

The nausea settled, and he squinted through his eyelids, trying to focus on the handle, on which he still held a white-knuckle grip. Another scream and call of something which sounded like "tasketty kiddyseye, tasketty."

Ignore it! Concentrate on the handle.

Why was he still falling? Had the world ended? Was he in limbo between life and death?

'Tasukete, tasukete kudasai, tasukete!' a woman's voice called.

He tried to look but was struck by another wave of nausea and swallowed hard. He concentrated on his hand and the grab bar. He gripped it with his other hand, too, and saw someone else's watch on his wrist! Why was he wearing this watch? A big watch with dials on its face. A chronograph. He'd never owned a chronograph!

'Tasukete,' a fainter whimper this time.

Wait a minute. There was a gold signet ring on the third finger of his left hand. Blimey, they weren't his fingers. They were hairier than his and softer. Nothing like his powerful hands. More nausea and he shut his eyes, concentrating on preventing his stomach ejecting his breakfast. What on earth was happening to him?

'Tasukete, oh tasukete, tasukete, kudasai, kudasai,' the voice called.

He squinted again. The room was vaguely familiar. Where'd he seen it before? He recognised it, but from where? Why was he still falling? There was no way he'd escape this fall alive. It must be a huge hole in the ground, going on and on, impossibly deep. It must mean he was dead. This was nowhere in the real world.

'Ooh, tasukete!'

It was an elongated room, narrowing to the right and becoming a circular tunnel. A short way into the tunnel there were junctions. Two legs were sticking out, sort of floating in mid-air and kicking. He slammed his eyes shut to prevent the nausea.

When he squinted at the room again, he realised what it was. He was in the space shuttle or the space station thingy! He didn't know the name of it, but he was apparently in it. He was in free fall.

He was in space!

He settled his reflexes, allowed his impulse to spew to fade. It wasthe space station. He'd seen it in so many news bulletins. All that stuff about astronaut Tim Peake. A white tube, like a tube of toothpaste, floated past his head as if in confirmation. He tapped it and sent it spinning away. A laptop computer mounted on a strut stuck out of the wall beside him.

The legs vanished from the junction.

Above him was another handhold. He pulled it, but far too forcefully and shot forward. He twisted his body and his shoulder hit the wall painfully. Ooh, that hurt. He might be weightless, but he could still hurt himself by banging into things and now he'd caught his shin on a piece of equipment sticking out beneath him.

'Fuck it!'

He finally succeeded in stilling his motions, wrenching his wrist in the process.

'Hello. Who's there?' he called.

'Oh, tasukete, kudasai, tasukete, tasukete,' the tiny voice repeated.

A head and shoulders came into view. A woman with a blonde ponytail streaming out behind her. She repeated the words and promptly emptied her stomach into the air.

Out of control from seeing her vomit, the contents of his own belly joined hers and they were floating in hellish whirlpools of sick imitating the spiralling of galaxies. He retched twice more, but with little result.

He retreated to where he'd been previously, away from the spinning globs of partly digested food which were gradually drifting towards the opposite wall. Oh, the smell of vomit.

'Totemozannon,' the girl said, 'totemozannon.'

'I'm English. Do you speak English?' he asked slowly and deliberately.

'Some. Little.'

'Come over here slowly. Try not to disturb the mess. Are you okay? Will you be sick again?'

'Sick. No. Space. In space.'

'Yes. How? You astronaut?'

'No. Not astronaut. Teacher.'

'You give lessons in space?'

'No. No. Tokyo. School in Tokyo. In classroom. Now in space. You astronaut?'

'No. Salesman. Your name Taskett?'

'No, tasukete mean help. Call help.'

'Don't know how. My name Allan.'

'Me Kenta. Not girl. Man. Why girl?'

'You're not a girl?' Allan asked, assuming he'd misunderstood.

'No. I man. Man, Japanese schoolteacher. Not girl. Why I girl? Why I here?'

'No idea, mate.'

Allan pulled himself over to the end of the room away from the vomit. The vision from the porthole was mind-blowing. The Earth stretched out beneath him in all its glory.

He spewed again!

©2019 Tony Harmsworth