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michellelarina · 3 years

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Supermarket Tribal

In a land of pissed-off shoppers, is peace even possible?

9.05am

My regular supermarket has changed things around again.

I hate that.

It seems a somewhat tone deaf thing to do in the middle of a pandemic, and as I hurry along what used to be the condiment section, clutching my basket, I see my own emotions echoed in the eyes of the masked shoppers around me; confused, angry, frustrated.

We don’t have time for this.

Cowboys and Kisses is playing as I find washing powder where the activated almonds used to be. I hear myself sigh in that irritated, overloud way I’ve always contributed to crotchety old ladies. Further up the aisle, where the fabric softeners are, an elderly gentleman in a biscuit-brown cardigan pulls out a bottle of Sunny Glow Softener, and his face creases around his mask.

‘This is shit,’ he says.

The words are soft; inner frustration spilling out of his lips. But then he says it louder, almost shouting, and as he does he throws the bottle down the aisle.

‘This is shit!’

I find myself watching, fascinated, as the bottle skids across the blindingly white floor. From somewhere in the next aisle I hear a wail.

‘Where the fudge are the biscuits!’

There’s a few giggles. I think it’s because of the word fudge. My feet quicken as I set off once again. I just want to pay for my groceries and leave.

The next aisle is where I normally get tomato paste. Instead I find greeting cards, and feel my mind slipping.

9.15am

I can’t find anything! I’m only halfway though my shopping list. I want to leave but somewhere between frozen foods and garden supplies I feel myself pulled into a circle of spectators who are watching a tiny old lady berate a store manager. Her finger is pointing at him severely.

‘I think its very bad timing, young man, to do this while we’re all trying to get our shopping done as quickly as we can these days . . .’

Nod. Murmurs of agreement. I hear my voice join the others. The manager is sweating slightly under the bright lights.

‘I’m sorry you feel that way, and I’m happy to help you find the paper serviettes . . .’

‘That’s not the point!’ says a woman who’s joggling a plump baby on her hip. ‘I’m trying to do my weekly shop with a kid, and you’ve swapped everything around!’

‘All I want to do is make a slow cooker casserole, but I can’t find anything!’ says another woman, and promptly bursts into tears. ‘I just want to go home!’

‘If you all take a minute to look at the signs . . .’

‘The signs are useless!’ says a man, stepping forward. He looks like a farmer in his town clothes, perhaps sent in by the wife to pick up some groceries while he’s paying bills. Our city is a regional one, surrounded by wheat belts and sheep. The farmer is angry, calloused hands bunched into fists. ‘You’ve made dog’s breakfast of this. I’ve been in here for half a bloody hour!’

More nods. More voices joining in. And then someone says, ‘You can’t keep doing this! We already spend our money here. Why do you always need more of it?’

I never knew who said it. That quiet voice. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

‘If you just give me a moment, I’ll find some floor staff to assist you . . .’

But then someone else says it. ‘Why do always you need more?’

I find myself repeating it, along with half the people around me.

The manager takes a step back as it becomes a soft chant.

As one, we take a step forward.

9.23am

The manager puts up a good fight but eventually goes down, arms flailing, mouth open in shock as the old lady whacks him with her walking stick, saying, ‘Its just not good enough, young man!’

He’s curled up in a ball now, begging for his life. Security is coming. I put down my basket and pick up the heaviest thing in it; a tin of Corinthian chocolate wafers. They weren’t on my list, but I was looking for tea towels, and they were there, and I was so tired . . .

As I pulled them from a shelf a worn-out looking mother of twin boys who seemed to be trying to kill each other in her shopping cart whispered, ‘Don’t you see? That’s how they get you.’

The middle-aged man beside me has a can of peas and carrots in each hand. The security guards, two men in vests, hesitate.

Someone hurls a jar of Olay Regenerist Night Cream at the tallest one, and it catches him above the eye. He collapses, boneless, and we’re running now, hurling packaged meat and tinned puddings and scented candles, animal-like screams coming from our mouths as the second guard turns and runs.

9.28am

The surviving security guard has locked the doors and is calling the police. He’s saying it’s not okay to beat up store managers and kill security guards with night cream. But as he makes his speech, his thumbs hooked into his belt, the woman with the still-fighting twins lifts them out of her shopping cart and shoves them at him.

‘Attack!’ she screams, and the twins hurls themselves at the guard’s ankles. Teeth snap. The security guard is dancing around, eyes bulging as he screams.

‘Get them off me! For the love of god, get them off me!’

We don’t.

The twins are wrapped around his legs. He stumbles and falls to the floor. One boy immediately latches onto his ear with tiny teeth. Blood flows and we watch with shiny, embittered eyes. Someone has wrapped a blue and white tea towel around a broom handle. They light it with a Bic lighter and lift it high as police cars scream into the carpark, sirens wailing above the security guard’s cries.

9.48am

The manager is being spit-roasted in the meat section.

Many have surround him in a circle, swaying and chanting, but I find the smell overpowering, so when someone suggests serving him with mint sauce I volunteer to go find some.

The condiment section has been taken over by a handful of shoppers that stop me from entering. But their leader, a sweaty man with chilli sauce smeared across his cheeks, is willing to trade. They want coleslaw, he says. And three hot roast chickens.

Three is a ridiculous number. I point out how many people are locked in here, and he relents.

‘One, then,’ he grunts. ‘But we want cola. And barbecue shapes.’

I make my way back as Cruel Summer begins to play overhead.

The meat section was taken over by those of us who first turned on the staff. The two women behind the counter quickly surrendered and were seemingly eager to become part of our tribe, but unbeknown to me, while I was searching the land for mint sauce, they rebelled and split up into their own sub-tribe. They are now in control of all the roast chickens.

I approach. They’re defensive, hostile. Susan, the older one, tells me they’ll trade for weapons.

‘There’s only two of us,’ she says, as the other woman, Barb, nods in agreement. ‘We need to be able to defend ourselves.’

I hear someone shout, ‘Where’s the bloody mint sauce?’ I know my position in the meat section is tenuous, so I agree.

10.02am

Kitchen utensils have been claimed by an all-male warrior clan.

They’ve scarred themselves with a Wiltshire Staysharp. A slow burning fire fuelled by cardboard packaging heats the blade red hot, and each man draws it across their chest three times.

Those who refuse the ritual are banished to the barren land of plasticware, further up the aisle. They’re mostly younger and weaker males, their future bleak.

Over the fire looms a vaguely human-shaped effigy made from barbecue tongs lashed together with plastic ties. Jamie Oliver’s face peers out from the cover of a recipe book that’s placed on the head of this figure. I watch, fascinated, as their newest member draws the blade across his skin while the others chant, ‘Blood is life! Life is blood!’

I roll my eyes. Jamie Oliver’s smile seems to grow wider.

The farmer is their leader. He looks down at me as I ask for a knife or two.

‘No woman shall wield the weapons of steel!’ he bellows, and from behind him his clan chant, ‘No woman! No woman!’

I try to explain how offensive that is. He doesn’t listen. His arms are crossed over his bare chest, blood dripping. But as he turns away, one of the younger men takes pity on me. He slips me a small paring knife and a recipe book.

‘May our great god Jamieoliver bestow his benevolence upon you, woman,’ he says. It’s the most kindness I’ll get from these cavemen, so I nod my thanks and leave.

10.12am

The rotisserie warriors aren’t happy with me.

One paring knife to defend themselves is pretty poor, given their numbers. Their hostility towards me grows, and I have no choice. I offer to join them. I never belonged in the meat section anyway.

They anoint my forehead with hot chicken juice. It burns, but I try not to flinch. I promise to uphold our territory, with my life if necessary. I’m handed a hot chicken, nestled inside its little plastic carry-bag, and begin my journey.

10.17am

I trade the recipe book for a box of barbeque shapes.

I don’t know why the people of savoury biscuits would want a recipe book. Maybe its because they’re distracted; they’re at war with the other half of the aisle, the tribe that rule over assorted creams and scotch fingers and caramel crowns. I can hear the warring factions taunt each other loudly as I continue my journey.

The smoke mart has been taken over by teenagers. They’re lanky and feral, demanding chips and cola from those who wish to trade. They’re being watched over by the mothers who have created a sanctuary in the baby aisle. Their children play with each other while the women sit in a circle, breastfeeding and talking earnestly about the politics of the surrounding lands and the possibility of creating a yoga retreat.

In party supplies there’s a celebration that is said to never end. The people of this land pop streamers at each other while dancing to the non-stop music. They don’t seem to eat or drink, and whenever a Kylie song comes on they go slightly bananas. They seem oblivious to everything else as balloons fill the air, but I’m told that if you wander too close they will try and pull you in.

I skirt around the snacks aisle, even though it makes my journey longer. The people there are twitchy and half-crazed. I see a man spread-eagled on the floor, making a liquorice angel. His lips are ringed in chocolate, his eyes glazed, lost in Sugarland.

In the soft drink section everyone is begging for Cola. Someone from the distant electrical tribe hands over a kettle and a toaster for a single 1.25ml bottle. She clutches it to her chest as it’s handed over, and when I get too close to her, she growls.

The leader is short but ferocious. Muscles like MMA fighter. Spiky hair.

‘What do you want?’ she asks.

‘Cola.’

‘One chicken.’

‘What?’

‘I know who you are, rotisserie woman.’

‘I can offer you a quarter pack . . .’

‘No trade.’

‘But a whole one is ridiculous . . .’

‘No trade!’ she screams, and suddenly her crew are behind her. They’ve made armour out of drink cartons, their cardboard-clad shapes hostile.

What could I do? I gave her my chicken.

10.25am

The people of condiments are restless. The leader snatches my offerings and glares at me.

‘Where is the fowl you promised?’

‘I had to trade it, for that,’ I said, nodding at the plastic bottle in his hands. ‘My journey has been long. I could use a meal and rest before I start back . . .’

‘There’s no food in these lands,’ he said, and I suddenly notice that his people are packing jars and squeeze bottles into shopping bags.

‘We are joining the peoples of the great meat section,’ he says, watching me. ‘They’ve agreed we will be a stronger tribe together. Here . . .’ He shoves a jar of mint sauce at me. ‘I would have gone with applesauce,’ he adds, shrugging. ‘But whatever.’

I leave them to pack and prepare for their long journey.

As I pass the biscuit aisle a man in a hoodie whispers a promise of chocolate and sweetness. I keep my gaze steady, and my feet don’t slow. On my travels I have seen what people will do for a tim tam, and I will not go down that road.

When I finally reach the great plains of the meat section I’m exhausted. The mint sauce is grabbed out of my hands.

The manager is being carved and served up on paper serviettes.

10.28am

My homeland has been depleted. Many chickens have been traded for water and coleslaw and lunch rolls. But that’s not all that’s troubling my clanswomen.

There is talk of war.

10.30am

The coming battle is over the bathrooms.

They’re being guarded by a tribe of warriors in store uniforms. They call themselves Staff.

They have nothing but pure hate for us. They talk of how our people once murdered their leader in cold blood, back in ancient times. They refuse all talks of peace and trade.

They are strong in numbers, so invasion will only be possible if enough tribes join together.

The warrior clan are on board, of course, as is the meat section and the condiment crew. The party people don’t even hear the request; they’re too busy throwing glitter into the air and singing along to Black Velvet, and the mothers are putting babies down for naps and firmly shushing anyone that approaches.

We of the rotisserie chickens have no choice other than to join. We are too few in numbers to be truly independent, though we’ve been joined by a fourth. Janet is from the meat section. She became disenfranchised when she suggested they start wrapping the cold cuts and rationing them. Instead, they decided to trade almost a third of their supplies for cheese and olives, and are gorging on antipasto.

‘But what about tomorrow?’ she says. ‘What about the future?’

So we shall fight.

10.40am

The people of Staff were ready for us.

They’re armed with toilet brushes and bleach. The clash is ferocious, chaotic, and unbelievably loud. I’m knocked to the white floor, the smell of bleach heavy in the air. Over the screams I can hear Cowboys and Kisses, yet again. Am I going mad? I get to my feet and run forward, armed only with sharpened chicken bones.

Suddenly a roll of toilet paper is thrown into the air. We stop as one and stare as it unravels in slow motion — a streaming white banner that floats gently to the floor.

Surrender.

The war is over.

We decide not to take prisoners, because we all really need the loo. We line up, bloodied and bruised. Some are weeping.

Suddenly a procession of people appear from health and haircare. They glide towards us, silent, their faces serene, their hair long and glossy. In their hands are band aids and bandages, aspirin and medicated creams. They start to bandage our wounds, tend to our sprains.

We’re suspicious. What do you want? We ask. Who side are you on?

‘We take no sides,’ they say, their words little more than sighs. ‘We wish only to heal.’

It’s been a long, hard morning. Will we ever make sense out of this chaos?

11.05am

We’ve had our first death.

It’s from the small, strange tribe of people that protect all the peanuts. Driven mad by thirst, they went to war with the water people. But there were too few of them , and after they were driven back one of them promptly died of salt poisoning.

We wrapped his body in a blue cotton throw, and the cold, sombre people of frozen foods allowed us to place his body gently in a freezer.

Strangely, it has bought a kind of peace to our lands. We know now that we need to get along, to live in tolerance of one another, if we are to survive. We may be many lands, but we are just one supermarket, after all.

Trade has become easier and more reasonable. Children are allowed to play outside their borders, though adults must seek a clan leader’s permission to enter any land they’re not from. The mothers have lectured the teenagers about sharing and water is distributed fairly, though I can’t say the same for soft drink. Those people are still jerks.

Our one law is that anyone caught stealing will have a hand ceremoniously removed by the warrior clan leader. This was argued against by the elfin creatures of heath and haircare, but in the end even they saw that trust must be built.

As for my small tribe . . . our stocks are low and we know the end is coming. Janet has started dating someone in ice cream. She says the marriage will secure her future. Perhaps she is right, but I have a strong streak of independence and won’t marry, even for choc mint. Perhaps I will join health and haircare — they’ve set up a small salon and are offering a free cut and shampoo to anyone that wants to become one of them.

12.09pm

Janet has done a runner, taking our last precious chicken with her, as dowry.

We are more sad and betrayed than angry, though if I ever catch her alone I’ll use the paring knife without remorse.

Reluctantly we part ways, and I find myself cast adrift in this new world. I set off, looking for a home.

12.14pm

The elder of health and haircare rejects me.

‘You are from those that eat the flesh of animal,’ they sigh. I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. Their hair is so long it brushes the floor. Their skin in translucent, glowing.

‘But I’m just trying to survive.’

‘We live on vitamins, and the light from above that shines on us perpetually. We spend our days trading peacefully with the people from beauty and cosmetics. We help anyone who is in need of pampering, expecting no reward.’ A delicate eyebrow arches. ‘You would not fit in, you — who battles over bathrooms and wields the knife.’

‘Just give me a chance, please! I don’t want to be on my own out there.’

But its no use. The elder offers me a small packet. ‘Take this peppermint conditioner sample. If you can tame the split ends of your heart as well as those in your hair, you may return.’

‘But . . .’

‘Goodbye, traveller,’ the being sighs, and drifts back to the others.

12.26pm

I’ve been caught up in a small skirmish between pasta and bakery.

I can’t tell if its tomato sauce or blood that’s running across the floor. I don’t even know how the battle started, except that it had something to do with breadsticks. I try to run, but someone hits me with a solid cob loaf. I see the floor coming, but I don’t remember hitting it.

4.35pm

When I come to, the battle is over.

I’m in a deserted no-man’s land, somewhere between bakery and pet food. The floor is smeared with red, the air heavy with the scent of parmesan. Overhead a light flickers, making me disorientated. When I sit up and check my watch I’m horrified by how long I’ve been unconscious.

The land is silent, and eerily still.

Suddenly a tiny service dog bolts out of the pet food aisle, teeth bared and tags jingling. Behind it a group of people are hollering at me and making shooing gestures. Something is wrong with them, but I can’t place it as I stagger to my feet.

The dog is still charging. The people jump up and down, urging the creature on. With horror I register the sounds they’re making; hoots and grunts and strange clicks. There are no words. Their clothes are rags. Their feet are bare.

I’m so dazed the creature is almost upon me before I run.

My surroundings are frighteningly unfamiliar. Aisles twist and curve strangely. Shelves are empty. Some have toppled to the floor. Both hair and healthcare and beauty and cosmetics are completely abandoned, and as I run along a path littered with empty shampoo bottles and broken hairbrushes, I hear a voice whisper from the bright lights above me.

‘We have fled the flesh-bodies, traveller. This land has fallen to ruin.’

I stumble over abandoned Country Style magazines. I catch glimpses of the others; faces that peer from behind cereal box camouflage, figures that sink behind the carcasses of checkouts. Something calls out from wilderness, a long, drawn-out sound that is both mournful and savage.

I keep running long after the snarls behind me have faded, looking for refuge.

5pm

A special-ops team crashes through the doors, hurling teargas cannisters and shouting.

I was asleep under a row of shopping carts, living in the outlands to avoid the violent primitives, and they don’t see me.

From the haze of gas comes startled yips and grunts. In the distance I glimpse wild-looking figures, scattering. I wander out of doors that have been forced open, only to be body-slammed by four police officers in full riot gear.

The pavement rises up to meet my face. I breathe in concrete and cigarette butts and fresh air. The smell of outside. Memories are rushing back, of a younger me, parking my car and pulling shopping bags out of the boot. I’m hauled to my feet and with wonder I see the sky. I’d forgotten its blue. I’d forgotten the sweet, soft brightness of natural light.

I begin sobbing with relief. Someone is saying, ‘What’s your name? Do you know?’

I don’t. I just know I’ve survived. I’ve gotten out of the supermarket.

*Certain events in this retelling may be slightly exaggerated.

If you liked reading this, and I hope you did, please consider buying me a coffee.

#short story #humour #dark humour #fiction #writing humour #writing community #writers on tumblr #was it wrong to spit-roast the store manager?

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michellelarina · 3 years

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CUBE

After the end of the world she wakes in a strange place.

This is a novelette of approx.14k words.

Chapter One

I was so sure I died.

But I wake, my body curled into itself, strands of hair falling over my face. My cheek’s resting on my arm and my arm has an ache in it from lying on a hard surface. These are the things I notice before remembering I’d died.

Then the rest of my consciousness barrels into me, and I come fully awake with a jerk.

Blinking. My breath making my hair move. I’m lying on a floor, which isn’t right. The floor is a light grey. I must be in a hospital.

Of course. There had been fire, burning embers. A wind that blasted my skin as I searched for my family . . .

But if I’m in a hospital, that means I’ve been saved. Relief and confusion are trying to work in tandem as I lift my head. The walls around me are the same grey as the floor. The corners are rounded and there are recesses along one wall. It doesn’t look like a hospital. It doesn’t look like any room I’ve seen before.

The only sound I can hear is a white-noise hum in the background.

I sit up, slowly and carefully, expecting to feel pain. To smell my own burning skin.

I’m aware I’m trying very hard not to look at my body.

But it glides upright, my muscles so smooth it’s like they’ve been rubbed in olive oil. Then my hair falls over my shoulder in a long veil and for a moment I stop breathing.

Okay, don’t think about that right now.

I stand on shaking legs, and everything begins to spin. I shut my eyes, sweat beading my forehead. I breathe, in and out. Press my hand to my breastbone.

Maybe I should be overcome with gratitude for my not-dead status, but I’m still playing catch-up, and when I open my eyes again I’m looking for a door, a sign, a person. I need to know what’s happening. I need someone to tell me what to do.

I can’t see any doors. There are no doors. I turn, fear already rising in me when I see it.

I won’t talk about that right now. I can’t. I’ll tell you about the end of the world instead.

It was the second day of spring when we learned that an asteroid named 2023QF5 had a significant chance of hitting Earth within the year.

It’s a strange word, significant. Slot it into place and suddenly everything becomes so much more . . . significant.

Apparently no-one had noticed the asteroid until late August, despite the fact it was thought to be between six and ten kilometres wide and there’s a bunch of people and organisations whose sole job is to monitor such things. I hope someone got sacked.

I’m not sure of the exact time the news broke around the world, but I found out in the middle of the day, at work.

I was doing a stint in a small accounting firm owned by a husband-and-wife team. Pam and David. Both tall and thin and somewhat morose. I was filling in for their assistant, Hannah. Hannah was on maternity leave. She’d left a family photo and a vase of flowers on her desk. She was warm and friendly with the clients and sometimes brought in homemade banana bread and made coffee for everyone on a regular basis and was always smiling apparently.

‘So different from you, Rachel!’ Pam would laugh.

Sitting at my desk that day, listening to my bosses whispering about something in the little tearoom, I looked to Hannah for guidance. She was laughing at the camera while hubby lifted a small and grubby boy onto his shoulder. Her hand rested on her little football-sized belly. She did look like someone who would bring homemade banana bread to work.

‘We can’t just leave! And she’s here!’ I heard Pam say.

I looked at Hannah again, brows raised, wondering if they were having a personal crisis. They had young kids. People with young kids were always on the edge of some emergency.

Hannah suggested I offer to close the office, and perhaps smile more.

I cleared my throat.

‘If something’s come up, I can close the office,’ I called out.

There was a moment of heavy silence in which I imagined glances being exchanged, silent agreements made.

Pam stepped out of the tearoom, and I remembered later how she briefly searched my face. She was so pale my dislike of her wavered. I wanted to ask what had happened. I thought one of their kids had been hurt or something.

I’m not sure how much they knew at that point, but you’d think they would have told me. (They would have told Hannah.) But no, that bitch grabbed her coat and bag and practically flung the keys onto my desk, instructing me to cancel the day’s appointments while David strode out without a backwards glance.

‘Sorry to do this to you, Rach,’ said Pam, as she followed. The door banged shut behind her, and they were gone.

Chapter Two

So, back to the thing. The thing I don’t want to talk about. I don’t even want to look at it, but I can’t seem to stop.

It’s a window. Or rather, it’s what’s on the other side of the window. Which is nothing.

A black nothing.

The window takes up most of the wall. I think the glass must be very thick - it gives that impression - but I can see though it clearly. For one relatively stress-free moment I thought it was the night sky. Because that’s a normal thing to do, isn’t it? To wake up after dying, in an empty room with no doors, and a large picture window looking out into the night.

But the sky is never black like this. Not the cold, final black of space - a black that contains absolutely no other colour. Its horrifying.

There’s a scattering of stars that shine in hard points of light, but my sluggish brain is skipping over those and homing in on the upper right corner, where a perfect blue and white marble hovers in all that darkness.

It takes my mind awhile to put the puzzle together, and when it does I sink to the floor, still staring at a planet I’m never supposed to see like this.

I can’t look anymore. I can’t breathe. I curl up tight, my arms over my head as I start to shake. I can hear someone crying, making sounds like a wounded animal, but there’s no-one here besides me.

I discovered the announcement of our impending doom the same way most people did that day. Bloody Twitter.

I thought it was a joke. I scrolled and scrolled, looking for the hook, the catch. #2023QF5, #EndOfTheWorld and #Exinction were trending. I started to get angry, because it wasn’t funny, scaring people like that.

I had a brief reprieve when I saw #ExtinctionHoax also trending, but then I read the comments.

I went into our small meeting room and switched on the telly.

And heard the word significant.

I felt a moment of pure horror as it sunk in. Oh my god, it’s happening. It’s actually happening I’m going to die I don’t want to die what if I BURN TO DEATH what if it HURTS? I was on my knees because my legs had stopped working, feeling the scratchy carpet under my palms as I crouched there, wondering what I was supposed to do. I wanted to call someone. I had no-one to call.

My vision was speckling. Bloody Pam. Bloody David. I was going to kill them.

Chapter Three

I don’t know how long I’ve been curled up on the floor like this.

The worst of the shaking has stopped. I thought someone would come, but they didn’t, and now I’m forced to my feet.

Because I have to pee.

I walk towards the recesses that are set into the opposite wall; three shallow rectangles. One holds a bed, which is a thin mattress on a base that looks like its moulded right out of the wall. There’s a folded blanket on one end, and something about that makes me uneasy.

The second recess is narrow and only contains shelves, and the third one is a bathroom.

It looks surreal. I mean, I still rush in, sit down and pee, but even as I’m doing it the experience is so strange I feel like I’m having an out of body experience.

I’m peeing in space.

I wonder where it goes.

Mostly I’m just relieved about being able to pee.

We’re a basic species, aren’t we?

There’s a basin opposite me, and along the third wall is what I think is a shower. There’s a slight rise in the floor, a square panel in the ceiling over it.

When I finish I pace around the small space I’ve found myself in, searching desperately for a door I know isn’t there. Two of the walls are smooth and blank. I press my hands to them. The walls are warm, and have a strange smell.

‘Hello?’ my voice is so thin it’s like I’ve never spoken before, and I try again. ‘Hello? Can you hear me? Is someone there?’

When there’s no answer I thump my fist against the nearest wall. ‘You can’t keep me locked up like this! Hello!’ My fists are pounding now, my voice a scream. ‘I’m fucking in here!’

When I stop I press my ear to the wall, listening for the sounds of voices or footsteps or . . . anything. All I can hear is the constant, background hum that seems to be all around me.

But if I’m here, others must be as well. Amy and Dorothy, they’re here too they must be why is no one coming for me?

Tears of frustration and fear are pricking at my lids as I walk over to the bed. Why is there a bed? How long will I be here?

Who left that blanket, folded up so precisely?

I pick it up and wrap it around me, grateful because - and I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet - I’m naked.

When I finally picked myself up from the meeting room floor I made myself a coffee I wouldn’t drink, sat down at my desk and stared at the opposite wall for a bit.

Part of me waited to wake up.

The phone rang a few times. There didn’t seem to be any point in answering, so I didn’t. I glanced up at the clock, because I very much wanted to go home, to close my door on the world and try to process what I’d just learned. Then I realised how ridiculous I was, sitting there and dumbly waiting for the little hand to reach the five. I jumped up and grabbed my bag.

The traffic was chaotic. Some people were screaming out of their car windows at one another, some people were just screaming. Others looked bewildered because they obviously hadn’t heard the news. I could see the questions on their faces; Why are all these people yelling what’s going on why does my phone keep ringing? We were all in flux. Was it a joke? Was it real? It was as if the whole city was caught in some crazy tableau, frozen in the moment between an old world and the new one.

A large sedan ran a red light and almost careened into me as sirens wailed over the noise. I was screaming as the car swerved away at the last moment.

It was a relief, to scream.

I got back to my flat in one piece and raced up the stairs. My neighbour’s door was open, her bag lying in the doorway, one strap falling outwards. I could hear her pleading; ‘Please call me back, please, please call me back . . .’

My door opened into the living room. I dropped my bag onto the couch, ran to the bathroom and made it in time to throw up.

Chapter Four

The blanket’s thin, but warm. I tighten it around me as I study the shelves that are set into the wall.

The first three are lined with glass flasks, filled with water. I assume its water. The second three are stacked with rectangle packages that immediately remind me of Kraft cheese.

I hate Kraft cheese.

There’s nothing else. No towels, no clothes . . . no notes of explanation.

I’m thirsty, but I don’t want to drink the water in those flasks, not until someone comes in here and explains what’s going on. But looking at them, lined up so neatly, so pointedly, I start to feel very, very scared.

I’m shivering. I sit on the mattress that sinks slightly under my weight and hug my knees to my chest. I try to ignore the empty, black void that’s outside, but it’s impossible.

I couldn’t eat anything that night. I curled up in a corner of my couch and watched the news coverage. I listened to all the scientists who were being interviewed; some blinking and messy-haired, some dismissive and patronising. Most of them looked shell-shocked and spoke haltingly. Some stuttered. They didn’t want to be saying the words that were coming out of their mouths.

While they talked, I googled how to survive an asteroid strike. I researched cave networks in my area. I imagined living in the dark with my supplies and torches while the world burned. I went on Twitter to find people to talk to, to react with, and found a multitude. By midnight a group of us were swapping phone numbers. I asked if anyone wanted to share my cave with me and an argument broke out about whether being in a cave would help in any way. Then I spent hours talking to a very sweet man called Liam. We cried and told each other we loved one another. We were quite drunk.

At one point I could hear my neighbour, crying. I guess no-one called her back. I turned the volume up when she began to wail, and fell asleep around six in the morning. When I woke a few hours later it was to a humanity in the throes of panic.

Chapter Five

I’m thirsty.

But I’m going to hold out until I get some sort of explanation, or even an acknowledgment. I’d settle for that. Because someone has put me in here. Someone has built this little room. So I scream and bang my fists against the wall. I swear and beg for clothes, or a pillow.

‘Please, just tell me what’s going on!’ I shout, and then my voice becomes raspy and faint. I keep shouting anyway, until I sink down to the floor. My ears are pressed against the wall, desperate to hear anything but that constant hum.

I think I’m going to have to drink the water. I stare out the window-thing, at the Earth. I’m supposed to be down there with my family, doing our best to survive the approaching apocalypse. My last images of them are hazy. In fact, everything is hazy, as though my memory is an atrophied muscle. It’s an effort, to remember. But the more I do, the easier it becomes. It’s like trying to recall a book you read when you were a child. Perhaps you can see the illustrations in your mind’s eye, how the book felt in your hand, but the words are less clear.

If I’ve survived, they must have as well. We were together when it happened. I need to get out of here. I need to find them.

I’ve stopped shaking, and now the blanket is too warm. I stand and step out of it. My throat feels raw, my stubbornness fast being overtaken by need.

Fuck it.

When I reach the shelves my hand hovers. What if it’s some kind of trap? It’s hard not to feel paranoid, to feel anything but fear. The flasks are round and ordinary looking. Clear glass and flat lids. Bottles of water lined up like soldiers. I pick the first one.

Drink me, I think, and take a nervous sip.

It tastes like water, and nothing terrible happens.

I swallow a mouthful, then put the flask back. I take one of the blocks, turning it over in my hands. It almost looks like it’s wrapped in the same kind of material the rest of the cubicle is made from, but paper thin. It peels away from the block like banana skin. I blanche at the brown, grainy-looking square inside, but shrug to myself and bit off a tiny corner.

It tastes like . . . like . . .

Okay, imagine you have something that tastes completely and utterly like nothing, and then you add just a drop of something. I tell myself it tastes like a plain biscuit. An Arrowroot biscuit, perhaps. Its texture reminds me of the bottom layer of cheesecake. Perhaps my brain is trying to fill in the blank space where taste is supposed to be.

My hands begin to shake as I nibble at it, one tiny piece at a time. What if I’m eating space-soap? Space-deodorant? I can’t eat more than a few mouthfuls. I throw the rest across the floor, go back to my blanket and wrap myself up again. I stare at the tiny blue ball that is my planet.

Maybe I haven’t been saved after all.

Maybe I’m a prisoner.

That first week when we were told about 2023QF5 was the strangest of my life, and that’s saying something.

Everything looked odd and tilted. I constantly felt as if I was looking at something for the first time - a piece of toast, a tree, a leaf even. Cars and buildings looked strange. People’s faces weren’t quite right.

The prime minister immediately decided he needed to ‘spend more time with family and church,’ and scuttled away, clutching his fat pension. Most of his party promptly went on stress-leave. The deputy minister, to his credit, took over for three days, declaring the whole thing fake news and making vague references about the Russians before he too became spiritually motivated to leave.

Eventually a junior member started turning up at the pressers. She looked like she’d just slid out of a university, still damp and clutching a degree.

Her name was Bianca.

She told us to be mindful that the data on 2023QF5 was being updated constantly. A lot of speeches about working together and having hope. But we were too busy panic buying and yelling at each other in supermarket to listen. By day three it was so bad I got knocked to the floor by a large woman who wanted the can of corn I had my hand on. I got it back though.

A lot of countries got on with rioting, looting, and setting everything on fire without much preamble. Some people sidestepped panic and confusion altogether and just went crazy. All around the world cults I’d never heard of were committing mass suicides. A government was overthrown. The religions squabbled about whose god was being righteous and over what.

Survival shelters immediately became a huge thing. Buying them, stocking them and guarding them. The Americans proudly showed off theirs and taught others how to stockpile on YouTube, and no-one laughed at them. Well, not as many as before. And of course everyone quickly split into two groups - the #Extinction and the #ExtinctionHoax-ers. Twitter kept crashing under the weight of the arguments.

The routine of going to bed and sleeping until my alarm went off became a memory - a relic of the old world. To go to bed was to deliberately walk into the land of nightmares, of fire and choking smoke and noise and death. I learnt to drink myself to sleep on the couch, the television screen flickering against my closed lids, my obstinate resistance to alcohol erased.

That belonged to the old world as well.

Chapter Six

At some point I slept.

I have the feeling I was asleep for a long time, as if I fell into a deep, dark unconsciousness. But it’s impossible to tell because day and night are meaningless in my little room. The light is constant, despite the fact I can’t see any fixtures, or switches or bulbs. I think its day two. That feels right.

I’ve decided to try the space-shower

I step onto the slight rise in the floor, look up at the square panel in the ceiling and look for something to turn, or push or, I don’t know, light up. As I move my foot feels something give, and I look down to see a panel shift slightly as I move back.

A wall shoots up out of the floor.

I panic, slamming into it in my effort to get out of that small space and shouting ‘No!’ as my body bounces off its surface. The water hits me so suddenly I scream.

It smells. Am I being poisoned? I’m trying to find the edge of that panel, my fingers scrabbling over the surface. They can’t find a gap, a purchase. I back away, into the far wall as the water falls over me. The smell is almost antiseptic, but that’s not quite right. It makes me cough, lungs jerking, body hunched. I’m trying to calm myself, but every sense in me has become prey animal, and I fold up in a corner, my eyes screwed up in fear. I’m still curled over when the water suddenly shuts off.

I hear it trickling away somewhere, unwilling to move or even open my eyes. For a moment I can almost believe I’m back in my flat, in my own bathroom, as I hear the familiar sound of water going down a drain.

Then warm air starts blasting over my skin.

I don’t know where it’s coming from. I’m still frozen, but part of me, deep within the fear, is growing a bubble of anger. And as my body dries I push myself up and stand, my legs wobbling like a new-born lamb’s. The air is quickly drying my hair, the soles of my feet. To alleviate some of my fear I start taunting my captures.

‘Would towels really be that hard?’ I shout. ‘Like, really?’

The shouting makes me feel better. I find myself pulling my hair away from my face, fingers running though it to smooth out the tangles.

‘You can build a spaceship, or whatever this is, and a fancy shower, but you can’t make a towel? Unbelievable.’

As if in answer, the air snaps off. I wait for the wall to slid back down but it’s still there. After a few moments of waiting, and a bit of ugly swearing, I press the panel in the floor with my foot.

The wall slides back down obediently, and I step out.

As strange as it might sound, many of us clung to a strange veneer of normalcy during that first week.

You could still eat your tea in front of the television and watch the live coverage with your plate balanced on your knees. There were still ad breaks about the specials at Coles that week.

And some of us still went to work.

Like the supermarket staff that kept restocking the stripped supermarket shelves, I kept going to the office. Because I had to. Just because there was a significant chance an asteroid was going to turn me into dust didn’t mean I wanted to be homeless and hungry when it did. I wanted to be safe in my little flat. It was a shelter from the storm around me, a place I could lock up tight and keep the noise at bay. I could curl up under a blanket on my couch and drink until I fell into drunken slumber or eat chocolate until I felt sick, since there probably wasn’t any reason to avoid sugar anymore.

Pam and David never showed up at the office. No-one rang or came to their scheduled appointments. I told myself I was holding down the fort until things became clearer, that I would be rewarded, but on Friday my pay failed to go in, and when I rang both Pam and David’s number I was told they were no longer available.

I drove out to their house in a blind fury.

Pam had invited me over for a barbecue when I first went to temp for them. It was a way for her to show off her noisy offspring and give me a little speech about how they were a family business, that they hoped they would be able to call on me on a casual basis when Heather and her banana bread returned.

Wrong move, Pam. I curved around two men fighting near their dented cars in a quiet, tree-lined street, took a wrong turn and finally pulled into their driveway.

They lived in neat, suburban luxury. Paved pathways, green lawn, double garage. I glimpsed a pool in the backyard, a plastic tricycle tipped over next to the flower bed. I banged on the door even as I noticed the silence, the dry leaves that had gathered on the doormat. From across the driveway a mop of salt and pepper curls appeared above the dividing fence, followed by a pair of bright eyes.

‘They’ve gone to their beach house!’ the neighbour shouted, louder than was necessary.

It took a while to sink in. For a moment I honestly thought they’d just gone away for the weekend, because who wouldn’t?

Then it sunk in. They’d done a runner. Because, who wouldn’t?

‘Fuck!’

I screamed it. The word rang out across the street. I kicked at the door. Once, twice, three times.

‘Everyone’s gone. Everyone’s leaving. Where? I don’t know. Like rats jumping ship, right into the ocean. Plop, plop.’

I realised my new friend was slightly drunk. Then she suddenly dropped out of sight, and I heard a very small thump.

‘Are you alright?’

‘I’m fine, dear! Just fine and dandy! Come in for a drink!’

I left her to it and drove back towards the city, through roads full of chaotic traffic. I saw vehicles with belongings strapped to roof racks, kids’ faces peering out from stacks of boxes and suitcases piled into back seats, caravans and campervans and trailers. There was a mass exodus towards the centre of the country, rumours of inland sanctuaries. These nomads talked of tsunamis and violently rising sea levels, as if they just had to ride out some bad weather with bottled water and canned food.

I tried to tell myself that I was free now. I could do whatever I wanted. I could travel and see the country. I could go backpacking. I could follow the nomads. What did I have to lose?

I had a little over two hundred dollars in the bank.

Every time I stopped at a set of lights I broke down and cried, driving home through a veil of tears and snot.

Chapter Seven

I’ve drunk half a flask water and eaten half a block of food, with no side-effects. Apparently, my captures don’t want to poison me. Which is nice.

I’m cross-legged on the bed, staring out of that window at the far-away Earth. It’s in the same spot it’s been since I’ve woke up here, so at least I know we’re not moving, that I’m not being taken further from my home. That comforts me a little.

But I’m exhausted from fear. My throat is rubbed raw from the constant shouting. I put the flask and the rewrapped block of food aside, curl up and close my eyes.

You are flying towards the Earth, I tell myself. Your spirit has left this place. You are going home . . .

I’m winging my way through that cold expanse of space, towards the promise of Earth, barrelling my way through the atmosphere until I reach white, fluffy clouds. And then . . . my feet are landing on green grass. I’m surrounded by trees, and flowers, and the hum of bees. A nearby stream flows with clear water. I sit on the bank and let my feet drop into it, and hear the splash. The sky is a calm, light blue, filled with the sound of bird song, and a breeze sweeps over my skin.

I imagine this scenario over and over. I don’t get tired of it. I tell myself I will stay here until there was no more of me left to dream.

My landlords doubled the rent.

‘You can’t do that!’ I shouted. But I was shouting at an email. I rang the office. The response was the same you got from everyone then. Flat and cold. They could do whatever they hell they wanted, and they knew it.

I didn’t sign their new lease within the twenty-four hours they asked me to, so my current one was terminated. Just like that.

I didn’t pack because I had nowhere to go. I curled up on the couch, my arms wrapped around myself as I tried to hold it together.

My mum died when I was seven. The Family Court packed me off to a pair of abusive alcoholics, otherwise known as my aunt and uncle. I was out of there at sixteen, working part-time at McDonalds and living in a share house. I rented a loft bed in the front hallway. It was awesome. My share house buddies became my family and I lost touch with my school friends.

A year later some of us flew to a new city, and this time I got a full-time job at McDonalds and half a room. I was going up in the world.

It wasn’t until I turned twenty that I realised how shit my life was, how fast it was going nowhere. And my friends were less fun now, because by then they were all hopelessly drug addicted and unemployed, and I’d started to stick out a bit. I refused to give up my ‘rubbish job’ - their words - and stay up all night with them. Instead I’d scream at everyone in the early hours as they partied because ‘I have to go to work in the morning!’ Sometimes they stole from me. One of them stabbed me. It was with a fork, but still . . .

By then I’d gained enough status to occupy the tiny sleep-out at the back of the house. Only newbies slept in lofts. One night I lay awake listening to them, wondering what it was I was holding onto so tightly. I had a sense of floating in dark water, trying not to sink out of sight but having nothing to hold onto. I knew I had to get out of there, but I was scared to be on my own.

Somewhere in that sleepless night I wrote ‘If not now, when?’ in blue pen along my wrist. I told myself I was brave enough to make choices, even though I didn’t believe it because my self-esteem was in the toilet. But I kept telling myself that as I rolled onto my side and pulled the pillow over my head.

That week I signed up for a course in admin work. I pictured myself wearing skirts and having nice hair and working a nine to five job and having my own little flat, while I studied on my real career at night.

I was more maladjusted than I gave myself credit for though. I earned the Doesn’t Play Well tag early. But I tried, I really did. And I signed up with an employment agency, and I even got a really cool case worker who would take me out for coffee and tell me that I just had to trust my new life and go easy on myself and stay the fuck away from your old friends because real friends don’t stab you with forks, Rachel!

My first job was a temporary one, and that quickly became my thing; the ability to slot in quietly and not annoy people with questions about the photocopier. I got my little flat. I learnt to budget. I bought a few nice things that made it a home. I was becoming. I felt a new, fledgling life under my bones. I grew potted herbs on my kitchen windowsill and started to think about studying at night.

Now here I was, on the couch of the little flat I had worked so hard for, my arms wrapped around my ribs as I rocked, because I was losing it all, before the end of my very small life.

Chapter Eight

The other world, the world of my prison, is rudely intruding on the more peaceful one I’ve constructed for myself. A world where I sit with my feet swishing about in the slow-moving stream, hearing a rustle and turning to see Marshmallow, plump and furry, running towards me. There are figures behind him, laughing and calling my name. I want to jump up and run over to them . . .

But I’m hungry and I need to pee again.

I sit up and a wave of dizziness sweeps over me. I feel faintly sick.

I eat, and drink, and take a shower, stepping in and pressing the panel with my foot like I’ve been doing it my whole life. I only jump a little as the water hits me. I stand in that warm, stinking water and scrub myself with my hands, trying to bring myself back to life. I wash my hair. When the shower shuts off and drains away I stand here as the blowing air dries me and the walls, trying to breathe through the panic. I don’t know if I’ve lost my mind (maybe there was no asteroid maybe I’m in a mental health unit right now) or if I’m some weird government experiment. Perhaps I’m being watched right now, by a bank of evil scientists standing behind a two-way mirror.

Maybe there’s no-one here at all.

Somehow that thought is even more terrifying - the idea I’m out here, floating in space, by myself.

The food. The water. Left for me. A bed to sleep on.

Through my paranoia I let slip thoughts of hope. I’ve survived. And it’s not like I’m anyone special, which means others must be here as well. Maybe whoever is in charge of this place is just busy, with all the survivors . . .

I’m in dark water again, searching for something to hold onto.

As the panel snaps down I feel a fierce need to do . . . something. I won’t curl up on my bed again, feeling sorry for myself and trying to disappear. I go out into my small living space, and I start a yoga routine.

Naked space yoga, in front of a window’s view of the stars, is a hell of a thing.

I haven’t done yoga since the news of 2023QF5 - or Twenty-three, as we’d starting calling it that spring - had broken all our brains. And I’d only been doing it for a year or so before that. When I started it was because people who worked in offices and wore skirts and had nice hair did yoga classes, and I was invited by one of them while I was working in a larger office, before going to the accounting firm. I tried to make friends and got invited out to coffee with little groups of my co-workers. Small steps.

But now my body is stiff and groaning as I stretch. I feel myself begin to breathe harder. My breasts wobble as if they’re alarmed about this new ploy. My hamstrings feel like leather and my downward dog is so difficult I fall to my knees.

Its fucking brilliant.

I’ve found something to help take up my endless supply of time, something from my old life. And I’ve found something else, as well. I decide to tell you my story.

I know you’re not real. I make you up - my invisible audience, wondering at this nondescript person, this survivor who escaped not just the apocalypse but the planet, albeit not of her own doing. I’ll try to give you the most accurate account I can recall, one step at a time, because my memory seems to work better when I do that. And I’ll try to be brave, because . . .

There are a few things that are bothering me.

I mean, yes, I’m stuck in a strange kind of apartment in space, far away from my own planet, naked and terrified with no idea how long I’m going to be held here or even if I’ll ever escape . . .

But there’s more.

Because I refused to leave my flat the police eventually showed up. They felt sorry for me though. The tallest one drew me aside.

‘Look, we’ll tell them you’ve agreed to vacate within 24 hours, okay? But after that, we can’t help you. Put your stuff in storage and go stay with family.’

‘I don’t have any family . . .’

But there was no point in arguing with him. He was trying to be kind, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks.

When they left I curled up on the rental-grey carpet and cried for a solid hour. I’d been crying for days, but this was different. Because I was falling through the cracks, and I knew it. There was nowhere for me to go, no legal help or charity that could help me. Everyone out there was crying out for help. No-one was coming to rescue us.

I knew I had to leave, but before I did I had a long, hot shower. I scrubbed myself with the last of my coconut-scented body wash, dried myself and wrapped myself in a towel, which was just as well because when I stepped into my bedroom my neighbour was sitting on my bed, tears streaming down her freckled face.

I didn’t know my neighbour very well. And I wasn’t in the mood to be kind. I moved around her and stared getting dressed, out of her eyeline.

‘They’ve doubled my rent,’ she sniffled.

‘I know. Me too.’

‘They’ve doubled it!’

‘I know!’ I shouted. I yanked up the fly of my favourite jeans, pulled on my favourite t-shirt. When I finished getting dressed I looked at my shoes. What kind of shoes are best for being homeless in?

‘I uh, heard you before. After the police left . . .’

Oh, fuck these paper-thin walls.

‘And I haven’t had anyone to talk to. I thought . . .’

‘I’d offer to double up and split the rent,’ I said. ‘But I’ve lost my job.’

‘Me too. I have a rescue cat.’

‘What?’

‘A rescue cat. What’s going to happen to him?’

‘What about your boyfriend?’ I’d been seeing him coming and going for weeks now. Blonde. Tall. Big nose.

‘He dumped me the day it happened. Ghosted me.’

‘Oh. Wow. Sorry.’

‘You lost your job too?’

‘Yeah.’

I sat on the bed and yanked on my boots as she wiped her nose. She had light red hair that hadn’t been washed in days. I didn’t know what her name was.

‘Don’t you have someone to stay with?’ I asked.

‘No.’ Despite her tears she answered with a bitterness I recognised. ‘I mean I have friends . . . workmates, mostly. I’ve rung all of them. They’ve all quit their jobs and gone home.’

‘You don’t have family?’

‘My grandparents. They’re both gone now.’

Silence.

‘I’m on my own too,’ I volunteered, and it felt strange.

‘I have some relatives nearby. They’re moving into the family home together. They say it’s going to get bad, that it’s best to stick together, so I went to see them, but . . .’

‘There’s no room for you?’

‘They said I haven’t been in touch with them enough over the years. They don’t know me well enough.’

‘That’s just an excuse,’ I said.

‘I know.’ She sniffed. ‘I like your boots.’

‘Thanks.’

On such small moments do friendships start.

We stayed up all night, drinking cheap wine and eating macaroni and cheese for dinner. In the morning we packed what we could carry. I had a backpack and a small suitcase. Amy - that was my new best friend’s name - had two suitcases and a cat carrier. Her cat’s name was Marshmallow, a big ball of white and smudged-grey floof. Marshmallow crouched unhappily in his carrier as we put him into my hatchback and drove to Pam and David’s house. We broke in through the laundry window, and moved in.

Chapter Nine

I’m feeling a little better about things.

I’ve had ‘lunch.’ And I did anther yoga routine. My muscles feel warm and fuzzy.

But there are still a lot of moments to fill, a lot of time I find myself staring into space (ha ha). The panic is never far away, or the questions that are crowding my mind, now that I’ve stopped screaming them at the walls.

I’ve been pacing and bouncing on the balls of my feet. Now I’m doing a handstand, my heels resting against the wall, blood rushing downwards as I stare at the Earth and its lovely patterns. I wish I had a book to read, my phone, an iPad. A piece of paper and a pen. Two rocks to bang together. Something. I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to hold out for.

By the time spring warmed into summer Amy and I had adjusted to life in suburbia.

We spent hours lying on the pool loungers, pleasantly drunk and watching Marshmallow prowl around his new home. We started saying things like, ‘It might miss us,’ and ‘It will probably miss us. Space is so big, right?’

And it was true. The percentages on our survival seemed to change daily, depending on what news channel you watched, what scientist you listened to, which tweets you believed. But there was always a chance.

We had a daily routine; in the morning we’d drive to the supermarkets to scrounge up what we could. In the afternoon we chilled by the pool. In the evenings we locked up early and stayed indoors.

The electricity was still on. Pam and David had left behind a few bottles of wine. There was food in the pantry and freezer. And neither of us had ever had a pool before. It was glorious.

In the world beyond our temporary home we had what Amy called a shoestring government. It turned out Bianca was made of more stoic stuff than I’d given her credit for. She surrounded herself with an equally resolute and impossibly young-looking staff. They gave daily pressers. They reiterated that nothing was certain, that we had to ‘see this through, together.’

I would have voted for her if the world hadn’t ended.

Life was both terrifying and strangely wonderful. When you stop taking it for granted a lot of things cease to matter, and other things take its place. I would dive into the pool and marvel at the way the bubbles curled around my body. We ate weird meals, like packet rice and stale bagels, and enjoyed them because we knew things were slowly getting worse. We watched movies and read books and got happy-drunk, dancing around the pool to music I can’t quite remember. The neighbours left us alone on the unspoken proviso that we would share what we had when asked; half a loaf of bread here, some frozen or canned vegetables there.

At the same time the outside world was getting pretty scary. People would literally fight you for a packet of pasta in the supermarket, or try and rob you as you left. As soon as the sun started going down gangs of people would be out roaming, in cars or on foot. It was better in the 'burbs, but even there I remember how everyone would chase their kids inside as the sun lowered, blinds drawn, doors locked, cars tucked into garages. There were no dog walkers or joggers after five, just an eerie silence, punctuated by the occasional bird call.

Life was just how it was. And we had each other to watch our backs.

Then Dorothy showed up.

Chapter Ten

Something just happened.

I was waking, with memories of chlorine, and the six-pack of vodka cruisers we’d found at the bottom of the pantry and how Marshmallow’s purrs felt against my chest, when my prison gave a slow, shuddering jerk.

My brain is screaming. I’m frozen.

All around me there’s a loud humming. My first thought is that I’m about to die. It’s a common thought. Perhaps I’m about to be jettisoned from whatever this room is attached to. The band of evil scientists or aliens are bored of me. I’ll drift out into space and starve to death.

Besides the hum I keep thinking I hear other noises, strange clicks and the sounds of machinery, but my heartbeat is so loud in my ears it’s hard to be sure. I’m just sitting here on my bed, as still as a rabbit caught in headlights. Then I notice that the Earth has moved.

I run over to the window, panicking for real now. That small blue and white world has sat in the top right corner for as long as I’ve been here, but now it’s in the centre, so high up I’m frightened it’s going to disappear altogether, and I press my body against the glass, my eyes wide, drinking it in as I pound the flat of my hand on the glass and shout, ‘No, no!’

I can’t have the Earth disappear.

I can’t my only view be of that cold blackness outside.

My breath catches in my throat. The Earth is moving. How is it moving?

I’m in idiot. The Earth isn’t moving.

I am.

That day when someone knocked on the front door Amy and I jumped, then stared at each other with too-large eyes.

It was early morning. We were eating the last of the toast. Marshmallow was on the counter, eating his half can of cat food, because he was on rations. And then the knock.

We’d had attempted break-ins, a cursory walk around by two police late one night (we hunkered down behind the sofa and eventually they went away) and the occasional visit from a neighbour. But rarely a polite knock, as if the world had returned to normal.

I tip-toed over to the peephole.

And recognised those salt and pepper curls immediately.

When I swung the door open she beamed at me; a small, birdlike woman with a pixie-face that didn’t fool me at all.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello!’ She held up a bottle of wine. A full bottle of wine.

‘They’ve cut the power off,’ she said, as if that was a perfectly ordinary way to start a conversation. Then she peered around me, into the hallway. ‘Power’s still on here,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘Listen, we don’t really . . .’

‘Perhaps I should call the police?’ she asked, smiling like she’d just offered me cookies.

‘For god’s sake, let her in!’ said Amy, brushing past me and opening the door as if she was our dear old grandma. Then she said, ‘Hi, I’m Amy.’ Very politely.

‘Hello Amy, I’m Dorothy. It’s nice to see some people still have manners in this godforsaken world.’

Dorothy swept in, having a good sticky beak as she made her way to the kitchen. ‘Do you want to get some glasses, or do I need to find them myself?’

Chapter Eleven

The Earth is now framed in the centre of the window.

You have no idea how . . . miraculous it looks; that tiny, tiny world, hanging in the void. It doesn’t look natural. It hangs in space the same way a hammer doesn’t hang in the air. I press myself to the glass that I don’t think is glass - there’s something metallic about its texture - and long to be there, on the surface once again. My bones ache with it. It’s like being in love with someone you will never have, a drink of water always out of reach.

The loud humming that began when I felt the initial movement hasn’t subsided. It’s all around me, and I try to imagine what’s going on out there. Am I attached to some kind of satellite? An alien ship? Or am I simply hovering, a tiny lifeboat lost in all that blackness? What if the humming stops? Will I freefall through space? I wrap my blanket around me. I’m thirsty, but I can’t leave the window and the sight of my planet. If it disappeared while I was looking away, I’d never forgive myself.

Because Dorothy’s power had been shut off, we made sure to empty her pantry and fridge and cart everything next door.

When I say we, I mean Amy and I. Dorothy was on a pool lounger, claiming to have a bad back and brushing Marshmallow.

‘She’s old,’ said Amy, determined to adopt her as we packed tinned soup and frozen bread and bottles of vodka into plastic shopping bags

‘She’s a drunk, and she’s mean. She tried to kick me.’

‘Because you were shouting at her!’

‘She tried to pinch my toast.’

‘She’s an alcoholic who lives on her own. Have you seen how skinny she is? Just be nice.’

Back at the house we packed everything away carefully, freezing what we could because there was the beginnings of a food shortage. Sometimes the shelves at the supermarket stayed empty for days. And sometimes the supermarkets stayed shut because there wasn’t anyone to run the checkouts.

Worse than the empty shelves and the locked doors was the fear they’d close down and be liquidated, like so many other businesses had.

That summer a new god had risen. A saviour that could rescue you from the Big Scary Rock from Space. And its name was money.

Money would buy you a survival shelter. One of those fancy ones with all the bells and whistles, made for today’s survivalist. One you could fit all your family and friends in, and stock for a whole year.

Of course, to know how to stock it correctly you could go to one of the many seminars that were set up, where, for a price, you could learn all sorts of tips and tricks those sheep out there would never know, to keep you and your loved ones alive through the apocalypse. Live out your dream of being the alpha male in your very own tribe! Keep your children alive! Inherit the Earth! Here, buy this really big gun with things attached to it.

Of course if you were really serious, and really fucking rich, you could buy a ticket to the Ark Fleet.

The Ark Fleet was a bunch of specialty-built ships hidden off the coast of Norway, or Greenland, or wherever. The story often changed. There were enough places for one million people, the humans that would inherit the new age, a civilisation birthed from billionaires. The conspiracy was that the ships had been built years ago, because the rich and powerful had known about 2023QF5 from the beginning, while the rest of us were only told about Twenty-three before it became visible to the naked eye and couldn’t be kept a secret anymore.

Money was the new saviour, and that meant people lost their jobs, their homes and their cars so someone could have a bit more of it. When the first bank folded and took everyone’s life savings with them people started withdrawing everything they had and paying cash. So robbery and home invasions became constant. Amy and I were robbed twice during the day, while out roaming the city for food. They took our money and whatever we’d found. Once when someone attacked at cashier at Woolworths I snatched the money out of the till before anyone else could, grabbed Amy’s hand and ran.

‘We just have to ride it out,’ said Dorothy that evening, and reached across the island bench to pat Amy’s hand as she pan-fried steak. Only weeks before we would have had a barbecue out in the backyard - we hardly ever had meat in those days - but by then we’d become worried about the smell. About who we’d attract. Lately it seemed there was always some car driving slowly down the street at night, always a shadowing figure darting around.

‘Ride out what?’ said Amy, still shaken. ‘It’s never going to end, is it? Until it does. And we didn’t get anything today. Half the places are shut . . .’

‘If it hits we all go to hell. If it misses everything goes back to normal,’ broke in Dorothy. ‘Either way, this won’t last, and tonight we have steak.’

She was right, of course. We just had to make it through the year, and see how our fate played out.

Chapter Twelve

This is a good place to tell you I have exactly three tattoos.

You won’t know why I’m telling you this right now. It’s not important. It will become clear later.

The first one says, ‘If not now, when?’ Right where I wrote it in biro all those years ago, when I realised I had to get away from my stoner friends and make a new life for myself.

The second one’s kind of cringey. It’s the word ‘Survivor’ on my left shoulder blade, in loopy writing.

You should never get a statement tattoo in your twenties. It should be law. Have you ever met a twenty-something who knows anything about life?

The third one is a feather, curled around my upper right bicep. No particular reason. I just liked the design.

Before the end of the world I contemplated getting more. There was a strange sense of pride in belonging to the last group of humans. And it wasn’t like I had to worry about being older and embarrassed about it. But I never got around to it. I spent most of my time being joyously happy to be alive and full of hope that Twenty-three would dart past us like a bullet, or getting drunk and trying to put it out of my mind.

Three tattoos. Remember that.

Money wasn’t the only deity to rise into power after the discovery of Twenty-three, of course. There was also science and religion, and the subjects of these three gods spent their last days screaming at each other.

But for those of us who had neither cash nor patience for the mythical idols of long-ago, something wonderful happened just as Summer began to wind down into a glorious, mellow autumn.

I was sweeping a few leaves out of the pool when Amy started shouting.

I dropped the rake and ran into the house. I thought the police had turned up. But I found her in front of the television, saying ‘Look! Look at what they’re saying!’ as Dorothy wandered out from the kitchen, morning vodka in her hand.

A balding man was being interviewed on the morning news. The news readers looked positively childlike, their eyes wide, lips parted as they unconsciously leant forward.

The back of my neck prickled.

‘What . . ?’

‘Shhh!’ Amy jabbed me in the ribs as she turned up the sound, and I heard one of them start to talk.

‘So let’s make this clear, you’re saying this deviation has meant . . .’

The balding man was obviously the kind that hated to be interrupted. He waved his hand in that self-important way some people do, and said, ‘Again, the latest data tells us the asteroid now has a thirty-five percent chance of missing Earth entirely . . .’

I heard myself gasp, my body suddenly weak. My head swum.

‘ . . . because its deviated somewhat from its former trajectory. This isn’t unheard of, and though it’s still travelling towards us . . .’

I felt myself dropping onto the couch as a childlike joy rose in me, swallowing his words with the blind trust of the devout. Of course I did. Amy was smiling and hugging herself. Then she hugged me, and Dorothy, who was crying and murmuring, ‘He said that. He really said that, didn’t he?’

People were always predicting that the fuel was going to run out, but that day we didn’t care. We jumped into the hatchback and drove to the beach.

It was packed with families; parents and little kids splashing around in the shallows. It was obvious that everyone there had heard, and on that sunny, perfect-weather day we had left the safety of our homes to feel the sun on our skins, and perhaps to look at one another again, from a safe distance.

We put Marshmallow in his little harness and took turns carrying him, because he’d decided he was terrified of the sand and the water. We never left him in the house alone, always aware Pam and David could return at any moment, or that the police could turn up and throw us out. We walked along the shoreline and kicked our feet through the incoming waves and found seashells. A little boy ran over, wanting to pat Marshmallow, who was incredibly gracious about it.

The shops were all shut, but for some reason a woman in a sarong was handing out apples from a string bag, saying, ‘These are from my tree, share and enjoy,’ to everyone in a singsong voice. We took our apples, sat in the sand and soaked up the communal hope.

Dorothy told us a little about her life. She’d been a hairdresser in her twenties, before marrying. She was widowed now, and her son had died when he was twenty-one, during his first year as a probationary constable. That’s when she’d started drinking. She drank from sunrise to sundown, just to maintain her equilibrium. Amy and I hugged her, and we cried together as the late afternoon light began to fade.

That autumn #thiryfive and #wewillsurvive trended hard. People started saying this was a wake-up call for humanity. A new age. A bohemian vibe began to overtake the media. Good news stories about people sticking together were jammed in wherever possible. We heard that people were returning to their jobs, that family businesses were opening again, after cleaning away the broken glass and graffiti. People flocked to them and urged others on social media to support the small business, to bring back the good ol' days, now that the big supermarkets had let us down so badly.

Anyone who said the initial scientist was wrong was shouted down and ignored, rumours about their personal lives quickly circulated. We just didn’t want to hear it.

The weather was amazing - warm afternoons and evenings with golden-edged hues. I laughed and wore cute little dresses and sandals, (thanks Pam, you’re the best) and let Dorothy cut my hair. We made meals together and played poker at the outdoor table near the pool, orphans who had found a family to see out the apocalypse with.

The people behind the counters - and there were a few more of them that autumn - would smile and look you in the eye, and you did the same. ‘Have a nice day,’ took on a new weight. The supermarkets weren't shut so often. People were stacking shelves again.

Suddenly we had real, tangible hope.

For a very short period, Twenty-three no longer trended as much.

We all just wanted to stop, to take a breath. So we did.

Chapter Thirteen

I’m sure of it now; the Earth is getting bigger.

Whatever strange craft I’m in is drawing closer to the Earth. But if I really am moving towards it, does this mean I’m going back? That I really will be able to feel my feet on the ground once again?

I sit and watch and ignore my thirst and my hunger. And because I’m just sitting here and trying not to keep myself busy, and distracted, I can’t help thinking about the things I’ve been furiously pushing down in my mind, in order to hold onto my sanity.

It would seem that I am not entirely myself.

It’s funny, what hope can do. It can block out all else until it leaves you blind. I think hope must be like love; an eager falling that drops you into a world warmer and kinder than the one you just left.

That autumn we all had hope.

Even the former Prime Minister tried to return; slinking out from whatever luxury rock he’d crawled under. But his plans were leaked by the journalists who were suddenly back in force, and Bianca wasn’t having it.

During that day’s presser she announced she’d instructed security to stop him from entering parliament house, and a day later security did just that. We all got to see the very satisfying vision of him being shuffled back into his car, red faced and eyes bulging in disbelief as the protesters howled like wolves.

We were in a new world, and we loved it. Many became political again, strident in their opinions on how this country should be run as our acting PM announced she’d be completing the full term until the next election.

We didn’t know what was coming, what the scientists were planning.

I was in the supermarket when it happened. I’d found a packet of noodles that had been kicked under the shelves and was on my hands and knees, trying to snag it when I saw Amy’s worn shoes suddenly appear.

‘Rachel, everyone’s on their phones . . .’

And then someone started screaming.

I jumped to my feet, but not until I got those noodles. We skipped the checkout and made straight for the doors as something ugly began building in the air. People were grouped together, heads bowed over their screens. The keening wails were coming from a woman who had dropped to the floor, a handful of groceries scattered around her and quickly being snatched up as she wrapped her arms around a confused-looking toddler and rocked.

‘Not my baby! Not my baby!’ she cried, and my mind seemed to fill with a thick, oily fear.

Driving home I had to swerve around cars that had come to a stop in the streets. We saw people wandering around in the traffic, faces slack, and I was suddenly whisked back to the that very first day, trying to get home as the sound of sirens pierced the air.

‘I don’t want to look at my phone,’ Amy was saying. ‘I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know . . .’

‘Breathe,’ I said, because she was starting to hyperventilate. When we reached our street it was empty apart from one man who was just . . . standing there, right in the middle of it. He was wearing gardening gloves, a pair of secateurs in one hand. He turned his head as we pulled into the driveway and took one shambling step towards us.

It was so much like being in a fucking zombie movie I got the creeping horrors. We ran to the front door like spooked kids.

Dorothy was tucked into a corner of the couch, Marshmallow curled up in her lap. The television screen filled with news readers talking and gesturing, but the sound was muted. She was staring down at her iPad, a glass in her hand. Her face was pale as she looked up.

‘The scientists have gone rogue,’ she said mildly, and sipped her dink.

We crowded around her screen and watched as a digital fire spread across the world. The scientists were live. They’d been communicating in secret - I don’t know for how long - and they’d decided to tell the world the truth. One wept at her desk, framed photographs of her kids on the wall behind her.

‘I have been ordered not to say anything,’ she was saying. ‘I have been threatened by my own government. Many of us have. So many. But we have come together. They cannot silence us any longer.’

At that point we heard a man moaning and crying in the background, the questioning voice of a child.

‘The chances of the asteroid missing Earth are minute. It has not deviated. And the Americans are lying — there is no weapon being built to drive it off course. Such a thing isn’t possible. We must find peace in truth. God help us.’

It was the same message being spoken by all of them. Stories of governments threating the lives of their families if they didn’t say what they were told to - sprinklings of facts salted with lies to keep people from panicking when they learned there was no hope for us. The balding scientist, we learned, had committed suicide a week ago, his death covered up. People had disappeared.

We watched and listened as the sun lowered in the sky and the room grew cold and grey. At one point I looked up at the television to see the news readers unclipping their mics.

Then they stood up, and left.

After a few hours we put our phones and tablets down. Switched off the television. Amy put on some music. I can’t remember now, what we listened to.

We talked about our lives for a while. There was crying, but not much. We were rapidly running out of patience for our tears. I felt divorced from my body. To have such hope, and then . . .

There was a lapse in conversation, and we heard the first bird break out in song.

‘Time for bed,’ said Dorothy firmly. She pushed herself up from the couch, slowly, as if she’d aged ten years in the last few hours. ‘Don’t you girls stay up all night, making yourselves more miserable. Things always look brighter in the morning.’ And as we stood up, silent and drained, she pulled us close, one by one, and kissed us on the cheek.

Then she shuffled off to her room.

I collapsed into my sheets with gritty eyes, clutching at her words like a talisman.

Chapter Fourteen

I didn’t mean to sleep, but I must have drifted off, and when my head jerked I saw the the first one in the distance, purely by chance.

A flash of something, a reflection. I crowded against the window, searching the darkness. And then I saw it; a tiny, round-cornered cube. Grey-coloured and moving.

I searched the blackness until I saw the second one, and the third. My largest count so far has been twelve, but I keep losing sight of them, having to search the darkness and begin my count again. I have no idea how many of us are out there, huddled inside our little spaceships, drawing closer and closer to the planet ahead of us. I wonder if they’re alone too. Or are they with families? Spouses? Have strangers been put together?

They’re too far away for me to make out any detail, much less faces peering out. But I wave anyway. I try to send my thoughts to them. I see you! I think. Do you see me? Do I know you?

The next day there were no pressers, no government, no police to try and control the violence on the streets. We stayed inside, too scared and broken to go out.

And then fucking Pam and fucking David came back.

It was pure luck I saw their car pull into the drive. I ran through the house, yelling at Amy and Dorothy, not bothering to keep my voice quiet because it wouldn’t make any difference.

‘Get Marshmallow!’ I said to Amy, grabbing her and spinning her around, pointing her to the laundry where the cat carrier was. ‘Dorothy . . .’

‘I’ll grab the go-bags,’ she said, and walked away, calm as you like. We kept the bags at the door that opened onto the garage, where the hatchback was.

The garage. Oh fuck. I heard the double doors start to roll up.

‘Dorothy!’

‘What are they going to do? Shoot an old lady?’

I was cramming what I could into plastic bags. Cat food, canned soup, potatoes, a frozen loaf of bread . . . Amy appeared, lugging the cat carrier and a growling Marshmallow. She started to do the same but there was no time. I could already hear raised voices.

‘Let’s go.’ I grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the garage.

David was standing under the roller doors, unrecognisable and screaming.

‘I’m calling the police!’ he screeched at Dorothy, who was throwing our bags into the hatchback. He kept repeating it while Pam shouted, ‘What are you doing here? This is our home!’

They were both wild-haired, their faces red and windblown. Pam tried to grab one our bags. ‘You give me that, that’s ours!’

‘Leave her alone!’ I was yanking Dorothy away. I saw her give Pam a good kick in the shins. Amy was in the driver’s seat, the engine roaring into life.

‘Don’t you go anywhere! I’m calling the . . .’

‘Yeah, yeah, everyone’s calling the police. They don’t come!’ I shouted, shoving a protesting Dorothy into the back seat.

‘But I want to sit next to Amy.’

‘Get in there, you old bag!’

Their kids were staring out the windows of a four-wheel drive. It had a huge dent in the rear panel. David latched onto me as I struggled to get into the hatchback.

‘This is a citizens’ arrest! I’m calling the police!’

I pulled away, yanked the door open and threw myself in. ‘Jesus, just go!’

Amy reversed out onto the road. A car swerved around us, then came to a screeching stop. Some guys poured out of it and stared running at us. Amy was shaking so hard she couldn’t find first gear.

‘Clutch!’

She pressed her foot down. I hauled at the gear stick. There was a thump, a crack of glass. Dorothy cried out.

Then we were racing away, with nowhere to go and maybe a quarter of a tank of petrol.

Chapter Fifteen

As the Earth draws closer I try to see evidence of the destruction Twenty-three left behind; scars and craters. Countries set afire. It’s only been a few days, a week at most, but I’m not close enough to make out anything apart from vast stretches of blue with hints of green and brown.

I am utterly terrified. What’s the plan? To crash me into the planet, or safely return me? To what? What’s down there? I’m guessing there won’t be any coffee shops. How will I survive? And how many are still on the surface, living and dying through the aftermath?

I remember all the things that were said about the impact of such a large asteroid. No sunlight as the vaporised dirt and rock filled the atmosphere, impact fires and a rising heat that would become trapped, damage to our ozone layer, radiation and cancer, extinction . . . people talked about a snowball earth, far into the future when humans would be nothing but a brief blip in the Earth’s memory.

Ribbon Bay was a small seaside town. It looked kind of ruined, and all the stores and service stations were closed, but we had no choice. We were running out of petrol, and more than one vehicle had tried to run us off the road. We were exhausted and frightened, and the car smelt like cat pee.

And we had found an abandoned caravan park.

Dorothy pointed out a spot for ourselves among the roving many, and we made camp. Like, literally dug out a hollow and searched for wood and made a campfire, because the night was so cold.

And that’s where we stayed.

As winter approached we spent a lot of time wandering along the grey shoreline during the day. It grew colder, but we just wrapped ourselves in blankets and took turns at holding Marshmallow. It was like holding a disgruntled hot water bottle. Marshmallow had adapted to his life on the road, but he was stringy and of increasingly bad temper. He lived on a leash, always tied up or attached to one of us. We couldn’t lose him. We were all we had left.

It wasn’t all horrible and depressing. Depressing gets old. When you’re with others there’s always someone that needs cheering up and someone to do the cheering. I think we were careful to keep an even keel, because by then suicide had become a not uncommon thing in the caravan park. It was catching. People couldn’t take the waiting, for the hammer to fall. There was a lot of it.

But when I look back now, I think of grey sea waves that were always ready to make our footprints disappear, as though we’d never been there to begin with, our blankets whipping in the wind as we kept a lookout for anyone that might want to hurt us.

It wasn’t all bad. It was better than nothing. And the nothing-bringer was bright in the sky now, naked to the visible eye.

Chapter Sixteen

I’ve seen sunrise on Earth, from space.

I drink it in, pressed close to the glass that isn’t glass, my legs tucked up to my chest as the world gets closer and closer.

I’m not sure how long it’s been since I first felt that slow, heavy jerk that set my little cube into motion. My belly’s complaining, but I can’t leave the window.

I can make out the distinct shape of landmasses now, but nothing looks familiar. Forget seeing my country, I can’t see any country I recognise. What's visible is one large continent surrounded by smaller ones, like fish swimming around a whale. Mostly its blue.

But I know its Earth, and I think the way it looks has something to do with the way I am now.

The end came quicker than we thought. I remember that. But my memory is patchy.

It was midwinter and we had a tent. We didn’t steal it, just so you know. It’s just that its occupants no longer needed it for reasons you can probably guess by now, and we were the ones that grabbed it first.

It meant we could lock what little we had in the hatchback and sleep in relative comfort. We did have a few blankets, but the nights were horribly cold. We’d sleep lined up like logs, greedy for each other’s body warmth as Marshmallow curled up between us.

We’d spent that day scouring the small town for anything we could find. Others were out doing the same thing, but we were leaving each other alone. There was an odd sense of community in that town. People were tired. No-one wanted to fight. We all just wanted to bunker down with whoever we were with and have enough food and water to get by. There were small kindnesses, and some of us even did our best to turn an old nursery into a community garden. It was something to do, a way for people to be together in a non-threatening way. I remember the smell of earth filling my nostrils as I watered seedlings, making small talk with the others.

As we walked back to camp Dorothy spotted a group of oldies sharing a fire and passing a bottle around, and promptly ditched us. She returned in the evening, humming tunelessly and dropping her arms around our shoulders as she squeezed in between us.

‘It’s going to be cold one tonight, girls,’ she observed.

‘It’s always cold.’ Amy had her sleeves pulled down over her hands, her collar bones standing out as she hunched over.

I don’t think we said much for the rest of the evening, just held our hands out to the warmth of the flames. I threw in the rest of the wood, and we pulled our blankets out of the tent and lay them on the ground.

‘What about tomorrow?’ Amy fretted.

‘I’ll get some more wood. I always find something,’ I said.

My memory past this point is disjointed. I have a picture of Amy curled up with Marshmallow tucked in her arms, the sound of Dorothy’s snoring. The thinness of my blanket. And I dreamt of a light so bright it was like summer had returned . . .

Then my memory tears at the edges, and the next impression I have is of my face pressed into the dirt, and the pain. Muffled noise. Ringing in my ears. My head . . .

I lifted my face from the dirt. Blood was pouring from my mouth. I put my hand to it and felt the ragged edges of broken teeth. I was making sounds. I coughed as blood ran down my throat, swallowing bits of teeth.

The hatchback was on its side. No campfire but everything was on fire and something was really, really wrong with the sky the tree . . . the tree is on fire . . .

I called out, over and over. I saw Amy through the smoke and red embers that were flying through the air. She was lying on top of our flattened tent, her blanket flung over her, one arm stretched out and fingers splayed. I saw Dorothy’s coat, whirling violently in the throes of some terrible wind, but she wasn’t in it.

I think I saw Amy move. But . . . I’m not sure. Everything was swinging from side to side, and I couldn’t seem to control my body as I tried to sit up. The tree blazing with fire, the embers hitting my skin. I remember the sound of myself screaming, but after this the only other impressions left in my memory are thin and few. A sense of being smothered. A very out of place recollection of being a child again and playing hide and seek with Simone Winters in her grandmother’s house when I was seven. I try to remember something, anything after that, but there’s nothing. A long, stretching nothing, seemingly endless. And then I wake, on a grey floor.

Chapter Seventeen

The Earth is almost all I can see now, the cold blackness just a thin rind around it.

I press my tongue up to the roof of my mouth, let it edge over my teeth.

They’re all intact.

That’s not all, but it took me a while to notice the other things. Every time a new awareness surfaced, I pushed it down again.

It’s not just my unbroken teeth. I’ve also lost my tattoos. No encouraging words scrawled along my wrist. No feather. And I’d bet a block of chocolate there’s no Survivor written on my shoulder blade, which is ironic to say the least.

I let Dorothy cut my hair that autumn. It was the shortest it had been since my very first job at McDonalds when I was sixteen. It shouldn’t be this long. Long and straight and swinging like a curtain. It hits the small of my back.

I’m still me. My hair’s the same colour. And I know my body. I put my hand to my face and feel my nose, my eyebrows, my cheeks. I mean, you know yourself, don’t you?

Most importantly, I have my memories, though sometimes I wish it was those they’d taken, because they are so painful.

I have seriously begun to worry about what will happen when my little craft hits the atmosphere.

I have to assume they, whoever they are, thought about that. And I’m so tired I can’t help dozing off . . .

Noise.

Shaking. The room is shaking. I see a panels slamming down, and suddenly I’m in a small, enclosed room; no window, no bed . . . just blank walls. I think I hear the sound of some great engine, or is it the coldness outside, about to tear apart my little life raft and hurl me out into the abyss? I curl up in the centre of the floor, my hands over my ears. If this is it, at least I’ve had something, in the after.

The noise is endless. It’s getting hotter. I remember the heat and fire of that day, and I start to scream.

The feeling I have when I let my body slip into the warm water and hold me, suspended, is something I can’t describe. There isn’t a word perfect enough, large enough.

I’m aware that this peaceful interlude is going to be very brief. It’s probably the only calm time I’ll have for the rest of my life. But that just makes me cherish it more.

That cube did have a fucking door after all.

Panels had locked down as we approached the atmosphere. There had been a sense of passing through a storm as I tried uselessly to grip onto the smooth floor, beginning to slide as the cube tilted. But then the floor seemed to drop out from under me . . .

I was hovering, weightless. My brain started to panic, telling me I was falling, but I’ve had a lot of practice lately, at keeping myself calm. I shut my eyes as the walls around me shuddered, the noise outside rising, and when I opened them again I was simply . . . floating, in mid-air.

I looked down wonderingly at the floor below, and saw a circle of light in its centre, where I had first woken. I can’t really explain it but I think it’s the circle that was holding me, buoyant, as we screamed through the atmosphere.

As the noise subsided and the shaking lessened there was a rolling sensation that seemed to last forever. Then I felt a sudden halt that made my stomach drop. For a few moments I thought I’d landed, until my cube did just that; dropping with a heavy thud that was audible.

I was lowered to the floor, and quite quickly; landing on my side heavily enough that I have a bruise on my hip now.

The stillness was so shocking I didn’t trust it. I got to my feet slowly, hands splayed, waiting for things to start lurching again. The light in the room flickered, then seemed to stabilize, and I saw it; the panel that had snapped shut over the window held the shape of a handprint, pressed into its centre like an echo.

I walked over to it on legs that were ready to fold under me. When I pressed my palm to the handprint a ring of light encircled it, a mini-copy of the one that had appeared on the floor. It made me jump and snatch my hand back as a series of loud clicks seemed to bounce off the walls around me. Then the panel slid up.

The window was gone. It must have detached, or fallen off. I don’t know. I didn’t build the thing, did I?

Air hit me. Smells . . . so many smells. And colour. The golden sand, the green of the trees, the blue of the sky . . . I tottered out, wanting to take it all in, but instead I crumpled up and had an involuntary nap.

Thankfully nothing came to eat me while I was prostrate on the beach.

My cube rests in a shallow hollow in the sand. I don’t like going far from it. I go to the water and back, and sometimes make little circuits around it, exploring and looking for firewood, but it’s never out of my view.

I still have over half my supply of food and water. But it won’t last forever. Which is why tomorrow I’m going to stop frolicking about in the ocean like a kid and let go of this peace.

I need to find fresh water.

I need to find food.

I need to make some kind of clothing, because the sand really does get everywhere.

I’m not sure if this is an island, or if it’s attached to the land I can see in the distance. I’m surrounded by ocean. Warm, deep ocean with streaks of green. There are fish here, mostly small. For all I know there are other fish the size of Moby Dick, just waiting to snatch me up. Maybe the air is toxic, the trees poisonous, the flowers carnivorous. There are too many things I don’t know. I’m not sure how long I’ll survive.

All the fish have tiny teeth.

All the land animals I’ve seen so far are enormous.

The ones I see the most are horse-sized and travel in herds. They eat grass. I haven’t seen any predators yet, but I’ve only been here for two days.

The smallest animals are the ones that hop back and forth between the trees. They’re spider-monkey sized, but they’re not monkeys.

The sea birds seem to be normal sized though, just . . . different.

I’m going to have to eat the fruit, even though I have no idea if it’s safe. I’ll start with the one that looks like a starfruit made a bad decision with a banana one night. When I hold it to my nose its smells like sugar, and my mouth waters as tiny insects crawl over my hand.

I thought perhaps all our cubes would land together. A new human tribe. But I haven’t seen any of them, and I haven’t spotted any people. Yesterday I thought I saw a smudge against the blue sky that could have been campfire smoke, but moments later it was gone

I try not to hold out hope for the things that will hurt me if they don’t come true, but they surface in my mind as I float in the water. After all, I was saved. Or at least a version of me was.

Still, I try not to wish too hard as I let the ocean hold me, and think about the tomorrow.

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michellelarina · 3 years

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Hi! How are you? Thanks for visiting my tumblr. I’m an Australian writer and aspiring novelist. I love to follow writers and artists on both twitter and tumblr - I follow back and engage.

Cheers!

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michellelarina · 3 years

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#writing aesthetic #jane austen #a free window seat for everyone when I am ruler of all

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michellelarina · 3 years

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Wash Your Hands.

I didn’t want to visit my parents. Is that a terrible thing to say?

‘Wash your hands before you do that, Sophie.’

The words grate against me badly, and I’m ten years old again. I keep my temper in check because this is just a visit.

I take a coffee cup down from the shelf and set it next to the kettle. Her brows dart up — frightened sparrows against a pale sky.

‘Sophie. . .’

‘I’m just making myself a coffee, Mum. My hands are clean. Do you want a cuppa?’

This is a thin attempt at re-shifting her focus, but she’s defensive now, angry. There’s a short burst of recriminatory words and I find myself in the bathroom, washing my hands and trying to banish old feelings that have risen to the surface.

Hamish, the Scottish terrier, follows me and tries to get into the bathtub. Apparently he has a thing for dripping taps; he’ll sit in the tub and lick the spout for hours if you let him. The bathroom door must always be shut and there’s a folded tea towel wrapped around the tap in the garden.

My dad assures me he’s wonderfully well-adjusted besides this one quirk.

Hamish is a new addition to my parent’s home since the last time I was here. I’m surprised she allowed a dog in the house, but the comical eyebrows and the upright tail that’s always in motion could melt anyone. He’s adorable, and he knows it. Whenever my mother goes into the kitchen he trots in after her and props himself up in a perfect begging pose, and she’ll laugh, softening, before giving him a treat from a jar tucked against the cookbooks.

This is the woman who once shouted at me because I’d sneaked a packet of chewing gum into the shopping trolley. Who refused to give me pocket money for school in case I bought chips or cola. The woman now dishing out little bone-shaped snacks from a tartan-patterned container.

I’m jealous of a small dog, I think, as I look at myself in the mirror and consciously smooth out the crease between my brows.

My parent’s house has changed very little since I left home, the bathroom least of all. The pink tiles are dreadfully outdated and comforting, the bathmat is an odd shade of green and the same kitschy curtains grace the window, letting in a splash of winter sunlight. There are at least six bars of Velvet soap lined up along the sink. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to use so I settle for the soap dispenser I suspect is my dad’s. The room holds the sharp tang of vinegar; there are bottles of the stuff tucked away under the sink. Vinegar is disinfecting. She uses is everywhere. She won’t let me help with meals because I refuse to rinse my hands in it.

I didn’t want to visit my parents. Is that a terrible thing to say? It’s a two-hour drive from the city, with the prickly maze of my mother’s disorder waiting at the end. Phone calls are easier. The thought of spending two days with them filled me with anxiety, and I tried to talk to Mel about it while I paced the kitchen and sipped wine. She stared at me from across the island bench, trying to force common sense into me with her own sheer will.

‘You’re not going to cure her. Don’t try. Just do all the little things she asks and don’t focus on it. You’re there to visit your mother, not her illness.’

When I come out of the bathroom she’s dishing up tea. My presence bothers her. The kitchen is a minefield of fears and she becomes so anxious her mouth draws into a tight bow, and she snaps at me.

‘Can’t you wait? Dinner’s almost ready.’

‘I’m just getting my coffee.’

My voice is sharper than I intended. She turns her back on me, sighing loudly for my benefit as she spoons vegetables onto the waiting plates. She’s an inch away from not eating, so I back down and leave the room.

I was always doing the wrong thing in that kitchen when I was younger. I’d help myself to a glass of orange juice and she’d appear, immediately angry. Maybe I’d unknowingly touched something in the fridge. Or perhaps my hand had hovered over the plates when I reached for the glass, which would inevitably be set down on the wrong counter.

‘I won’t be able to eat dinner now,’ she’d say bitterly, and over our meal she’d sit at the table, resentful and silently accusing while my dad and I ate. We pleaded with her, cracked jokes, anything to try and placate her. Nothing worked. She was as unwieldy as stone against the tepid water of our words, and eventually the table would lapse into strained silence. Now I sit stiffly at the same table and watch her move around, a small-boned woman whose anxiety emanates from her in palatable waves.

My dad appears from what he insists on calling his study; the spare room that’s now a mancave complete with teak furniture and a sagging orange armchair. I know he spends most of his day in there, avoiding conflict. When he does venture out she’s constantly watching, instructing, criticising.

‘Have you washed your hands? Why do I always have to ask?’

I long for him to stand up to her, but he’s become mute in the face of her behaviour and prefers to comply in order to keep the peace. He joins me at the table and we talk about the long winter, the latest political chatter.

Dinner is roast chicken with rosemary stuffing and winter vegetables, an old family favourite. I know she bought the string beans for me. Her plate is lined with layers of greaseproof paper. She rinsed the plate in boiling water but didn’t dry it; she doesn’t want anything but her hands to touch it. Yet she still needs a barrier between the surface of the plate and her food, which is rye crackers and cheese and a small handful of almonds. The short list of things she will eat has become even shorter since she stopped using utensils.

Don’t say anything, I think.

‘Mum,’ I start.

Fuck. Don’t say anything!

‘Don’t you think it’s time you got some help?’

‘Help? For what?’ She looks at me blandly.

‘For this!’ I gesticulate at her plate with my fork, my tongue well and truly out of the gate. ‘Can’t you just try talking to a counsellor?

‘Let’s not fight,’ my dad says mildly, and I feel my spine grow spikes because they’re ganging up on me already, pushing me out of their insulated space.

‘You think this is normal? Someone needs to talk about it, even if you two won’t.’

Oh yes, the martyr has arrived.

‘This is our business, not yours,’ my dad replies shortly. He allows himself to be angry with me.

I was going to say so many things this time. I was going to be calm and reasonable. Dialogue would begin, things would be admitted. In my most extreme fantasy, apologies would eventually be made.

But as always, my voice is just . . . gone. Washed down inside of me, resting in a deep pool. I know if I say more it will be in the voice of a skinny, desperate teenage girl, full of helpless anger.

I push back my chair.

‘I’m going to take Hamish for a walk.’

I text Mel.

Its not going well.

She calls me back. ‘Come home,’ she says immediately. ‘If it’s going to drive you crazy, just come home.’

‘I can’t leave before tomorrow. Everyone will blame me for ruining the day if I’m not here. I’ll leave straight after.’

We have a strained conversation while I stand on the pavement with the leash wrapped around my legs because Hamish is overexcited in the crisp air and wants to run. My scarf is pulled up to my ears. I talk about what it was like when I was a kid, how she tried to convince me I was sick all the time, telling me I had allergies and some unspecified weakness of the chest. She wouldn’t let me use spray deodorant, conditioner or toothpaste with fluoride. I couldn’t have a bike. It sounds so childish when it’s said out loud. It doesn’t explain the hollowness that carved out my insides, leaving a space that slowly filled with hurt and confusion as I grew up in a house so full of small fears and rules and vigilance that it pushed out all the warmth

‘She’s obviously had problems for a long time. You can’t control it. Stop trying.’

‘So I’m jut supposed to ignore it, like everyone else in this fucking family?’

It’s a crappy thing to say, and we both know it. But she doesn’t allow herself to be drawn into playing devil’s advocate again.

‘Think of me waiting for you to get back, with a large bottle of wine and many things made of chocolate.’

We talk some more, and by the time I start to walk back in the lowering light with Hamish trotting at my side some of my frustration has escaped into the cold air.

The next day is her birthday. The sky lets in a little sun, enough to soften the chill. I offer to pick up the cake but my dad tells me he has to do it; there’s only one bakery he can go to. He has to get the right cake.

He doesn’t want to be alone with me. He knows I’ll try and talk about Mum, using him to burn off some of my frustration. Instead I tidy the guest room, my old bedroom, while she works in the garden. Hamish keeps me company. I smooth my hand over his soft ears and a pink tongue shoots out, swiping at the back of my hand.

‘Yuck!’ I wipe my hand on my sweater, but he just laughs at me, his face split into a grin.

When Paul and Rebecca arrive he bounds towards the sound of their car, barking possessively. I find Mum holding them in the front yard, showing off her garden, pointing out certain plants. She does the same with me whenever I visit. She’s always loved working in the garden. So many times I would come home from school and she’d be out in the front yard in her straw hat and yellow gloves.

‘Go get something to eat and come sit with me,’ she’d say, and I’d make myself a sandwich and settle on the top step while she talked about the bulbs coming up, the Japanese maple she was nursing through its first few years. She never asked me about my day at school. She was too wrapped up in her world of dark soil and flowers and garden birds. Now she points out the clusters of hellebores and paper daisies that splash colour across the dense green winter bed. She’s wearing plastic bags over her hands. She won’t go outside without them. No-one says anything, focusing instead on Hamish, who’s strutting around proudly with a ball in his mouth. When he tries to tug off the home-made guard around the garden tap Paul scoops him up, laughing. My brother is big and bear-like, easy-going to a fault. He’s never concerned about anything. At least not outwardly. I don’t talk to him about the problems with our parents because his response — ‘That’s just the way Mum is’ — is said with bland regularity before changing the subject.

He greets me with a bright but casual ‘Hey, sis!’ As if we see each other every other day. Instead of catching up he assumes I’d rather talk to Rebecca, who’s hugely pregnant and looks uncomfortable. She keeps rubbing her hand across her stomach, her face tired.

‘I’m two days overdue now. My back hurts like hell,’ she says, and glares down at her belly. ‘Get out, you loiterer!’

I tell her about my friend Emma, who went out for spicy food and promptly went into labour at the restaurant. She perks up a little and tells me she’s going to try it.

We’re still in the garden when my uncle arrives, and he walks up the path a little too ponderously. He gives me a one-armed hug and asks me jovially if I’ve ‘made a honest woman of Mel yet,’ because it’s a regular joke between us.

‘The question is, have you found a gym instructor.’ I poke him in the ribs. His scent is warm and spicy. Dad isn’t allowed to wear aftershave anymore and I have a childish urge to stay snugged against my uncle and draw in the comforting scent from my past. I settle for sitting next to him at lunch and listen to his laments on retirement. He’s bored, he says. I suspect he’s lonely because he’s been a widower for six years now. I talk about dating sites and he laughs.

‘Who’d want an old warhorse like me?’

‘You’re not bad looking. Give up smoking and update your wardrobe.’

‘I’d prefer someone who’s interested in the original version.’

I eye his worn zip-up jumper pointedly. He pretends to look hurt. ‘I thought I was your favourite uncle?’

‘You’re my only uncle.’

It’s all old jokes with him. He likes things that are comfortable, worn deep with time.

Mum eats her crackers and cheese and there’s the obligatory coaxing.

‘The curry’s lovely, Mum. Don’t you want to try it?’ and ‘You’re so thin! Can’t you eat just a little bit?’ They want years of habit to simply fall away so it can be a less awkward occasion.

When the cake’s produced we sing Happy Birthday, and Hamish cocks his head, surprised at the sudden burst of noise. She cuts the cake and hands out slices.

‘Aren’t you having any?’ I ask, looking at her empty plate.

‘I’m not hungry.’

This time even Dad is roused into speaking.

‘You don’t want any of your own cake?’

‘No. It’s been a little disorganised here today. I’ll have some later.’

She means me, my visit. There’s a brief, uncomfortable pause. Paul makes small talk about his job and the subject is eagerly seized on. Mum focuses on Rebecca and her overdue baby. Her face is animated, and she laughs and tells her about being in labour with Paul, which took two days.

‘And he was a big baby,’ she says.

‘Oh, he’s still a big baby,’ says Rebecca, rolling her eyes. The table warms a little. But when I get up to make coffee for everyone I catch her in an unguarded moment, silent amongst the light chatter. She looks sad and drawn, her face pale. It pulls at me hard. I want to comfort her, wipe away her worry like you would mop the tears from a child’s face. But there’s nothing I can do. I’m too defensive now, all my softness for her scrubbed away with Velvet soap and hot water.

Its late when everyone leaves. I wait until Dad is ensconced in front of the evening news before trying to slip out as quietly as possible.

‘We never see you,’ says Mum, walking to the car with me.

‘You could always come and see us,’ I point out.

‘You know I don’t like going into the city. There’s too much pollution.’

In the last two minutes, while I’m climbing into the car and buckling my seatbelt, she wants to know everything. How have I been? How’s Mel? How’s my job? Everything is condensed. I’m frustrated at her scant parcelling of affection and drive away, her diminutive figure framed in the rear-view mirror, a lost woman who never really grew up. I’m not strong enough to sweep her up and protect her. She tried to break me down with her. I do the only thing I can; I fly back to the city, away from her.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider buying me a coffee.

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michellelarina · 3 years

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#writeblr #writing #writing for coffee #why i write #why do YOU write?#writers life

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michellelarina · 3 years

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The Amazing Ella - Alien Spy!

A flash novel.

Ella is an alien spy with blue hair, here on Earth to study human behaviour. So why does everyone insist that she’s an ordinary little girl?

Chapter One - Me

My name is Ella, and I’m an alien with blue hair.

Okay, I’m only half alien. The Mothership brought me to Earth but left me behind with my very human father. I’m here to collect information about the human race.

Its not hard to do. I don’t have to write anything down or remember things, like I do at school. I just watch the humans very carefully; the things they do, the words they say and the way they behave, and all of this gets soaked up in my brain, like a scrape of butter on warm toast. One day the Mothership will come and get me, and I’ll be put in a big machine that will read my brain like an encyclopedia.

Don’t worry, it won’t hurt. The Mothership would never hurt anyone.

Until I have collected enough information I have to stay here, in this house of warm, reddish-brown brick, with my family. There is my dad, and Arthur, and Hannah. Only they and Ms Suhn know about my mission here on Earth. Ms Suhn suggested I keep a journal about it, and I’m not sure why, because I’ve told her it’s a secret. The world can’t know about the Mothership. But she says I don’t have to tell anyone about what’s in my journal unless I want to.

I will tell you about Arthur first.

Chapter Two - Arthur

Arthur is my brother, and he’s . . . different.

He’s much smaller than the average human. He doesn’t eat the same food that we do. He eats mushy stuff that gets scooped up with a spoon. But Arthur refuses to do even this. He forces my dad, Hannah and sometimes even myself to deliver each mouthful to him personally. He then insults us by spitting most of it out. I tell Hannah she must not put up with this behaviour, that she should put her foot down. But she says we need to be patient with Arthur.

There are other things that worry me about my brother. Sometimes when I’m in the living room doing my homework my dad will lower his newspaper, and there’s Arthur, quietly nestled into his lap. I once suspected he was scanning the newspaper for information, but it seems he’s now progressed to training my dad to relay the headlines directly to him.

‘Look Arthur,’ he’ll say, flipping up the corners of the newspaper. ‘The Dow has fallen again.’

Arthur’s one-piece outfits look like spacesuits. His habit of wheedling written information from my dad is suspicious. And when I peer into his eyes they are so clear and blue I get the uneasy feeling that he can see . . . . everything. The atoms that make up air, and the nuclei inside the atoms.

Has the Mothership sent another spy?

Do I have competition?

Chapter Three - Mrs Suhn

‘If I’m not an alien, then why is my hair blue?’ I say triumphantly.

Ms Suhn sighs, very softly, and looks down at her notepad.

I often make Ms Suhn sigh. When we start our time together she is positive and bouncy with energy. She greets me with a bright smile and says, ‘Hello Ella!’ as if I’m her favourite person. But as the minutes tick by she becomes a bit less cheerful. She starts to fiddle uneasily with her pen. Her shoulders slump, just a little. And then she sighs.

‘Ella . . .’ she begins.

‘Tell me that, Ms smarty-pants!’ I crow.

‘We’ve talked about this. The doctors think your hair is just the result of some genetic . . . mishap.’

‘A likely story!’ I jump up onto the coffee table and point at her accusingly. ‘No-one has blue hair! I am an alien!’

‘Some people have blue-black hair,’ she says, straightening her back a little. ‘Some people even have pure white hair. And when we get older our hair changes colour. Please get down from the coffee table.’

I jump from the table to the couch and wriggle into my usual position, with my knees hooked over the back. I glare at the now upside-down Ms Suhn.

‘Is there anything else you would like to talk about today?’ she asks. ‘How are things at home, Ella?’

‘I think my human brother may be another operative,’ I say. ‘I think he’s been sent to spy on me.’

The thought is a worrying one, but it seems to interest Ms Suhn. She straightens. Her pen twitches. ‘I’m sure Arthur is a perfectly normal little brother,’ she says, and pauses. ‘Do you like having a little brother?’

‘He is not my brother,’ I say, and Ms Suhn sighs for a second time. ‘Ella, of course he’s your brother. And I’m sure you’re a wonderful big sister.’

‘No!’ I slide off the couch by grabbing the backrest and swinging myself up. ‘I will not give up my mission to a tiny, crying being who might be spying on me!’ And I run to the door and out into the waiting room, where my dad is sitting.

Chapter Four - My Dad

My dad is a science teacher. He doesn’t teach at my school, he works at the university in the city. He is very tall and his hair is often messy, because he doesn’t pay much attention to how he looks. Sometimes when he’s about to leave for work Hannah will say ‘Peter! Your hair! Didn’t you brush it?’ And then she’ll notice other little things, like the fact his shirt isn’t ironed or his socks aren’t matching or he doesn’t have his phone, which is usually in some strange place and out of charge. And then my dad will rush to the bedroom to get dressed all over again and look for the spare phone that Hannah bought him, which he’s usually lost.

I don’t know why Hannah has to be so critical. The universe will not collapse because my dad lets his hair get too long between haircuts, or that he goes to work with no phone and one shoelace undone. And when I shout at her to leave him alone, she says, ‘Oh Ella. . .’ and tries to reach out to me with hands that are always full of tea-towels or baby bottles or slices of bread. But I’ll run away and shut myself in my room or my safety pod.

When my dad’s not teaching he likes to work in the garden. He mows the lawn in clean, even strips and clips the hedges into smooth walls that divide our front yard from each of our neighbours. He fills the bird feeders and straightens the little solar lights that are dotted around the yard.

But it’s winter now, so my dad is forced inside well before dinnertime. He’ll light the wood heater then straighten with a pop of his knees and a satisfied sigh, before settling into his armchair and reading a newspaper. If Arthur is on his lap or crawling along the carpet he discusses the main stories with him. Then he’ll do the crosswords, calling out the clues to me. Between the two of us we always fill out the crossword, even if I’m doing my homework at the same time. I don’t mind being on Earth so much then, when the fire is warm and crackling away to itself and Arthur is babbling to us in his strange language. (He refuses to speak English.) But always there in an ache, somewhere deep inside of me. I don’t think it will go away until the Mothership comes back to get me.

Chapter Five - Safety Pod

I’m in my safety pod, because today Arthur is being even more demanding than usual. His howls and screeches fill our house and make the windows rattle. I can feel little fists of air hammering at my ear drums.

I saw Hannah take some aspirin while she was making breakfast. After lunch she scooped up Arthur and found my Dad in the garden - he was watching the Honeyeaters wash themselves in the bird bath - and bundled Arthur into his arms.

‘We’ve run out of paper towel!’ she cried, her voice sounding higher than usual, and darted for the car. Arthur tried to grab at her with his chubby fists but she was too quick for him and made it to the driveway, things spilling out of her handbag as she whipped open the car door and disappeared into its interior.

As she roared off down the road I felt sorry for her - Arthur hardly ever lets her out of the house.

Dad carried my brother back inside, saying, ‘Now Arthur, what’s all this fuss about?’

Arthur tipped back his head back and howled at the ceiling, his arms flailing in outrage. I saw dad wince a little. He tried to tell Arthur about the discovery of a new insect in central Australia, but Arthur kicked and flailed and refused to be interested. He caught my eye and glared at me so balefully that I fled.

That’s why I’m in the big bedroom dad and Hannah share, curled up inside the built-in wardrobe. It’s very quiet and dark and peaceful. It has a carpeted floor. A stack of shoe boxes take up one end and I take up the other. The hems of jackets and dresses tickle the top of my head. With the door shut it becomes my safety pod, and I wonder when the Mothership will come for me. I wonder if I will be allowed to sit up front when it does, so I can see Saturn and its gigantic rings as we fly past it.

In the peaceful gloom, I press my toes against the neat stack of shoe boxes, and once again notice the one at the bottom of the stack. It doesn’t look like a regular shoebox. It’s the same size but prettier, because its patterned with little birds. Curious, I stretch out my hand, but something holds me back, something silent, but there, and I want to snatch my hand away.

But I’ve been left behind on Earth to find out everything, to go boldly where no Ella has gone before, so I pull out the box and place it on my lap.

I slide the door open just a little, to let the light in. Arthur’s outrage seems to have subsided and I suspect he’s fallen asleep, but you can never be sure with Arthur.

Birds flit across the box’s lid. Inside is a tiny blanket that smells of old roses. It looks too small to keep anyone warm, except for maybe someone Arthur’s size. Underneath the blanket are folded newspaper clippings. I take the top one and unfold it. It says;

Baby born with blue hair?

Doctors are baffled by a bub that’s been born with what seems to be blue hair. Though it will take some time for the tiny tot’s tresses to grow long enough to be sure, the delivering doctor seemed quite certain.

‘It’s definitely. . . blue,’ he said.

My heartbeat becomes a pair of wings that beat against my chest. Another person with blue hair? But that’s impossible! I only have blue hair because of my alien genes.

I lift the piece of newspaper up to my face and study the picture of the baby lying there, thin tufts of blue hair the same shade as my own curling up from its tiny skull. How is it that someone born on Earth has blue hair?

I run out to the kitchen, where dad is attempting to wedge a spoonful of goop into Arthur’s mouth.

‘What is this?’ I demand, my voice wavering as I wiggle the newspaper clipping in front of him. My dad glances at me distractedly. When he sees the clipping his face lights up for a moment, then shadows scurry over his features like sad clouds.

‘Where did you find that, Ella?’

But I ignore his question. ‘What’s going on? Who is this?’ I asked loudly.

‘It’s you, Ella.’ Dad pushes his glasses back up his nose. ‘I forgot all about those stories in the newspaper.’

I drop the clipping. It gets trapped in the eddy of air I create as I run to my room, swirling around in confusion.

Chapter Six - Marigold

I am too old for play dates.

Yet here is Marigold, spindly and awkward-looking as her mother pushes her through our front door.

Marigold is the most badly put-together person I know. She is so skinny and tall I worry about her safety whenever there’s a strong wind. Her knees are too big and her arms are too thin and her skin is too pale for the Australian sun, so she always smells like sunscreen. She can only see by using glasses with very thick lenses and if she eats a prawn she could die. She has huge grey eyes and lots of curly red hair.

‘Let’s play Space Shuttle,’ she says.

Marigold thinks my safety pod is a place to play games. But I’ve learnt the best way to handle Marigold is to keep her calm and happy until her mum comes to collect her, so we go to the main bedroom and shut ourselves in.

‘We’re travelling to Mars,’ she says. ‘We’ll be the first two humans in history to walk on its surface.’ And she taps her skinny fingers against the back wall of the wardrobe, making ‘boop boop’ noises under her breath. ‘I’m just programming in our flight plan.’

Earth people are so funny.

‘What will we do there?’ I ask. I’m trying not to look at the stack of shoe boxes, even though the one with the birds flying across the lid has gone. I’ve hidden it in the laundry cupboard, behind the spare towels. I’ve been ignoring thoughts about the newspaper clipping, but they kept trying to bother me, like an itch at the back of my neck.

‘We’re going to live in the space station.’

‘If we’re the first two people on Mars, who built the space station?’

‘It was dropped there by spacecraft, just like the Rovers. It landed right on top of a mountain. We’ll be able to see for miles and miles and miles.’

I unexpectedly shiver with the excitement of it all - the first people on Mars!

‘What will we do all day?’

‘Study the planet.’ Marigold has finished programming the on-board computer and lays back, bracing her arms against the floor for the initial take-off. I do the same, pressing my spine against the back wall as we both gaze up at the ceiling, then through it, to the stars we’re about to fly into.

‘NASA has some very sophisticated equipment set up in our living quarters. We’ll have to observe what its studying, and make sure that everything is working well and repair any damage. We’ll also have to go outside and do Mars walks.’ And we look up at the clothes hanging over us, brushing against the top of our heads. Rows and rows of sparkling silver-grey spacesuits, with bulky arm and leg encasements, and gigantic boots. I hope NASA made them to fit, because Marigold and I are very different shapes.

The shuttle gives an unexpected shake as the rocket boosters fire up, and we both gasp at the shuddering in our crew cabin. Underneath us, massive engines are burning the fuel needed to lift us into space, and we take off in a roar of power. I clap my hands over my ears at the sound, but Marigold just gazes up at the ceiling of the cabin, as if willing us to get there faster.

It will take us almost a year to get to Mars.

As we roar through the sky we hear and feel the rocket boosters detach. Minutes later the external tank does the same, and our shuttle is free, flying through the atmosphere that buffets us badly before entering the peaceful silence of space. I sigh with relief.

‘The take-off is always the hardest part,’ said Marigold.

‘How are we breathing?’

‘Oxygen ports.’ Marigold pointed to the box-shapes on the other side of the cabin. ‘These machines recycle our air.’

Suddenly the hatch door rattles. Marigold lets out a little squeak. Then, to our horror and astonishment, it flies back, and the hatch is filled with a tall, alien shape.

‘What on earth are you two doing?’ it asks.

Marigold begins to scream.

By the time her mother arrives to pick her up, Marigold’s face has some colour in it again. Dad has made her a mug of hot chocolate and sliced an extra-thick piece of banana bread for her, talking to her in a soothing voice.

She manages to wave at me weakly as her mum backs her car out of our driveway.

‘I wish you girls would play outside and get some fresh air,’ says my dad, not for the first time, as we walk back to the house.

Hannah has started dinner. She says ‘Peter, I could use some help,’ in an unhappy voice. When my dad starts to unstack the dishwasher she says, ‘I wish I didn’t have to ask.’

I decide to leave. I know I’m supposed to study all kinds of human behaviour, but arguments aren’t one of my favourites to observe. My dad and Hannah can never argue for long because Arthur is always demanding attention, but once Hannah slapped the spatula down on the kitchen counter so hard it sent droplets of oil flying through the air, and my dad said ‘I just don’t know why you’re so upset,’ in a baffled voice.

I decide I have enough data on arguments and flee to my room.

The box is sitting on the end of my bed.

Chapter Seven - Upside Down

‘Perhaps we can talk about your mother,’ says Ms Suhn.

I shut my eyes, and Ms Suhn’s upside-down face disappears behind a soothing wall of black.

‘You mean Hannah,’ I correct, and I half expect Ms Suhn to sigh. But her voice takes on a determined tone.

‘No Ella, I mean your mother,’ she says sternly.

Instead, I tell her about the box that appeared on my bed, and the newspaper clipping, and how I’ve re-hidden the box in the drawers under Arthur’s cot.

My diversion tactic works, and Ms Suhn readies her pen.

‘That must have been quite exciting, reading about yourself in a newspaper,’ she says.

‘It can’t have been me!’ I say. But my voice sounds strange. I clear my throat and try again. ‘That baby was born on Earth. I was left here by the Mothership to. . . .’

‘You look human to me,’ says Ms Suhn, with the smile she uses to let me know she is sharing a little joke with me.

‘Sometimes I don’t think you really understand my mission,’ I say crossly.

‘But now you know that having blue hair doesn’t have to mean that you’re an alien.’

I don’t like the silence that follows her words. It’s dark and heavy like a thundercloud. I want to press my hands against my ears, to avoid the coming clap of noise. Ms Suhn crosses her hands over her lap, her pen and notepad forgotten, and waits patiently.

‘I can’t be from Earth,’ I say, my breath hitching in my throat. Ms Suhn leans across the coffee table, plucking a tissue from the box and holding it out to me.

‘Sometimes when we tell ourselves stories, they can start to seem real to us. But it’s important to know they’re just stories.’ Her voice is so gentle that it pulls tears from my eyes. They run down my face and into my ears. I take the tissue, and Ms Suhn stands and goes to the door, and calls my dad in. He sits on the couch and tries to hold me, but it’s difficult, because I’m upside-down.

Chapter Eight - Hannah

I’ve talked about Arthur and my dad, and Ms Suhn. Perhaps it’s time I talk about Hannah.

I feel very strange today. Its Saturday, but when my dad suggested I invite Marigold over Hannah said, ‘Perhaps its best Ella has a quiet day.’

My brain has been rattled since my last appointment with Ms Suhn. Strange thoughts have come loose and are now floating free. This morning I wanted to stay curled up in bed, under my quilt, but Hannah made me get up and shuffled me into the bathroom. She made me a big breakfast and fussed over me as dad was sent to tend to Arthur’s demands.

Arthur has been looking both surprised and disgruntled all morning. But for now he seems happy as he sits on my dad’s lap and monitors the information that my dad unwittingly relays out to him.

‘Kim Kardashian-West has written an autobiography, Arthur,’ he tells him.

I’ve eaten breakfast and helped Hannah do the dishes. It’s raining outside. I half-wish Marigold would come over. Playing Space Shuttle would distract me from the strange thoughts. Instead I will write in my journal. Ms Suhn always says it will help when I feel overwhelmed.

Hannah is a scientist too. But she doesn’t teach like my dad. She’s a geologist. She studies the Earth, prising out its secrets. She says the Earth has a lot of secrets. She says it holds onto trees that are now extinct, and old meteors and volcano eruptions that happened thousands or even millions of years ago. She says the Earth never lets go of anything, that it keeps everything that ever existed, forever.

Of course right now she can’t be a scientist, because Arthur keeps her locked down in this house. So she settles for reading a lot of text books. She gets very excited whenever she finds a new paper written by another geologist online. She says she might write a book on the patterns of mass extinctions written in fossilised trees. ‘When I have time,’ she adds, in a sing-song voice as she bounces Arthur on her hip.

She has dark brown hair which is always tied back in a messy bun and she hates to vacuum, so our carpet is always getting furry because it takes a long time for my dad to notice things like that. It’s not until Arthur begins to pick up scraps of paper and pen lids and paperclips and tries to cram them into his mouth that he scoops him up and drops him into his bouncy seat before rushing to get the vacuum cleaner from its cupboard. But Arthur hates the sound of the vacuum cleaner, so I’ll pick him up and take him outside so he can watch the people walking dogs or jogging along the footpath in front of our house. Hannah always comes with me and says, ‘Be careful, Ella,’ as if she expects me to drop him. I guess I could, because Arthur is very heavy for his size. It’s as if his center of gravity is heavier than it should be. Holding him is like holding a very small moon.

There was a time when Hannah didn’t live with us. She lived in Canada, and it was just me and my dad. Then she came to Australia, and met my dad, and we all moved into this brick house outside of the city, and Arthur joined us.

Sometimes when Arthur sees me, he kicks his legs excitedly and smiles, and I feel something watching.

Is it the Mothership? Did it send Arthur here?

Chapter Nine - A Terrible Sunny Day

Today Marigold wanted to play Space Shuttle again, since our first mission was aborted by the alien attack, but my dad put his foot down and drove us to the cinema. He bought us large buckets of popcorn and shoved us into a semi-dark theatre full of strangers, ordering us to ‘enjoy ourselves.’

We’re sitting up the back and watching a movie about a group of jungle animals that like to break into song when they’re happy. I find my foot tapping along with the music. Marigold keeps whispering that the movie is too loud, because she has noise sensitivity issues. That’s why I made sure we got a seat at the back. But her foot is tapping too.

When it’s over we stumble out into the brightness, blinking and disorientated and smelling like popcorn. As my dad navigates the traffic he says, ‘I rang a riding school this morning. We’ve thought perhaps you could both start lessons together.’

Marigold and I exchange alarmed looks.

After we drop Marigold at her house we drive home, where Hannah is waiting for us. She’s put Arthur into his baby harness and straps him to my dad’s chest, ordering him to take him for a walk around the block to ‘get some sun.’ As they make their way down the driveway Hannah takes my hand and says, ‘Come with me, Ella.’

I think she’s going to make me a hot chocolate, but instead she leads me to my bedroom, where the box is once again sitting on the end of my bed. I realise Hannah has been taking it out from my hiding places and putting it there, as if hiding it away is a bad thing.

The sun is casting a patch of warmth on my bed. Hannah sits down and pats the space next to her, and I sit cross-legged in that circle of warmth as she takes the lid off the box and takes out the little blanket with the faded-rose smell.

‘This was your baby blanket, Ella,’ she says.

I touch it, but I don’t feel anything familiar.

Underneath the blanket are the newspaper clippings and some photos and a pair of knitted baby boots. They’re the same blue as my hair, and suddenly, I remember her kitting. She was in an armchair with a big blanket over her legs and pulled up to her waist and a beanie on her head, as if she was very cold. And she was saying; ‘I need to do something,’ as her needles clicked, making a scarf for my dad. And her voice was both frustrated and frail, as if she was very tired. Then the memory is gone, like the almost-faded smell of roses.

I can’t do this anymore. I place everything back in the box and put the lid on, and Hannah holds me close and hands me tissues, but doesn’t say anything as I remember my mother. And I remember her leaving - leaving me behind on Earth without her. And now I don’t feel right. I ache all the time inside, and I know part of me will always be waiting for her to come back.

Chapter Ten - Peanut and I

The horses look down at us from their great height, both pairs of ears pitched forward and snorting warm breath over our faces.

Marigold tries to make a break for it, but her mum catches her expertly.

The riding instructor introduces us to the horses. There is Peanut, who is a chubby chestnut, and Peppermint, whose coat is dappled grey, like foamy beach waves. I’m handed Peanut’s reins and we’re told to ‘lead our mounts out to the riding arena.’

Peanut follows me agreeably. He has big dark eyes and large hooves that I stay clear of, so he doesn’t accidentally step on me.

Once I have my new riding helmet buckled on my dad tries to help me into the saddle, but the instructor stops him, fetching a plastic mounting block and showing me how to put my left foot into the stirrup and collect the reins and a bundle of coarse mane with one hand. Peanut waits patiently as I bounce around for a bit before launching myself into the saddle.

Once there I wait for the fear to surface. I’m so used to being afraid I’ve come to expect it. I feel my body stiffen.

Peanut shifts slightly, and I hear the sharp swish of his tail. He turns his head and regards me briefly with one eye, which is warm and brown and ringed with thick lashes, before looking forward again and taking a step as the instructor murmurs a word to him.

It occurs to me that Peanut and I are now in a strange partnership. I’m not sure he wants me on his back any more than I want to be here, but we’re stuck together for the next thirty minutes, and the least we can do is make our time pleasant. Hesitantly, I pat his warm neck.

‘Don’t make me fall off, and I won’t kick you,’ I say, hoping that he will somehow understand. I hold the rough leather reins gently and keep my heels still against Peanut’s sides. He lifts his head a little and we begin to walk around the perimeter of the arena as the instructor concentrates on Marigold, who’s trying to make herself hyperventilate. But her mother is firm, and Marigold is pushed into the saddle. The instructor leads Peppermint around the arena by her bridle, talking to Marigold in a low, soothing voice, as if she’s a frightened foal.

I tip my head up to face the sky and stare into the deep, endless blue. I wonder if my mother is watching me, from somewhere in that silent place. I wonder if spaceships fly past our planet, and if they sometimes stop, darting through our atmosphere and hovering behind clouds, just to see what we do all day. I think about Hannah telling me the Earth never lets anything go.

Then Peanut gives a little bounce under me and I clutch at his mane, reminded of our partnership. The fear I’ve been waiting for hasn’t surfaced, but I’m still nervous. Peanut tosses his head. He seems to be enjoying our ride and I gather my reins gently, because I’ve studied horses online and I’ve learnt that they are super-sensitive. I click my tongue and he goes a little faster, his tail swishing.

Behind me I can hear Marigold taking deep, calming breaths. Both our parents are sitting on the sun-bleached benches at the end of the arena, chatting about whatever it is that parents chat about - vegetables and flu shots and laundry, probably. The saddle creaks gently as Peanut strides around the big rectangle of the arena. Next week Marigold and I will be riding with a regular group.

It’s very difficult for me not to think of myself as an alien spy. What will I do now? What is the point of studying people and things, and learning about maths and history at school, if I can’t tell my mum about it all?

When I asked my dad he said, ‘You can tell me, Ella.’

‘But you already know everything,’ I argued. And his eyebrows did a funny little dance as he said, ‘I don’t know everything.’

To test him, I said ‘Where is my mum?’

And he shook his head, his face creased with sadness. ‘She died, Ella.’

But how could my mother just . . . disappear? As if she’s nothing more than a cloud that’s forced to leave the sky when the sun sets? And if she’s really gone, why can I feel her watching me so closely? But before I could ask my dad these questions he changed the subject, and told me that one day we’re going to move into another house, because the one we have now is getting too small. I’m alarmed, because I have a suspicion that Arthur may not be enough, that other tiny, overbearing beings will crowd our home. I asked my dad if any of them will have blue hair, and he laid his hand on my head and said, ‘No. There’s only one blue-haired girl in the world.’

Behind me I can hear Marigold gulping her breaths down.

‘Don’t worry, Marigold!’ I call out, but softly, because horses have super-hearing and I didn’t want Peanut to think I’m shouting. ‘Look, it’s easy!’ And I drop my reins, lifting my arms and flapping them like a bird as I searched the sky again, because it’s true, it is easy. Not everything is, but I grasp Peanut’s mane, and say boldly, ‘Go faster!’

Peanut snorts in surprise, then bounces into a trot.

If you enjoyed reading this little flash novel, please consider buying me a coffee!

Artwork is by AlyssaTallent - https://www.deviantart.com/alyssatallent

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