AntiGravity
Nathan watched as carbonation bubbles rose to the top of his cup. He took a sip of the soda then pushed it away in disgust. Losing weight was impossible. His twisted mother had told him two-hundred-and-ninety-pounds wasn't that bad—there were plenty of people heavier than that! There were, but it was no excuse.
He stood up from the kitchen table with a sigh and caught a glimpse of his reflection on the microwave door. One look at his receding hairline made him turn away. He walked over to his living room window and pulled back the curtains slightly. He could see Devin Leavitt hobbling out of his house hungover and only wearing his underwear. He had a fine figure. Too bad he was a jerk and a loser, always bringing girls over to his place once a week. Nathan would have loved to know how the guy stayed fit. Heck, all Nathan had to do was sniff at a chocolate cake and he'd gain ten pounds. If Devin could only give him some pointers, maybe Nathan would have girls come over to his house one day.
The irony behind it all was that Nathan didn't use to even like food. When he was a kid, the trolls he called parents pushed the boundaries of what one would call 'parental discipline'. Bedtime at eight-thirty until he was eighteen. No sleep-overs. Touch a video-game controller and you'd be grounded for life: video games were of the Devil. Saturdays weren't for hanging with friends, they were for housework.
But the worse rule of all was the one enacted around the dinner table. Mom would dish up for everyone, not allowing anyone to make their own dinner decisions. She'd grab your plate and fill it with whatever she thought was best for you. Didn't like carrots? Too bad. Want more bread? Well you're getting a plateful of hash instead. Adding to it, was she would portion everything to the way she saw fit.
Nathan remembered being at that table; sitting quietly and staring at his parents with a sense of nervousness. Mom, with her black hair pulled back far too tight, slammed down a massive plate full of just mashed potatoes in front of Nathan.
"That's way too much!" he'd complained.
Her lips pursed and she turned away, ignoring his comment. His father continued reading the paper, not even looking at them.
"Mom, I can't eat all that!"
She turned back to him, hands on her hips and a twitch in her eye. "You're a growing boy Nathan. Eat it all up, up, up. You know the rules: you can't leave the table until all your food has been eaten!"
So Nathan would try. He would eat until he wanted to puke and sit back. Then his mother would come sprint-walking to his side of the table and stand next to him, 'assisting' if he couldn't eat on his own.
"Come on Nathan. You eat the rest of that food! Do you know how hard your father works every day to provide for you? Your ingratitude's going to land you in the shame room! Eat up, up, up!"
The shame room: a festering hallway closet full of damp wood and musty smells. He'd been locked up in there plenty enough for his 'misbehavior'; surrounded by darkness and spiders for hours at a time. Nathan would continue eating, pushing beyond his capabilities. He constantly went to bed with a pained, bloated stomach.
Years later when he was living on his own, he found himself eating massive quantities of food and thinking back on those moments, hating himself for what he'd become. A fatty. Lard-ball. Overweight.
Nathan sat down on his canary yellow couch; a hand-me-down from his cousin who would have thrown it away or burned the ugly thing. He grabbed his TV remote and clicked the ON button. Nothing happened. With a grunt, he stood and checked the TV plug. Still connected. Must have been the batteries then. He took two steps towards the kitchen when he heard the noise start up: a long, wailing siren. Starting at a low pitch, it slowly grew in volume and tone. He recognized it instantly. It was the noise they always played in movies when a city was going to be threatened by a nuke. The town alarm system.
He ran towards his front window and yanked the curtain back. He could see Devin Leavitt outside, looking about in confusion. He was still in his underwear, but hadn't noticed it. Others were coming out of their houses, some in robes and others looking pissed at having been awoken on a Saturday.
What was going on? Were they under attack? Terrorists? A bomb? A flippin' tornado?
There was a slight vibration to the floor and Nathan grabbed at the window-frame. A tremor? Was it an earthquake?
Then it hit. Violent and fast. But not an earthquake. Nathan's feet flipped out from under him and he went tumbling. Upwards. His mind and body both did a backflip and he rammed into his ceiling, all of his furniture slamming and crashing around him with a huge crunch. Shattering glass and snapping items exploded throughout his house. His confusion and disorientation was so great, he hadn't even had time to react. What, how, w--
Gravity had just reversed.
He lay there across the ceiling next to his physics-defying yellow couch, spread-eagled like an idiot. His eyes were bulging out and his mouth opened and closed like a fish. His mind couldn't absorb the situation. His inner ears were twisting and thrumming, causing massive dizziness and nausea. He tried pulling himself up--or down—and standing on the ceiling. The situation was almost comical. His arms spun in windmills and he fell back against his butt, sitting upside-down.
He finally paid attention to the noise. The screaming coming from outside. He twisted like a worm until his belly was against the ceiling and pushed himself away. Putting his feet beneath—or above—himself, he stood. He didn't torpedo back to the ground, smashing his head like an egg against the carpet. He was standing upside-down like some sort of character in a superhero comic book.
He stumbled drunkenly towards the window, now at his neck level instead of his navel. The curtains hung up to his feet and free-floated there. Hung up to his feet, hah. Crazy.
He peered out his window and saw a terrifying sight. It was hard to describe. Like upside-down rain that came from the ground and shot to the sky. But the rain was made of people, cars, and whatever else wasn't strapped down. Screaming in horror, bodies twisted and plummeted upwards; launched straight into the clouds far above and beyond. They were confetti, fluttering to their deaths.
Devin Leavitt held on to a fire hydrant, legs pointing straight up into the sky, crying and shouting; his face a mask of terror. His underwear had slipped down slightly, revealing one buttocks. Another person, a woman twenty feet away, held on by her fingertips to a light post. With a bone-shattering shriek, she lost her grip and plummeted into the sky. Devin slid up the body of the fire hydrant and grasped at the metal chain that connected to the cap. He was begging for someone to help him.
Nathan licked his lips, feeling his knees shake. The world had turned inside-out and upside-down. Reality had been shattered. Devin slid some more and let out a wail. Nathan made up his mind and ran across his ceiling to the front door. The ceiling groaned under him, its structure under a pressure it had never meant to withstand. Nathan dodged crushed furniture, making it to the waiting doorframe that started at eye-level.
With a quick look around, he spotted a chair and a broom. He propped the chair against the wall and stood on top of it, reaching up for the handle. He opened the door and pushed it outwards. He could feel gravity trying to yank him out by his collar and tip him head-over-heels into the cloudbank.
With the door opened, the noise became a whole lot clearer. Cars, their alarms blaring, fell like meteorites into the heavens below. A cacophony of crying, yelling, crashing, and exploding interwove into a blare of protest against whatever had just happened. Nathan wiped sweat from his forehead and looked about, wondering how he could help Devin. His eyes caught the long garden hose wrapped around a roller attached to his wall. He stretched out the broom, trying to maneuver the end of the hose towards him. The tip of the broom barely reached and he did everything he could to not drop it. Devin was now hanging by his fingertips. It was a race against time to save his life.
The broom poked and wiggled the end of the hose to no avail. Nathan leaned out over the doorframe, vertigo making bile rise to his throat. If he looked down, he could see clouds. If he looked up, he could see grass making up the ceiling of the world. Lunacy. He was stuck in a crack-induced hallucination; brain not able to process what his eyes were seeing.
He spun the crank on the roller and foot-by-foot, the hose unraveled downwards into the sky. When it was considerably longer, he was able to wrap it around his broom and bring it into his awaiting hand. He unraveled the entire hose until he could no longer yank at it—the end piece attached to the roller.
Devin had noticed him and now had his full panicked attention focused on what Nathan was doing. He was nodding, mania causing him to hyperventilate. Nathan grabbed the metal tip of the hose and gauged the distance from his door to the fire hydrant. It would make it. Barely. If Devin was even able to grab the hose, he'd Tarzan across the bottomless chasm and have to climb hand-over-hand up to his door. That was, if the roller didn't rip off the wall and send the almost-naked man to his death. A lot of speculation and not enough solidity to the plan. But screw logic, gravity had stopped working.
Nathan threw the hose, careful with his aim. The metal came close to hitting Devin, but the man missed grabbing it and nearly lost his precarious grip. Nathan was forced to reel in the hose using the broom once more.
"Hurry!" Devin begged, "I'm slipping!"
Nathan made sure Devin was ready and threw the hose again. When the metal end-piece was nearly to him, Devin did the only thing he could in such desperate circumstances. He let go of the fire hydrant and spun to grab the passing safety-line. For a brief moment the man hung suspended in space. The image could have been an incredible sci-fi painting; a poster for a hit movie. Then the man grabbed the hose and plummeted downwards into the sky. When his fall hit its zenith, he began to curve towards Nathan. The roller groaned under the pressure and there was a snap—a long crack appearing along the axis of the shaft.
Devin swung down, screaming at the top of his lungs, and curved back up the other way. He swung freely over thin air. His movements slowed and eventually the hose's wild swaying ceased. Nathan could see rivulets of blood running down Devin's arms from where his hands grasped the hose for dear life.
"You have to climb!" he called down, eyeballing the roller. "Hurry!"
Devin groaned out and reached up, pulling himself up a few feet. He grimaced in exertion and pain.
"Keep going!" Nathan warned.
Devin gave a strained roar and yanked up again. The roller tipped and bent, cracking sounds echoing out. In the distance a window shattered and someone toppled out, howling. Nathan watched the body twist and spin; falling, falling, falling—until it was only a pinprick that disappeared into the clouds. He looked back to Devin. The man had nearly made it to the roller, his arms shaking with exhaustion. Nathan was impressed that Devin had been able to actually pull it off so far. Adrenalin and a fit body did wonders.
"How do I get to you?" he wheezed.
Devin had a valid point. The man was at eye-level, but four feet away. The roller jolted, a section of it breaking loose from the wall.
"I'm gonna fall man!" Devin shrieked.
Nathan's mind raced, trying to think of a solution to the problem. An idea hit him.
"Throw me the hose!" he demanded.
Devin opened his mouth to protest, but decided there wasn't enough time. Instead, he complied. He grabbed a hold of the roller and using his feet, kicked at the hose until it was swinging. Nathan used the broom handle to guide the hose up towards his hand. Taking the end, he turned and jumped down the chair and ran across the ceiling to the hallway. He wrapped the hose twice around the closet handle and tied it off. He ran back and jumped up on top of the chair. He peered through the doorframe.
"Still there?" he asked.
"What do you mean I'm still here? Of course I am!" Devin shouted. The roller groaned once more.
"Grab a hold of the hose and climb up to me! I secured it! Somewhat..."
"Somewhat?" Devin yelped.
The roller snapped and Devin grabbed at the hose last minute. He fell a few feet and stopped, once more hanging in mid-air. Nathan could hear a bang come from his hallway and knew the door was wide open. The doorknob wouldn't last for long so Nathan grabbed at the rope and began to pull at it while Devin climbed. In the distance, a gas line ruptured and an entire city block exploded into flames; chunks of house, road, and debris flying into the void. Somewhere in that falling mess were a bunch of people that thought they had survived the worst of it in their houses. Devin grabbed the edge of the doorframe and pulled himself through, falling down onto the ceiling with a grunt. He lay there, covered in sweat and blood, gasping for air.
"You should have been a rock climber or something." Nathan said lamely.
Devin couldn't reply, his body was exhausted. Nathan left to get the man a drink. In the kitchen, he was left staring up at the upside-down sink. Would there even be any water? Any reservoir of any sorts would have fallen away. It made Nathan think of the oceans. He tried to imagine how that would have looked like from the coastline but couldn't grasp the imagery. It would have been... beautiful destruction. Apocalyptic. Through his kitchen window he could see a dead dog hanging by its chain in mid-air; choked by its collar.
He walked over to his fridge, smashed open against the ceiling and partially hanging into his attic. He found a bottle of cold water and brought it back to Devin. The man nodded in thanks and drank deeply. Nathan grabbed some clothes from his mangled room and Devin threw them on. They were many sizes too big, but the guy didn't seem to mind. Instead he shook his head and sniffed.
"It's over. It's all over for us."
"What do you mean?" Nathan asked.
"A bit unexpected, but this is how the world ends."
He motioned to Nathan's clothes he was wearing.
"Drank 'til I blacked out last night. Girlfriend dumped me. This morning, it uh—it wasn't my most glorious moment. My girlfriend's probably dead now."
He walked off into Nathan's house. Nathan followed him, wondering what the guy was going to do. The man checked each window, peering out and gazing at the neighboring houses.
"What are you doing?" Nathan asked.
Devin turned and faced him. "This window, it's pretty close to the other house. The other house even has a window facing this one. I bet I could jump the gap and smash through it."
"Why in the world would you want to do that?" Nathan asked in horror.
Devin shook his head. "My girlfriend, she lives just a block away. I have to check on her."
Nathan scoffed but Devin brushed him off. Instead, he reached up and opened the window. He climbed to the ledge and looked down.
"You have any broken doors?"
Nathan cocked his head, perplexed. "Maybe. The hallway closet is probably nearly off its hinges after your climb."
"Bring it here?"
Nathan went to the half-torn door and with a little bit of pressure, broke the last hinge free. He took it back to Devin. Devin took the wood and stabbed it at the nearby neighboring window, shattering it. He planted the door across the gap.
"Man, not much room between houses here, huh?"
He tested the bridge with one foot. It held. He turned back to Nathan and nodded to him.
"You saved my life and I don't even know your name."
"Nathan. I know you. You're Devin."
The man nodded. "I don't really want to know how you know my name, but that's all water under the bridge. Or, over the bridge now. Doesn't matter. Thanks for what you did back there."
He stuck out his hand and Nathan shook it, mouth half-open. Devin stood on the door and walked across it in quick short steps; arms out to balance himself. When he reached the other window he jumped through it and yanked the door after him. He gave a wave to Nathan.
"If this really is the end Nathan, I'll see you on the other side right? Maybe then we'll get to know each other?"
He disappeared inside. Nathan ran around into the living room to see if he could spot him through the other window. He waited, watching the neighbor house. He heard a shatter and knew that Devin was making his way across the block.
As he watched, he heard a groan. His house wiggled then was still. Nathan felt as if his heart had stopped beating. He stood stock-still. Dust hung in the air around him. There was another groan and a cracking noise. Nathan's eyes went wide. He sprinted back towards the open window Devin had climbed through, but it was too late. Houses weren't built to rest upside-down. There was cracking and suddenly, an explosion. It was as if the ceiling—or floor—had burst. It gave out under him; splintering, fracturing and avalanching in every direction. The entirety of his house collapsed into the sky.
Nathan's body spun and smashed into the exploding wood. He was falling through the ceiling, into the attic; thousands of pounds of material tumbling with him. He could see nothing but a chaotic mess of wood and debris. Sunlight. He'd broken through.
He felt his stomach launch into his throat and wind tear into his face and clothing. Chunks and particles of his house, his furniture, and his life fell all around him. He was screaming. The ground was rising away from him. Up, up, up.
Eat it up, up, up. He heard his mother say into his head. Up, up, up. Up into the sky.
He could see the clouds coming towards him. The blue of the heavens were going to swallow him up as if he had now himself become food. Even though he was heavy, he didn't plummet faster. Guess his weight didn't matter after all.
He stood up from the kitchen table with a sigh and caught a glimpse of his reflection on the microwave door. One look at his receding hairline made him turn away. He walked over to his living room window and pulled back the curtains slightly. He could see Devin Leavitt hobbling out of his house hungover and only wearing his underwear. He had a fine figure. Too bad he was a jerk and a loser, always bringing girls over to his place once a week. Nathan would have loved to know how the guy stayed fit. Heck, all Nathan had to do was sniff at a chocolate cake and he'd gain ten pounds. If Devin could only give him some pointers, maybe Nathan would have girls come over to his house one day.
The irony behind it all was that Nathan didn't use to even like food. When he was a kid, the trolls he called parents pushed the boundaries of what one would call 'parental discipline'. Bedtime at eight-thirty until he was eighteen. No sleep-overs. Touch a video-game controller and you'd be grounded for life: video games were of the Devil. Saturdays weren't for hanging with friends, they were for housework.
But the worse rule of all was the one enacted around the dinner table. Mom would dish up for everyone, not allowing anyone to make their own dinner decisions. She'd grab your plate and fill it with whatever she thought was best for you. Didn't like carrots? Too bad. Want more bread? Well you're getting a plateful of hash instead. Adding to it, was she would portion everything to the way she saw fit.
Nathan remembered being at that table; sitting quietly and staring at his parents with a sense of nervousness. Mom, with her black hair pulled back far too tight, slammed down a massive plate full of just mashed potatoes in front of Nathan.
"That's way too much!" he'd complained.
Her lips pursed and she turned away, ignoring his comment. His father continued reading the paper, not even looking at them.
"Mom, I can't eat all that!"
She turned back to him, hands on her hips and a twitch in her eye. "You're a growing boy Nathan. Eat it all up, up, up. You know the rules: you can't leave the table until all your food has been eaten!"
So Nathan would try. He would eat until he wanted to puke and sit back. Then his mother would come sprint-walking to his side of the table and stand next to him, 'assisting' if he couldn't eat on his own.
"Come on Nathan. You eat the rest of that food! Do you know how hard your father works every day to provide for you? Your ingratitude's going to land you in the shame room! Eat up, up, up!"
The shame room: a festering hallway closet full of damp wood and musty smells. He'd been locked up in there plenty enough for his 'misbehavior'; surrounded by darkness and spiders for hours at a time. Nathan would continue eating, pushing beyond his capabilities. He constantly went to bed with a pained, bloated stomach.
Years later when he was living on his own, he found himself eating massive quantities of food and thinking back on those moments, hating himself for what he'd become. A fatty. Lard-ball. Overweight.
Nathan sat down on his canary yellow couch; a hand-me-down from his cousin who would have thrown it away or burned the ugly thing. He grabbed his TV remote and clicked the ON button. Nothing happened. With a grunt, he stood and checked the TV plug. Still connected. Must have been the batteries then. He took two steps towards the kitchen when he heard the noise start up: a long, wailing siren. Starting at a low pitch, it slowly grew in volume and tone. He recognized it instantly. It was the noise they always played in movies when a city was going to be threatened by a nuke. The town alarm system.
He ran towards his front window and yanked the curtain back. He could see Devin Leavitt outside, looking about in confusion. He was still in his underwear, but hadn't noticed it. Others were coming out of their houses, some in robes and others looking pissed at having been awoken on a Saturday.
What was going on? Were they under attack? Terrorists? A bomb? A flippin' tornado?
There was a slight vibration to the floor and Nathan grabbed at the window-frame. A tremor? Was it an earthquake?
Then it hit. Violent and fast. But not an earthquake. Nathan's feet flipped out from under him and he went tumbling. Upwards. His mind and body both did a backflip and he rammed into his ceiling, all of his furniture slamming and crashing around him with a huge crunch. Shattering glass and snapping items exploded throughout his house. His confusion and disorientation was so great, he hadn't even had time to react. What, how, w--
Gravity had just reversed.
He lay there across the ceiling next to his physics-defying yellow couch, spread-eagled like an idiot. His eyes were bulging out and his mouth opened and closed like a fish. His mind couldn't absorb the situation. His inner ears were twisting and thrumming, causing massive dizziness and nausea. He tried pulling himself up--or down—and standing on the ceiling. The situation was almost comical. His arms spun in windmills and he fell back against his butt, sitting upside-down.
He finally paid attention to the noise. The screaming coming from outside. He twisted like a worm until his belly was against the ceiling and pushed himself away. Putting his feet beneath—or above—himself, he stood. He didn't torpedo back to the ground, smashing his head like an egg against the carpet. He was standing upside-down like some sort of character in a superhero comic book.
He stumbled drunkenly towards the window, now at his neck level instead of his navel. The curtains hung up to his feet and free-floated there. Hung up to his feet, hah. Crazy.
He peered out his window and saw a terrifying sight. It was hard to describe. Like upside-down rain that came from the ground and shot to the sky. But the rain was made of people, cars, and whatever else wasn't strapped down. Screaming in horror, bodies twisted and plummeted upwards; launched straight into the clouds far above and beyond. They were confetti, fluttering to their deaths.
Devin Leavitt held on to a fire hydrant, legs pointing straight up into the sky, crying and shouting; his face a mask of terror. His underwear had slipped down slightly, revealing one buttocks. Another person, a woman twenty feet away, held on by her fingertips to a light post. With a bone-shattering shriek, she lost her grip and plummeted into the sky. Devin slid up the body of the fire hydrant and grasped at the metal chain that connected to the cap. He was begging for someone to help him.
Nathan licked his lips, feeling his knees shake. The world had turned inside-out and upside-down. Reality had been shattered. Devin slid some more and let out a wail. Nathan made up his mind and ran across his ceiling to the front door. The ceiling groaned under him, its structure under a pressure it had never meant to withstand. Nathan dodged crushed furniture, making it to the waiting doorframe that started at eye-level.
With a quick look around, he spotted a chair and a broom. He propped the chair against the wall and stood on top of it, reaching up for the handle. He opened the door and pushed it outwards. He could feel gravity trying to yank him out by his collar and tip him head-over-heels into the cloudbank.
With the door opened, the noise became a whole lot clearer. Cars, their alarms blaring, fell like meteorites into the heavens below. A cacophony of crying, yelling, crashing, and exploding interwove into a blare of protest against whatever had just happened. Nathan wiped sweat from his forehead and looked about, wondering how he could help Devin. His eyes caught the long garden hose wrapped around a roller attached to his wall. He stretched out the broom, trying to maneuver the end of the hose towards him. The tip of the broom barely reached and he did everything he could to not drop it. Devin was now hanging by his fingertips. It was a race against time to save his life.
The broom poked and wiggled the end of the hose to no avail. Nathan leaned out over the doorframe, vertigo making bile rise to his throat. If he looked down, he could see clouds. If he looked up, he could see grass making up the ceiling of the world. Lunacy. He was stuck in a crack-induced hallucination; brain not able to process what his eyes were seeing.
He spun the crank on the roller and foot-by-foot, the hose unraveled downwards into the sky. When it was considerably longer, he was able to wrap it around his broom and bring it into his awaiting hand. He unraveled the entire hose until he could no longer yank at it—the end piece attached to the roller.
Devin had noticed him and now had his full panicked attention focused on what Nathan was doing. He was nodding, mania causing him to hyperventilate. Nathan grabbed the metal tip of the hose and gauged the distance from his door to the fire hydrant. It would make it. Barely. If Devin was even able to grab the hose, he'd Tarzan across the bottomless chasm and have to climb hand-over-hand up to his door. That was, if the roller didn't rip off the wall and send the almost-naked man to his death. A lot of speculation and not enough solidity to the plan. But screw logic, gravity had stopped working.
Nathan threw the hose, careful with his aim. The metal came close to hitting Devin, but the man missed grabbing it and nearly lost his precarious grip. Nathan was forced to reel in the hose using the broom once more.
"Hurry!" Devin begged, "I'm slipping!"
Nathan made sure Devin was ready and threw the hose again. When the metal end-piece was nearly to him, Devin did the only thing he could in such desperate circumstances. He let go of the fire hydrant and spun to grab the passing safety-line. For a brief moment the man hung suspended in space. The image could have been an incredible sci-fi painting; a poster for a hit movie. Then the man grabbed the hose and plummeted downwards into the sky. When his fall hit its zenith, he began to curve towards Nathan. The roller groaned under the pressure and there was a snap—a long crack appearing along the axis of the shaft.
Devin swung down, screaming at the top of his lungs, and curved back up the other way. He swung freely over thin air. His movements slowed and eventually the hose's wild swaying ceased. Nathan could see rivulets of blood running down Devin's arms from where his hands grasped the hose for dear life.
"You have to climb!" he called down, eyeballing the roller. "Hurry!"
Devin groaned out and reached up, pulling himself up a few feet. He grimaced in exertion and pain.
"Keep going!" Nathan warned.
Devin gave a strained roar and yanked up again. The roller tipped and bent, cracking sounds echoing out. In the distance a window shattered and someone toppled out, howling. Nathan watched the body twist and spin; falling, falling, falling—until it was only a pinprick that disappeared into the clouds. He looked back to Devin. The man had nearly made it to the roller, his arms shaking with exhaustion. Nathan was impressed that Devin had been able to actually pull it off so far. Adrenalin and a fit body did wonders.
"How do I get to you?" he wheezed.
Devin had a valid point. The man was at eye-level, but four feet away. The roller jolted, a section of it breaking loose from the wall.
"I'm gonna fall man!" Devin shrieked.
Nathan's mind raced, trying to think of a solution to the problem. An idea hit him.
"Throw me the hose!" he demanded.
Devin opened his mouth to protest, but decided there wasn't enough time. Instead, he complied. He grabbed a hold of the roller and using his feet, kicked at the hose until it was swinging. Nathan used the broom handle to guide the hose up towards his hand. Taking the end, he turned and jumped down the chair and ran across the ceiling to the hallway. He wrapped the hose twice around the closet handle and tied it off. He ran back and jumped up on top of the chair. He peered through the doorframe.
"Still there?" he asked.
"What do you mean I'm still here? Of course I am!" Devin shouted. The roller groaned once more.
"Grab a hold of the hose and climb up to me! I secured it! Somewhat..."
"Somewhat?" Devin yelped.
The roller snapped and Devin grabbed at the hose last minute. He fell a few feet and stopped, once more hanging in mid-air. Nathan could hear a bang come from his hallway and knew the door was wide open. The doorknob wouldn't last for long so Nathan grabbed at the rope and began to pull at it while Devin climbed. In the distance, a gas line ruptured and an entire city block exploded into flames; chunks of house, road, and debris flying into the void. Somewhere in that falling mess were a bunch of people that thought they had survived the worst of it in their houses. Devin grabbed the edge of the doorframe and pulled himself through, falling down onto the ceiling with a grunt. He lay there, covered in sweat and blood, gasping for air.
"You should have been a rock climber or something." Nathan said lamely.
Devin couldn't reply, his body was exhausted. Nathan left to get the man a drink. In the kitchen, he was left staring up at the upside-down sink. Would there even be any water? Any reservoir of any sorts would have fallen away. It made Nathan think of the oceans. He tried to imagine how that would have looked like from the coastline but couldn't grasp the imagery. It would have been... beautiful destruction. Apocalyptic. Through his kitchen window he could see a dead dog hanging by its chain in mid-air; choked by its collar.
He walked over to his fridge, smashed open against the ceiling and partially hanging into his attic. He found a bottle of cold water and brought it back to Devin. The man nodded in thanks and drank deeply. Nathan grabbed some clothes from his mangled room and Devin threw them on. They were many sizes too big, but the guy didn't seem to mind. Instead he shook his head and sniffed.
"It's over. It's all over for us."
"What do you mean?" Nathan asked.
"A bit unexpected, but this is how the world ends."
He motioned to Nathan's clothes he was wearing.
"Drank 'til I blacked out last night. Girlfriend dumped me. This morning, it uh—it wasn't my most glorious moment. My girlfriend's probably dead now."
He walked off into Nathan's house. Nathan followed him, wondering what the guy was going to do. The man checked each window, peering out and gazing at the neighboring houses.
"What are you doing?" Nathan asked.
Devin turned and faced him. "This window, it's pretty close to the other house. The other house even has a window facing this one. I bet I could jump the gap and smash through it."
"Why in the world would you want to do that?" Nathan asked in horror.
Devin shook his head. "My girlfriend, she lives just a block away. I have to check on her."
Nathan scoffed but Devin brushed him off. Instead, he reached up and opened the window. He climbed to the ledge and looked down.
"You have any broken doors?"
Nathan cocked his head, perplexed. "Maybe. The hallway closet is probably nearly off its hinges after your climb."
"Bring it here?"
Nathan went to the half-torn door and with a little bit of pressure, broke the last hinge free. He took it back to Devin. Devin took the wood and stabbed it at the nearby neighboring window, shattering it. He planted the door across the gap.
"Man, not much room between houses here, huh?"
He tested the bridge with one foot. It held. He turned back to Nathan and nodded to him.
"You saved my life and I don't even know your name."
"Nathan. I know you. You're Devin."
The man nodded. "I don't really want to know how you know my name, but that's all water under the bridge. Or, over the bridge now. Doesn't matter. Thanks for what you did back there."
He stuck out his hand and Nathan shook it, mouth half-open. Devin stood on the door and walked across it in quick short steps; arms out to balance himself. When he reached the other window he jumped through it and yanked the door after him. He gave a wave to Nathan.
"If this really is the end Nathan, I'll see you on the other side right? Maybe then we'll get to know each other?"
He disappeared inside. Nathan ran around into the living room to see if he could spot him through the other window. He waited, watching the neighbor house. He heard a shatter and knew that Devin was making his way across the block.
As he watched, he heard a groan. His house wiggled then was still. Nathan felt as if his heart had stopped beating. He stood stock-still. Dust hung in the air around him. There was another groan and a cracking noise. Nathan's eyes went wide. He sprinted back towards the open window Devin had climbed through, but it was too late. Houses weren't built to rest upside-down. There was cracking and suddenly, an explosion. It was as if the ceiling—or floor—had burst. It gave out under him; splintering, fracturing and avalanching in every direction. The entirety of his house collapsed into the sky.
Nathan's body spun and smashed into the exploding wood. He was falling through the ceiling, into the attic; thousands of pounds of material tumbling with him. He could see nothing but a chaotic mess of wood and debris. Sunlight. He'd broken through.
He felt his stomach launch into his throat and wind tear into his face and clothing. Chunks and particles of his house, his furniture, and his life fell all around him. He was screaming. The ground was rising away from him. Up, up, up.
Eat it up, up, up. He heard his mother say into his head. Up, up, up. Up into the sky.
He could see the clouds coming towards him. The blue of the heavens were going to swallow him up as if he had now himself become food. Even though he was heavy, he didn't plummet faster. Guess his weight didn't matter after all.
