Falling Up

There was a low hum, and then the ground began to vibrate. Next, her teacup floated to the ceiling, followed by the rest of her furniture. Her cat slowly rose to the ceiling, his legs stiff and rigid, confused by the sudden ability to fly. Her TV in the living room remained plugged into the wall and floated like a balloon. Soon, her chair lifted her to the popcorn ceiling, where she braced against it like a starfish on a rock. 

Eventually, everything slowly began to lower back from where it came from. The cat, still rigged, fell gently onto his feet. Pieces of the popcorn ceiling covered her left cheek and the rest of her clothing. She felt the chair under her again, and then she was where she had been sitting just minutes before. 

Outside, she could hear significant booming impacts around the neighborhood. She went to the window and watched as trash cans, trampolines, minivans, lawnmowers, bicycles, and swing sets came smashing back onto earth. Her TV failed to hover back down right-side-up, and with great difficulty, she pushed it back onto its stand. Her hands shook as she juggled the remote, anxiously hoping to understand what had happened.

She flipped to the news channel and watched a female news anchor nervously pat down her now frizzy hair. The anchor waited for the camera to re-angle itself before breaking the news. 

“This just in, a global disaster event is unfolding. What we have gathered at this moment is that gravity has seemingly failed. We are getting reports that these events have been isolated in different locations around the globe.”

The anchor pressed her earpiece to hear the latest information better. Then, nervously, like a deer in the headlights, she told the viewers that they had a leading professor of physics from the local university on the other end. The professor came online and rushed to fix his tie when his image popped up on one-half of the screen.

“Professor, thank you for doing this.”

“Thank you for having me.”

“Can you help us make sense of the gravitational occurrences happening around the globe?”

“Well, yes and no,” the professor began. “It seems earth has seen something like this before, although much less aggressive. At times, the earth’s magnetic fields have shifted. Sometimes, it is done by small measurements and other times, it is flipped entirely from one pole to the other. However, these events happen between two hundred million years to three hundred million years. What is odd this time is two things. First, the last shifting of the magnetic field was only twenty million years ago. Meaning, this is too soon for another. And lastly, this isn’t at the poles; this is everywhere and nowhere in particular.”

The anchor bobbed her head deep in concentration at the professor's words. Then, probably out of habit, she looked at her notes before asking the professor if the events typically cause gravity to fail.

“The short answer is no, or at least we don’t know. We haven’t been here to observe such an event,” replied the professor, now itching the top of his brow.

Suddenly, a humming noise drowned out their conversation. First, the cameras went up over the news desk. Then the anchor rose slowly with her notes, now suspended around her like orbiting planets. The channel's signal wavered as the anchor flailed wildly nearly out of frame, and then the channel cut to black. 

She went to the window and looked towards downtown. Rush hour traffic lifted into the air, all in a single line like one great snake. It lifted higher and higher, with other debris from the city. Then, to her horror, gravity clicked back on. The commuters plummeted towards the highway below. The patrons of the downtown rooftop restaurants fell towards their tables alongside their appetizers. She covered her eyes with her hands and turned away.

That evening, she had begun to hammer down her furniture before the next event. She tried to avoid going to the window, but her curiosity was too much for her. Across the street, she could see her neighbors preparing much like she was. However, they could also be seen packing as if to be gone for a long time. She wondered if they knew of somewhere safe, maybe the equator, she thought. She grabbed the last of the nails she found at the bottom of her hallway closet, which the landlord used to store spare parts for the unit.

She put the few nails left in her mouth and hammered one home into the base of her cat’s playpen. Then, she took one from her mouth and nailed it to the painting of the Brooklyn bridge she had bought at Target. She had never been to New York but thought the image tied the room together. She used the last of her nails to nail a pair of old boots to the floor. This was to keep her feet on the ground instead of her body pressed into the itchy asbestos ceiling. 

She tried the TV again, but there was no signal. Outside, she saw the glow of multiple blazes around town. She also heard the sounds of sirens. Brave, she thought, still out there even after all that. Beside her, her glass of water began to vibrate, and that now-familiar hum returned. She could hear an audible gasp from around the neighborhood. Wives gave a quick scream followed by their children's screams. Then everyone accepted that gravity was again gone, and their nighttime preparation was now to be tested. 

Before she lifted off the ground, she had slipped her right foot into the boot, followed by the other, and quickly tied them up as her hair began to float above her head. She watched the objects she had forgotten to secure rise to the ceiling. Her toaster zapped out of the wall socket, her Maidenhair fern splayed out on the popcorn ceiling and then was crushed, and then there was her cat. This time, however, her cat had landed right-side-up with his feet on the ceiling. Was it right-side-up or just up?

What was unnerving about this new event was that it seemed much stronger. She could see the shingles on her neighbor’s rooftop pulling away by the thousands into the August night. Furthermore, the force pulling at her was beginning to hurt her ankles. Then, without warning, houses began to pull off their foundations. The houses floated away like rocket ships destined for Mars. The water piping was ripped in half by the houses' untimely departure, and water followed the homes like reversed waterfalls. 

A great mass was moving over her place, but it was too dark to tell what it was. She leaned forward in her floor-secured boots. Then the object’s foghorn sounded, and she could make out the golden propellers of the container ship. The barnacle-covered bottom moved weightlessly over her apartment. 

Her hair was around her ears again, still slightly upturned. Then, gravity returned, but this time, it wasn’t as slow a descent as last time; instead, it was an immediate return of Newton's law. Her cat landed but was displeased with the velocity of his re-entry. Her toaster shattered onto the linoleum, and her fern’s pot shattered, covering the living room’s carpet with soil. Then she flinched with a quick ducking motion at the explosive sounds outside. House after house splintered into a million pieces, and overhead, she heard the ship's horn wane as it fell onto the golf course just behind her building.

She untied her laces and quickly grabbed her cat for comfort. He was grumpy, she knew, but he was patient enough to allow for a few short minutes of hugs. The world outside was no longer and never would be the same. The city was dark now. She couldn’t make out the buildings that remained. Her neighborhood was dotted with pancaked homes and others that had survived the second loss of gravity. No sirens could be heard, no movement in the remaining houses, not even the fires remained. 

She lay in her bed, which thankfully remained secured to the floor. She was proud of her handy work. However, she did not sleep. Instead, she looked at the ceiling, damaged here and there from the first event when all her furniture crushed up against it. She began to hear movement in the unit above her. Maybe it was her building settling incorrectly or that cute guy with the Doberman. She listened as footsteps could be heard on the walkway above her unit and the steps hurrying down the staircase towards her door. She remained frozen in bed for a few seconds after the knocking began. Then, his voice could be heard mumbling something. She quickly jumped out of bed and ran to the door. 

When she opened the door, he stood there with his Doberman, secured to his torso by a harness. The dog's belly faced her, and its paws drooped dumbly in front of it. The neighbor’s eyes were intense, and he did not ask for an invitation inside. Instead, he walked past her, the dog licking her face as he squeezed by, and then he inspected her unit thoroughly. He looked at the corners of the ceiling and knocked on the walls with his ear up against it. She watched him pace around, inspecting everything for what felt like ten minutes. Then he turned to her, his face calm, cool, and collected, his Doberman’s tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, and spoke directly.

“You cannot stay here.”

“And why is that?”

“Our foundation is compromised,” he pointed at the wall behind them and continued, “I came down here to be sure, and now that I am, I don’t want to stand in here a minute longer.”

“Where else can we go,” she asked, now hugging herself nervously.

“Wait here. I‘ll grab you something.”

He hurried out of her unit and back up to his unit without a moment's hesitation. Curiously, she went over to her wall, put her ear against it, and knocked. “Here,” he said, already back from his excursion. She turned around and saw a bag heading her way. She grabbed it like a sack of potatoes and inspected it. 

“It’s a parachute,” He said plainly. 

“And you want me to wear it?”

“When this happens again, we are going to float, which is fine, but it’s the coming back down that is the problem,” he pointed at a cord over the right shoulder strap of the bag, “Pull that when gravity returns, and we will safely fall back to earth.”

She looked at her cat, who sat attentively looking at them from the center of the room. Then, the neighbor looked at the cat and then back at her and pointed to the small harness clips around her torso area. She shuffled over to the cat, who looked at her utterly unamused at the situation but allowed her to fasten him to her chest. 

The newly formed clan stepped outside into the street. The apocalypse was in full swing. Society had quite literally been flipped upside down, and now the world of humanity was silent at night. They began to walk with no particular direction in mind. He suggested walking outside the city and into the country so they could always land safely in a field together. She didn’t have much of an opinion either way, so they left the suburbs, passed the golf course now housing the carcass of a ship, and on towards the cabbage fields and cornstalks. 

They talked about their lives, professions, hobbies, and zodiac signs. Then, they moved on to their pets' names. Then, they wondered if their landlord was dead. That led to talking about how many people were dead. Surely, all those commuters, anyone at a park walking down the street, and those in flying houses. Both weren’t too concerned about family because both hadn’t spoken to their family in some time. They grew quiet for a short time. She had been growing sore and achy from the walk. She looked at him, wondering how he was so calm during such a time. Soon, they reached an empty field and sat down on the soil below. 

She gave her cat a few nibbles of food she had put in her pocket, and he poured some of his water for the Doberman to drink. The four waited as the sun began to rise in the east. They were both unaware of how exhausted they were, and nearly simultaneously, they fell asleep. When she opened her eyes, there was nothing but white. She looked around at the infinite blankness and thought she had died. However, his figure was ahead of her in a silhouette of mist. She soon realized they were in a cloud and ascending higher into it. She saw that he was still asleep when they reached the top of the clouds. She yelled at him, but they were slowly floating further away from each other. 

She noticed a shape surfing above the clouds, growing closer and closer. Eventually, she realized it was a glider. It passed her, the pilot waving to her and her cat. Out of the top of the clouds came three hot air balloons. Then, a blimp breached the clouds like a whale in the ocean. Then, far away came the skyscrapers, still in one piece, and then closer, there were a few houses, a couple of cows, and a farmhouse. 

She kept yelling at her neighbor, but he remained slumped over, deep in sleep. The humming diminished, and then her stomach felt the butterflies you get on a rollercoaster. The house sank below the clouds, the cows mooed at the sudden change of direction, and the blimps and hot air balloons hesitated momentarily and corrected to the new direction of gravity. Her neighbor was jolted awake by the sudden G-forces. His Doberman’s ears flew up along with his slobbery tongue. He saw her in the distance, and just before they hit the top of the clouds, he pointed at the release clip for the chute.

He pulled his and then was gone into the whiteness. She fell deeper and deeper into the cloud, nervously grabbing, losing, and then finding the release clip again. Eventually, she got a tight handle on it and pulled. Her heart sank into her stomach at the sudden change in speed. 

It was peaceful and silent in the whiteness. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears. She lost track of up or down and became dizzy, completely forgetting herself. Her cat meowed, which aided her return to reality. She saw him and his Doberman gently circling around her. He told her to grab the handles above her to direct her flight. Gently, he helped guide her down to the field below. 

They landed flawlessly, her cat only slightly annoyed. He unclipped his Doberman, who ran off to sniff the soil for a spot to poop. She looked at her cat, who looked at her with an expression that said, “Don’t you dare unclip me.” He helped her refold her chute quickly in fear of another gravity event. However, most of the day went by without another event. They grew hungry and found a house that landed upside down in a field nearby. They scavenged it for food and shared a loaf of bread. He found a blanket in one of the rooms of the house, which they took out to the field to lay on and await the next event. She found a bottle of wine that had safely fallen into the branches of a pear tree nearby. They drank the wine, ate the bread, and relaxed in the sun. When night came on them, they returned to the house and grabbed more blankets and pillows. They slept without interruption. 

In the coming week, they made themselves a lovely wall-less, roof-less home out in the field. They had made a living room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. The bathroom was still being figured out. Rugs and carpets distinguished different rooms of their home, and dressers and bookshelves helped with privacy. The neighbor and his Doberman would pick fresh vegetables from the field, and she and her cat would scavenge homes for canned foods. Weeks went by, and they did not mind their new world. They never saw another soul but were not eager to go looking for one either. Eventually, even the Doberman and the cat got along. They stayed in their field, prepared for the next event, but as the weeks passed, they grew less and less worried about it ever happening again. They figured there was no reason to keep the chutes on their back anymore. So they left them by the door, which was a placemat that said, Welcome. 

“Soon, we will go and look for others,” He said to her while munching on an apple.

“Sure,” she replied. 

In the distance, hot air balloons drifted across the state, blimps scanned for survivors where the city once was, and those whose homes were still attached to the earth began scavenging their neighborhoods. Communities were built, and communications began to sound over radios from every stretch of the country. There was still a government, cities, and power plants. And there was still the happy couple in a field with their pet cat and Doberman. Soon, they would look for the others, but not yet.