17: George – On the Flipside

It was the greatest storm in Earth’s history. Wind, ice, garbage, garbage trucks, they all cut through the air. Some cut through walls, others through George. Blind luck kept the worst at range, only small shards sliced his skin, tiny lines of red cross-crissing his forearms and rear neck or ass, anything left exposed from his defensive huddle. His clothes and skin tore, knuckles bled. The wind blasted hail and howling stone while the vortex below sucked and blew and threw everything it could to rip his hands from the rope, twisting him clockwise and counter to lift and drop him, smacking the earth for one last crumb, one last ape clinging to its fraying string tighter than he believed his muscles ever could. The world had flipped.

George cried for the winds to stop, begging, praying to them. Lightning flared in the screaming clouds. He screamed back, then turned to the apartment to scream for help instead. Holden and Wendy, arms wrapped over the window frame, screamed with him. They clung to the remains of the cladding-soaked rebar as hard as George could to his rope, neither audible and just as oblivious to his call. Zeke tumbled around the room, further in, half visible among the furniture rushing into the back wall. George caught his eyes before they squeezed tight and Zeke curled into a corner. If he couldn’t see a problem, it didn’t exist. He kept them shut tight until the wind grew to a kettle whistling crescendo, an inhuman wail, then with an ear popping boom, a sonic shockwave shattered the clouds and everything stopped.

The jetstreams dropped their flotsam. Glass and stone and metal, oh my, arced down, skyward. As his gut wrenching ride hit the breaks, George’s weight pressed into the rope. It’s slipknot constricted around his belly and he threw up. In the sudden stillness of the air, his hearing returned through a tinnitus whine, a whine that popped  through an intense earache into two distinct voices. Clutching the ledge with their eyes scrunched inward, Holden and Wendy still screamed. The knot tightened further and George threw up. His puke dribbled into the air.

“Are we dead?” Wendy said. Her voice came through like a thin wall stood between them.

She and Holden looked up from the ledge. Holden clamped his hands to his ears and peered down at the sky.

“If we’re dead, I’m giving every single religion a one star review. This isn’t what we were taught at all.”

His voice was just as muffled, but the pain in George’s ears was already lessening. By the time he pulled himself out from the knot to sit more comfortably, it was ignorable.

“It could explain why angels have wings.” He said between heaves. “Otherwise they’d need friends to help reel ‘em back in before the rope snaps and they drop into oblivion. Oh, speaking of which, would you two mind at all?”

“Shit!” Wendy said, and grabbed the winch.

She wrapped their end of the rope around her arm, released the pulley and fell inwards with it. Holden pried himself loose to help, one arm over her shoulder, the other under it. Together they hauled George up to the scaffold where he clambered on with a string of expletives.

“Thanks,” she said to Holden. “Thanks for letting us in, too.”

“George let me into your pad when I needed it. The least I can do is return the favor.”

“Anyone ever tell you, you talk funny?”

George’s arm reached in from the bottom of the window’s top. His hand flopped around and Holden took it. With a grunt, George slid in, collapsed on the ceiling and starfished.

“Never let me do that again.” He said. “Never. Fucking. Again.”

Wendy dropped across his chest, bouncing off his lungs. George coughed up more puke but she didn’t care, squeezing him tight and crying into his ear. She didn’t let go until Holden pried her off, but stayed on the floor, fingers interlaced with her brother’s as the hue of his face returned from purple. She hiccupped in silence.

With his heart and lungs recovered, George eased onto his ass and leaned in to hug his sister.

“Thank you.” He said. “I was half wondering if you’d leave me out there.”

“Never.” Wendy said. “Don’t ever think that.”

“From you two, I wouldn’t.”

He scowled at his old man. Zeke had found the plaster encrusted sofa, flipped it onto its base and laid down against a far wall, pretending to sleep. One eye popped open and caught George’s glare. It immediately closed, followed by the exaggerated wheeze of snoring.

Holden helped George and Wendy to their feet, then went to find a drink. The two siblings stared out the window at the upside-down apocalypse. The sky truly was below. And the ground was above, a slick, metallic mix of stone and the ceramics that once covered the city’s buildings. They made a dark mirror, clouds reflected in its smooth surface, broken by few holes. The holes were large, craters where busses or ships had broken free under their own weight and the uberstorm. Smaller objects and people still stuck out from it, forever melded to the city.

In front of Rhea’s apartment, Cat’s arm reached down to the sky, the terrible freedom she’d never have.

“Last time I was at this window,” George said. “Was with Cat.”

Wendy floundered for a moment, then said “I guess I’m sorry for your loss. I don’t really know how to comfort someone when their stalker dies.”

“That’s alright. I don’t know how to feel about it. Makes me wonder if Alfredo & Bobert are okay, though. They were her friends.”

“I don’t think there’s many, if any, people left out…” Wendy paused. “Hopefully they’re okay.”

A crash behind them drew their attention back into the apartment. Holden grunted as he pulled at a large heap of broken wood. When one piece gave, the rest collapsed and spread out across what had been the kitchen. He gave an “Aha!” and returned with his find.

“Three sodas and handful of Twinkies.” He said. “That’s all that survived Armageddon.”

He handed them a can and two Twinkies each, and as an afterthought tossed the last pack at Zeke. It bounced off the old man’s head and fell into his arms, but Zeke didn’t stir. His snoring had grown quieter, more regular. He’d passed out again.

With the immediate danger over, they focused on comfort, the fizz and sugar, last of the treats of their world. George pocketed a Twinkie and tore into the other, downing it with his cola in two gulps. He then tossed it out the window where it sailed away into the wind, under the empty basin that had held the oceans. Without water, or even a sand bed, the seas mysteries had been exposed. It didn’t seem so deep, just a shallow incline of a canyon with few caves. Wendy tossed her can and wrappers out and they followed George’s away to the jagged horizon. Waste disposable was certainly easier.

“You okay?” Wendy said. “George?”

George shook his head. “No. Not after that.”

“Rhea could still be—”

“No! Don’t.”

Wendy squeezed his hand. Holden patted his back.

“You’ve been privy to a change in perspective nobody else in the world has.” He said. “Let it sink in before you ruminate on possible insights. We’ll not press you.”

George scoffed. “I contemplated praying at one point, but I didn’t know where to aim it. I mean, is up down now? Is east west? What if I prayed to some god and a demon answered ‘cos I got the wrong direction?”

“Apologize and say you dialled the wrong number.”

The light faded through the clouds but didn’t entirely disappear. It was diffused, melting from glowing crimson to a deep, cold blue, the texture of moonlight, sans moon.

“When I find myself stressed or overloaded, I prefer to retreat to the comforts under a blanket.” Holden said. “Hopefully the beds are still intact. If we flip the mattresses, I’m sure they’ll still be soft on the underside.”

Wendy sighed. “That’s the best fucking idea I’ve heard all fucking day.”

“When did you last sleep?”

“I honestly couldn’t tell you. We found some people a couple of hours ago who were gonna put us up for the night. But, umm, George wanted to find Rhea first.”

George said nothing. Wendy and Holden left him to sift through his experience while they prepared a place to sleep. They sifted through the crust of stone and plaster across the beds. Holden took the large mattress in the master bedroom and gave her the child’s one on the grounds he wouldn’t fit on it. George sat by the window and stared up at Cat.

Shipyard Island wasn’t large. A journey from his place on the opposite side would take less than a half hour by bike. Cat had survived the fire and fumes only to cycle herself into the ground a few steps from what she thought was safety.

“What would you have found more heartbreaking, Cat?” George said. “Dying where you did, or succeeding only to die the same way in your sanctuary?”

“Don’t torture yourself.” Wendy said behind him. “People have gone mad asking those kinds of questions.”

“They go mad because there’s no answer.”

“And if there’s no answer, what’s the point of asking the question?”

He shrugged. Wendy hugged him from behind.

“Holden says if you don’t mind sharing a bed, the Yaos have a super king. Plenty of space, and I think you need to rest. It’s been a long, shit, a couple of days now.”

George didn’t turn round. “I’m not sleepy.”

“Well the offer’s there. I’m running on fumes and need to clear my head. Night.”

“Good night.”

He stood at the ledge and wondered how she could sleep. Sure the adrenaline was wearing off and they’d been awake for almost two days straight, but the world had fallen on its head and they’d watched the sky swallow the leftovers. George had dangled over it within reach of his sister and friend, and they’d been powerless to save him. His dad hadn’t even tried.

As the first night of that topsy-turvy world settled in, their newly riddled home settled with it, creaking, screeching as the walls, practically just rebar with a skin of solidified plaster and stone, warped and contracted. A small breeze blew through the cracks to steal the heat emanating from the roads five storeys above.

A soundless flash drew George’s eye down. What was left of the ceiling was Swiss cheese, a thousand holes letting in a wailing gale and flickers of lighting. Probing the hole, he discovered the ceiling wasn’t flat like the floor, but a dimpled, bubbled plane where concrete and plaster had dripped to the lower levels. Like the walls, it was mostly rebar, and when he a casual toe cap cracked the small hole wider, crumbs of rooftop fell away into the sky.

“We’re not gonna make it.” He said.

He swiped a bottle from his dad’s suitcase and grabbed a door from the collapsed kitchen cupboards, then slipped through the window and climbed back onto the scaffold. The planks had fallen away, leaving only interlocked metal bars, themselves remaining only due to their foundations cemented to the lower floors by an avalanche of concretion.

He laid the door across the bars, unscrewed the vodka and sat. He didn’t stop drinking until the sun rose, or descended, and the bottle ran dry. The sun itself was no longer a ball but a general light with no beginning or end, diffused through clouds and something he couldn’t guess at beyond them, something icy blue.

He didn’t know how long he’d sat there. The world had barely gone dark before the light returned, fading in on some celestial dimmer. It came from nowhere, everywhere at once, growing stronger rather than moving across the sky.

Once the bottle was empty, he stood and held it over the edge, then dropped it. The neck whistled into space as he kept his eyes on it, swaying on his feet until it grew too small to track, then his right foot extended over the edge after it. The dusk, or dawn, grew brighter underfoot. After an entire bottle of Dutch courage, standing without falling took great efforts. All he had to do was stop making them.

“Don’t do it.” He heard Rhea’s voice. “You can still make it.”

“No,” George said. “You weren’t there. You weren’t the one hanging over that fucker staring up at us.”

“Please don’t. Please step back.”

“It’s hungry. The sky wants to eat and I have nothing else to give.”

“Don’t you dare leave me!”

George looked up. “You left me.”

“No I didn’t! I waited for you. You’re the one who said you weren’t giving up on me and I’m holding you to that, George Travers!”

George’s eyes focused on a woman shouting at him from across the street.

“Rhea? Wait, are you for real?”

“Yes, I’m real! Are you drunk?”

George squinted. At the back door of the chapel, Rhea flailed her arms and called his name.

“George! Look at me!”

“Rhea?” he said, and reached out.

She smiled through tears and held her hand out, alive and welcoming. Rhea had made it! Her asshat of a dad had actually done his duty and taken her somewhere safe. George reached out to take her fingers, a wide grin straining his face as he fell forward to embrace her outstretched arms.

“No!” she cried. Her face fell.

His step forward wasn’t met with a surface to step on. George sobered in a heartbeat and his own face fell, mirroring hers.

And the rest of him fell, too.

Skywards.