2933 [SHORT STORY]

Part 1

I breathe in the fresh air as I step off the bus, squeezing my eyes shut in delight before I step to the ground outside. My eyes immediately snap open and I look around. Water, there's water everywhere, reaching most people's hips, children's shoulders, my waist... I continue to look around frantically, why is no one else bothered by this? That's when I notice it, people talking into ear pieces without a device such as a phone nearby, skaters skating on boards without wheels, cars doing the same thing; they're hovering. How is that even possible?

I'm shoved out of the way by someone else getting off the bus but something else isn't right. "The clothes..." I whisper, all the clothes, they're all wrong. Skin tight, they look kind of like bathing suit material but something more... Something I've never seen before. Some people have special jackets, or other clothes over the top but other just walk around in these suits. Nothing's the same here. "Where am I?" I breathe out looking around, nothing makes sense. What happened on that bus?

I start walking around and I'm immediately soaked in the cold water, how do these people even stand this? I'm barely walking for 5 minutes by the time my teeth start chattering and my body shaking like a leaf in the autumn winds. It doesn't help that the sky looks like it's about to release a downpour of rain. The wind makes the shivering worse and I can hardly get a breath between my lips. What do I do now?

I don't recognise anything, I'm disoriented before I can even turn a corner, where are all the street names? I keep walking but my pace begins to slow rapidly, I'm sure my lips are blue by now and I'm white as a ghost. Nothing I do seems to warm me up, and the cold is starting to become unbearable, how is everyone else fine?

I glance round me and soon realise I've lost my way back; I couldn't find it even if I tried. "I can't get back home." The panic sets in as soon as the words leave my lips and at the same time the world starts to spin around me. Before I can do a thing to stop it, I'm collapsing and water is surrounding me. It isn't long before the world becomes black and the air stops entering my lungs.