Red Queen

Everybody Knows Some Body

Alice was falling, except she wasn't. She could feel ground beneath her feet, but she was spinning, feeling air rush past her as if it were fleeing in the opposite direction. Don't go there! Anywhere but THERE! Whatever had grabbed her arm was gone, but she could still feel its grip. Her wrist felt sore, the skin slightly tender. It reminded her of the times her sister would pin her down and give her a snakebite burn, twisting tightly until Alice could kick her off or surrender.

She closed her eyes, hoping the firmness under her would settle her senses and make her realise she was actually standing upright. Alice quickly opened them again when the sensation of plummeting became much worse. She must be standing! She could feel it! She tried to crouch, bending forwards to feel the floor. Her hands continued past her toes, sending her into a forwards roll as she fell.

She vomited. For a long moment, the contents of her stomach kept pace with her and threatened repeatedly to hurl itself into her face and eyes hair. Luckily, though she had no control of her freewheeling, she managed to avoid its grasp. Eventually, her extra weight meant the race was lost to the puke and she left it behind.

A film she'd once seen flashed through her mind. It had a man jumping from an aeroplane without a parachute and aiming at someone who had to save themselves. She needed to straighten out. Angle her body. It was harder than it looked. Her constant spin was making her flail about as she attempted to right herself.

Alice stopped. She took a breath and slowly began to reach out with her arms. She straightened out her legs and kept them together, hoping for them to act as a sort of rudder in directing her body. With slow but steady movements, she twisted and pointed the various parts of herself in the directions she thought she should. Gradually, her plan worked. Her body began to slow its tumultuous decent and her frantic rotation eased and then stopped. She could feel, however, no matter which direction she tried to force herself to move in, she was simply falling straight down. It occurred to her, this might be a good thing. She had no idea in the odd darkness how wide the channel she was in might be. It could be a cavern or a narrow tube which, if she veered off course even slightly, she could crash into its walls.

The darkness was all encompassing, except for immediately around her. She could see her torso and her arms and legs. She could, now her mind had slowed its own whirling, clearly see her feet. Anything beyond was invisible, lost in a night which hid all it had swept over. She tried to push, thinking the ground she could still feel would act as a platform to jump from. It didn't. She remained firmly attached to a solid emptiness.

Alice screamed. It wasn't a cry of fear or pain, it was simply noise. She wanted to hear its echo. She wanted to see if it would hit any obstacles and be bounced back to indicate just how big the space she was in could be.

Much like a duck's quack, despite rumours to the contrary, did, Alice's voice had no echo. The scream left her and made it barely past her lips before fading like the smoke from her father's incessant smoking. The blue vapour would hang in the air for a second before dissipating, apart from the sneaky tendrils which invaded her own lungs. Her yell didn't even have the audacity to linger. It seemed to be afraid to venture beyond the comfort of her mouth and would rather scatter than be hurled into the chasm.

She had no choice but to wait. With the same measured movements as before, she managed to orient her body so she felt upright. Such a move could easily have increased her speed, with less of a target for the oncoming air to grab hold of, but she didn't care. What was the point? Any change in her velocity would not change the fact she was, at some point, going to hit the ground. She hoped. It was unlikely this was a bottomless hole. She wasn't going to fall through the Earth, coming out the other side in China, something she believed when she was a young girl and would dig holes in the sand at the beach, shovelling as far as her plastic spade would take her until she either hit the solid damp sand beneath or her sister kicked it all in.