Ah, the river really is flowing upstream. Thought the man as he fell, hitting the water with a large splash. The height of the fall, combined with his head breaking the surface tension of the water sent shockwaves of pain flowing throughout his entire body.
“Kyaaaaaaaaa!” a girlish voice screamed over the dull blanket of water.
“A man just fell into the river! Someone call 911!” another voice cried out, as his mind slipped out of consciousness due to the pain. Right before he slipped into the cold darkness, one last thought crossed his mind. Falling off a bridge and drowning in a river flowing backwards…? What a cruddy way to die.
The day had started off like any other ordinary day. His simple alarm clock rang three times before he managed to find the off switch. Groggily, he walked out of his normal room and into the dully colored bathroom down the hall found in many houses. He used the same generic toothbrush and toothpaste commonly found in big chain supermarkets, and ate a simple breakfast of toast, bacon and eggs. He walked to the community college a few blocks away from his apartment, much like all the other students who lived nearby did every single morning. His white shirt, black jacket and dark slacks and shoes matched those of all the other male students in the crowd, making him stand out as much as a drop of water in the vast ocean. He took general classes at his campus, and wrote term papers, just like everyone else in his class. He was an ordinary young man, nothing of particular interest of deformity. His life was as dull as the color of the sky that day, a pale shade of gray, without a hint of sunlight. On that fateful day, however, there was one thing that he did differently. That morning, he neglected to turn on the news and watch the morning slot. If he had watched the news, he would have seen the strange occurrence being reported, and would have taken a different route home that day. It was this one single change in his dreary and ordinary routine that would change the rest of his life forever.
On his way home from his afternoon classes, he took his usual route home; crossing the bridge that spanned across the river that divided the city into two halves. Normally, the bridge was almost entirely devoid of pedestrians, as people preferred to walk along the more beautiful and scenic bridge several city blocks downstream. That day, however, the bridge was swarming with people looking over the sides. “I can’t believe it! It’s really flowing upstream!” seemed to be the consensus of several voices, male and female alike. Not believing his ears, the man chose to ignore the people, thinking it was an elaborate joke. Trying to squeeze his way past several people so that he could return home quickly and eat a late lunch as usual, he found himself being jostled by the many people attempting to be the ones to stand at the rails.
“Hey, knock it off!” he said to no one in particular, as he found himself slowly being jostled to the railing by the movement of the crowd. It seemed to move as one single organism, singling him out for abuse. Of course, everyone was too busy clamoring to hear him, and soon enough he found himself pressed against the railing, desperately looking for an opening through the crowd and a safe path to his apartment. Upon seeing one, he quickly stepped forward, hoping to squeeze through before the gap disappeared and trapped him yet again. Before he could take more than two steps, however, a rather large man’s elbow clipped him in the shoulder by accident, forcing him to take three steps back, and as his body leaned in an arc from the force of the blow….
For a few moments, he felt as if he was flying through the air, like a bird diving into the sea. Except, it wasn’t the sea that came into his line of sight, but the river…
Ah, the river really is flowing upstream. Thought the man.
The young man weakly opened his eyes, only to be met with a harshly bright light. I’m alive? Was his first thought. Not soon after, however, his brain immediately demanded oxygen, forcing his body to sit upright and cough up the water that had entered his lungs. Falling to his knees and hands due to the violent nature of his coughing, he managed to force the water from his lungs and greedily take in a gulp of fresh air. Falling onto his chest and feeling glad to be alive, he stared at the river lazily as his eyes began to adjust to the light. What he saw would have normally been nothing out of the ordinary, but after what just happened to him and what he had seen moments before the impact, the sight before him was far from comforting.
The river was flowing downstream. Worse, it wasn’t the same river that he had fallen into. What…what’s going on!? The thoughts screamed in his head as they formed. But his eyes were already taking in the surroundings around him. The sky wasn’t gray. The bridge was gone. The familiar buildings, the sea of black and white, the throng of people, everything familiar to him was gone. Gone was the city and all the people in it, a vast and open plain bisected by a gently rolling river. No. Gone was the wrong word to use. Rather, he concluded, that it was never here. Wherever he was, whatever this place he had ended up in, it wasn’t his ordinary and familiar home. He was trapped in a strange place where nothing he saw was something that he could recognize.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”
His scream rent the air as it crossed the open plains for several meters, scaring up a flock of silver-white feathered birds into taking flight.
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