The Day the Earth Rained Sideways - a Short Story

Some people fell straight off the earth. They told us that couldn’t ever possibly happen, what with gravity and all.  But it happened that day.

You first noticed with the rain, I mean, being Scotland we get every single type of rain imaginable, but this was no ordinary Scottish downpour.  In the beginning it poured lashing lines and lines of grey rain, then all of a sudden it just sort of fell sideways and lots of people suddenly fell off the edge of the earth, just like that.

It was okay if you happened to be indoors, so long as nothing heavy fell on you.  Cars too, we lost lots of cars, and sheep and cows and other outdoor animals.

I think it lasted about thirty seconds, but it was all going in slow motion, the sudden sideways jolt then the earth seemed to right itself again.   Like when I trip over the pavement and catch myself, a bit like that.

Off we all went into outer space, never to be seen again.   It wasn’t really a selective process.  There was no warning, no one was prepared, the politicians didn’t have time to run to their underground bunkers.

The fish in the ocean swam and swam against tsunamis of non-gravitated ocean water.  Swim swim for your lives little fishes, and watch out for the flying fishing boat and the little rubber ducks floating about from fifteen years ago.

I almost fell completely off the planet, but I grabbed onto the top branches of a tree in the park, I clung to those branches, hauling myself further down onto the thicker stems for dear life.  A park bench flew past my head, three ducks flew against the tree, one knocked itself out and went hurtling away into space.  Even the clouds swirled in a big dragged out swooshy whirlpool towards space, it looked like someone had pulled the plug on the sky bathtub.  I remember my legs waving about in the sky, it actually hurt the way my legs were pulling against me, desperate to drag me away.  I saw someone being lifted off the ground who landed against the wall of a building, they survived as they could fall no further.  They actually looked across at me and waved and like an idiot I loosened my grip to wave back and almost lost my hold on the tree completely.

Well that's one way of getting rid of us all.  They tried to blame it on a passing comet, but there were none, it was just an anomaly, a hiccup in gravity.  Thankfully the Earth doesn’t seem to do it very often, or we’d all be pretty much doomed.