Flying High by Annie Dalton

Author:Annie Dalton [Dalton, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lazy Chair Press
Published: 2013-06-19T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

I was in rushing darkness, lit by fierce stabs of lightning, and filled with strange sounds. Confused snatches of conversation, ferocious battle cries, muffled sobbing, long-lost love songs.

If I’d known Dom’s device was so primitive, I’d never have risked it. Compared to this bone-rattling helter-skelter ride, angelic time-travel was a walk in the park.

At one point I was convinced I was turning inside out. That was just before all my limbs went dead. I couldn’t actually tell if my body was still in one piece, or if I even had a body. I was totally numb.

As I hurtled towards some unknown future century, new and deafening sounds erupted around me. Explosions, wailing sirens, crazily mixed up with canned TV laughter and dog-food commercials and pounding hiphop. And I’d thought MY century was insane!

Then everything stopped, dead.

There was a silence so total I genuinely thought I’d gone deaf. Then I realised I heard my own scared rasping breathing in the dark.

Had we fast-forwarded to the end of the world by mistake? Had some hideous future war finally exterminated everyone and everything on Earth? Was this the silence of total nothingness?

And then I heard it; the tiny liquid sound of a bird singing. A bird and a soft whisper of wind through leaves and somewhere in the distance, a small child happily laughing its socks off.

I felt my eyes fill with tears. The human race had pulled through! This wasn’t an ominous hush. It was world peace, how about that!

Simultaneously all the feeling flooded back into my body. It was agony, the worst pins and needles ever. And with a terrifying whoosh, I landed on solid ground. Seconds later, Reuben and Lola crashed down on top of me.

“OW! What are you doing here, you morons?”

“You didn’t think we’d let you swan off to the future on your own!” Reuben gasped out.

Lola just lay whimpering softly. “Never ever make me do that again,” she begged.

We lay in a tangled heap, trying to get our breath back.

It was almost evening and I could smell a sweet fresh smell, like the smell you get in really expensive flower shops. We had crash-landed in someone’s old summerhouse. From where I was lying, I could see bright blue trumpet-shaped flowers and a glossy orange tree complete with perfect baby oranges.

I felt childish pangs of jealousy. I’ve got a v. small orange tree in my room. I grew it in ten minutes flat, when I helped in Miss Dove’s nursery class one time. But though I water it faithfully every day, it still hasn’t produced a single orange.

I dimly registered Dom’s school mates melting out of sight between some pillars. We should really follow them, but I couldn’t seem to move. Then Lola gave a tiny gasp, so naturally I looked up.

Staring down at us with stunned expressions were Dom and his little freckled girlfriend.

I was so shocked that I actually stopped breathing.

We were visible! The device must have messed up our angelic molecules, causing us to materialise.

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