Floating in the Void - Short Story (Part 1)

Hey everyone, here’s part 1 of a short story I wrote back in 2022. If you want to read part 2, sign up for the newsletter or keep an eye on the blog!

Floating in the Void:

There were two men in a room. It was small, a university science lab. A bench stood on a raised dais at one end with two rows of tables extending down either side. The roof and two of the four walls of the room had fallen away, as if they had crumbled with age, even though the rest of the room was pristine and new. Outside was nothing, only black could be seen through the gaping hole where half the walls had been, or through the windows that lined one of the remaining sides.

The two men didn’t know how or when they’d gotten there, they didn’t recognise each other or the room itself. 

This is the predicament in which I found myself. 

-

It had been a normal morning. I woke before sunrise and began dressing as Amy stirred in the bed, her messy tangle of hair rising out of the blankets like a nest of twigs. “Morning.” I said, fixing my tie. All I’d gotten was a resounding grunt in response. Better than most days, I supposed. 

I went and got Charlie out of bed and made a modest breakfast of Froot-Loops and coffee. Charlie sat giggling, painting the counter with milk as he splashed his cereal around in his bowl. He was almost five now, growing too fast and too slow at the same time. Amy stumbled downstairs half dressed. “Mama!” The toddler beamed at his mother.

“Hi sweetie.” She pinched his cheek, still rubbing sleep from her glassy eyes. She helped herself to the remainder of the coffee in the pot. 

“When’d you get back last night?” I’d asked her, already knowing that whatever answer she gave me would be the wrong one, and more than likely a lie. 

“Not too late.” She stared into her coffee cup. “What do you have on today?” She asked, trying desperately to change the subject. 

“Just work.” 

“Can you drop him on your way?”

“Mmhmm.” I mumbled, sipping my coffee loudly. 

“And pick him up at three?” She moaned.

“I can’t today, I’ve got a case I’m working on. Can’t you pick him up?” 

“James.” She whined. I was growing so very tired of her whining. 

“He loves it when mum picks him up.” I justified, which was emphasised by Charlie throwing up his arms and laughing maniacally, covered in milk. 

“I want Mama!” He called cheerfully. I could always count on him to help me win my cases with his mother. 

“Alright.” She relented. “I’ll have to move my meeting.”
“Thank you.” I really meant it. “Alright champ, go run get your bag while I clean up this mess.” He ran off squealing. 

“What time will you be back tonight?” She arched an eyebrow.

“Christ, Amy. He’s your own son. You can manage for the evening without me there. Sooner or later you’re going to have to take care of him, you know, like a mother would?”

“Excuse me?!” She flared, trying not to alert Charlie to our fight. 

“Ok, ok. You’re right.” I backed up. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I know you’re trying, and I know it’s hard. It’s just…”

“I know what it is, James. I’m a terrible mother. I was never meant to be.”

“Don’t say that.” I said. She pulled away as I moved closer to comfort her. 

I didn’t blame her, I’d stopped being angry with her. I knew she wasn’t built for this, I knew she was struggling. But a small part of me, a little voice in the back of my skull whispered, ‘She had chosen this as much as I had, she was the one with the problem. Why couldn’t she just be happy? Why does she have to ruin this?’

“I’ll be home before seven.” 

She nodded silently. Charlie came bounding down the steps, bag in tow. “Let’s go dad, let’s go!” He screamed, practically dragging me down the front porch toward the car.

He’d always been an energetic kid, always rushing and screaming. Not in a rude way, but more in an excitement that never seemed to wane or tire. Amy was worried for him, I just loved him. The energy and boundless excitement that she saw as a sign of disorder or disease I saw for what it was. The enthusiasm and irreplaceable wonder of a young boy. A good kid. 

“Bye dad!” He barely had time to finish his sentence by the time he’d leapt out of my arms and rushed through the open doors of the daycare centre. His teacher, Mrs Leroy smiled politely. “Hurricane Charles is at it already, I see.” She said. I laughed, but only to be polite. 

“Amy’ll be around this arvo to get him.”

“Wonderful, have a pleasant day Mr Manning.”

“And you.” I waved as I left for work.

Work was exceedingly boring. the torrent of paperwork and administration seemed endless at the Police Station. 

“Manning.” 

“Jones.” I smiled at the young woman as she approached my desk. 

“Good night?” She pulled up a chair next to my desk.

“Not really. I left around eight. Couldn’t be arsed to sit around with those pompous pricks all night.” 

“That’s strange.” She frowned. “I heard Amy was out for a while.” 

“She was.” I grunted. 

“Right.” She laughed. She was pretty when she laughed. 

“Anything interesting happening this morning?” I bluntly changed the conversation. 

“Funny you should ask.” She handed me a folder. “The Martins case. Young student reports that she thinks her professor is involved with a foreign government, two days later her parents file for a missing persons.”

“Anyone else involved?”

“In her report she says a boy in her class. David Cooper. It’s all in here. Sarge asked me to ask you to check it out?”

“Sure thing, add it to the pile.” I said, which I now regret.

I arrived at the University campus soon after lunch. That much I remember. The details afterwards begin to blur together. I remember walking through the cafeteria, I remember talking to a young girl, and I remember a light shining in my eyes. A bright light, encompassing everything, blocking out my vision. I don’t remember waking up, or coming to or anything. In fact, I don’t even recall my first few moments in this place. I just was. I was here. And he was standing in front of me. 

My first impression of him was not flattering. He was definitely old, though I’d be disinclined to call him elderly. His faded Zeppelin shirt hung loosely off his thin, sinewy frame. He wore an old, oversized bomber jacket and torn jeans. “Who the fuck are you?” Had been the first thing he’d said, before peering behind him to the collapsed wall and the darkness beyond. “Where the fuck are we?!” He immediately shuffled away from the open expanse, suddenly anxious of the seemingly endless fall.

In those first few moments several thoughts presented themselves in my mind. At first I was confused as to how I’d missed sunset, but that thought soon faded away as I took stock of my surroundings. It wasn’t night, there were no stars. There was no anything. I looked out the row of windows, and what I saw was infinitely more terrifying than anything I could possibly imagine, anything I could ever have the words to describe. 

I saw nothing.

Real nothing. Not just a lack of anything interesting, not just an empty street or field. Nothing. A black void, stretching out forever in every direction. I think I must have said something, because the old man came shuffling up beside me. 

“What is it?” He exclaimed. I didn’t notice until now that he spoke with an American accent. 

“I… can’t see anything.” I told him. “There’s nothing at all.”

He stood in stunned silence. I edged closer to the collapsed wall, peering over the precarious edge. Even straight down, nothing. The room seemingly floated freely in the abyss.

“What the fuck.” The old man backed up, splaying his hands out to catch himself as he fell back, hyperventilating. “What the… there’s… out the…” He said, amid gasps. I can’t say I blamed him. Hell, I was half way to joining him on the ground for simultaneous panic attacks.

“Ok.” I said aloud, even though I was talking to myself. “Ok, ok, ok. Try not to freak out. Let’s stop, take stock of the situation.” My advice fell on deaf ears, the old man was still dry-heaving on the floor. 

I looked at the lab. It was clean, new, pristine. The whiteboard had no marks from where it had been previously erased. It had either never been used, or cleaned with a meticulous hand. The walls had laminated posters showing chemical theorems and anatomical diagrams, but none of them had a hint of de-lamination, not even any warping. Even the glass beakers were spotless. I picked one up, seeing faint marks of fingerprints on the glass. I reflexively went to hold it up to the light to see clearer when a sudden realisation hit me. 

“Where are the lights?” I asked, to no-one in particular. The old man looked up, distracted from his panic attack. 

“What?” He heaved, confused. 

“There’s no lights, the roof’s gone. Look.” He followed my gaze, and gave a start of fright when he saw the roof. Or, more accurately, the lack of one. The black void hung over us. Yet here we stood, able to see each other. No other sources of light were in the room, yet a stark white light illuminated the space. I rushed over to the bench, holding my hand over it. I had a shadow still, at least. But the most curious thing is the shadow lay directly below my hand, as if the light were coming from where the fluorescent bulb should have been. I moved to the whiteboard at the front of the room and repeated my experiment. Again, the angle suggested the light was coming from the non-existent ceiling.

“What are you doing?” The old man scolded. “We need to get the hell outta here!” My patience was wearing thin. 

“How?!” I exploded. “We have no idea where we are! You tell me how to get out of here, and I’ll gladly trot along, but until then your useless whining isn’t helping us.” He shrunk back. I felt like an asshole, but I really did need him to be quiet. Or to stop acting like a child, at least. 

“What’s your name?” I offered shyly. 

“W-Winston.” He flustered back. “My name’s Winston.”

“My name’s James Manning, but most people just call me Jimmy.” A quick flash of surprise crossed his face when he heard my name, but only for the briefest moment before he had it under control. “I think I’ll stick to James.” He said. “So James, what are you some kinda cop?” His voice was’t quite disgusted by the word, but not far from it. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I was still wearing my uniform. “Yeah. Constable actually.”

“Constable.” He said, with his almost mocking tone. “A life of service, then? Obedience.”

“Duty.” I corrected, only half believing it myself. It had been a long time since I felt that I was doing my duty to my city. I’d almost given up trying. 

“What do you do then?” I asked, warding off what I correctly assumed would be an impending argument. 

“I’m an actor!” He spread his hands, presenting his exaggerated smile to a stage that wasn’t there. “And a comedian. Author, writer, poet, rock and roll legend, some might even say spiritual guru.”

“Might they?” I asked flatly. “Have you done anything I might know?”

“Oh, well I don’t know. It was American shows mostly, I’ve only crossed the pond these last couple years, y’know?”

“Like what?”

“Well let’s see here, I bought to life the role of David on ‘One Big Family’. No? Well maybe it was just a US thing. Are you a fan of theatre at all?” I shook my head. “Well, that must be why you don’t know me.” He beamed. “Very big on Broadway, did a production of Macbeth that got a standing ovation!” 

“Right.” We sat in silence for a moment. “I like rock.” I broke the silence. “Written anything I might’ve heard?” 

“Have you ever heard of Twisted Fault Line?”

“No.” I answered, which was met with a resounding scoff.

“You brits’ve never heard of good music. We were legends back in New Mexico.”
“Is that right?” I was almost sarcastic, not that he showed any signs of noticing.

So there we sat, the two of us. Making small talk in the void. 

The talk had died down and we sat in silence. The hours stretched on and we still had no clue as to what had happened. We had taken stock of the room and found nothing extraordinary. Lab equipment, unused stationery, those white lab coats and goofy looking goggles. Everything you’d expect in a uni science lab. There weren’t even any personal notebooks from students, no graffiti scratched beneath the desks by bored kids, no gum stuck to the bottom of the seats. It was immaculate.

“How long do you think we’ve been here?” I asked, ruining the quiet.

“Sorry?” He looked over vacuously.

“I think we’ve been here overnight. It must’ve been at least a day, right?”

“No, no that’s impossible. How could we have been stuck here that long without someone rescuing us?”

“I don’t know. But it HAS been a while. Not that we have a sun to keep track of time. Did you sleep at all?”

“No, you?”

“Neither.” We looked at each other. 

“Come to think of it,” he said, “I’m not even hungry. Or thirsty. Or tired. Or anything. We’ve just been sitting.” This was beginning to feel like a bad dream.

“What about gravity?” I asked. 

“Excuse me?”

“Well, think about it. The room’s floating wherever-the-hell we are. There’s no planet holding us down. Why don’t we float away? Why does it still feel like Earth?”

“You know, that’s a good point.” The old man sat up. “Where do we go if we fall off the edge?”

We both stood. I took a beaker from one of the tables and threw it straight out into the darkness. It flew, and flew, spinning in a straight line. It never arched or dropped, it just kept flying until we couldn’t see it anymore. 

“What the fuck.” Whispered Winston. I picked up another one and dropped it. It fell, exactly as you’d expect, and shattered on the laboratory floor. I swept the glass shards over the edge with my foot and a spray of shimmering crystals floated out into the void. 

“What the fuuuck.” Winston echoed, louder this time. I took my torch from my pocket and turned it on. “Let’s see how far out it goes. Maybe there’s an edge.” I said, throwing my flashlight. It spun as it flew. As it got further out all we could see was a pulsing light as the torch spun to face us, then away from us. It never illuminated anything, just kept on flying. After an hour it was our solitary little star, blinking at us through the empty darkness.

“So we’re in space?” Winston asked. “Like outer space. Real outer space. We’re astronauts!” He beamed.

“I don’t think so.” I hated to crush his dreams, but this wasn’t any normal space. “If we were in space we’d see stars. And half a room’s not exactly air tight is it? If this were outer space we’d have suffocated to death as soon as we got here.”

“But if we aren’t suffocating, what are we breathing? It feels like normal Earth air.” I raised my hand to my face and blew on it. But the strangest thing happened. I felt nothing. I rushed to the filing cabinet full of blank notepads and began maniacally ripping through them. I tore out sheet after sheet of paper. 

“There was this astronaut.” I said. “A real astronaut. Not like us. He went to the moon, and to prove that gravity acted equally on all objects he took a hammer and a feather and he dropped them.” 

“So?” Asked Winston

“So,” I continued, “They hit the ground at the same time. It proved that the only thing stopping a feather from falling straight down was the resistance of the air on Earth.” I rushed over and grabbed the plastic whiteboard eraser. “So paper does the same sort of thing, and if i just blew on my hand and felt nothing, it means that there’s no air in this room.” I dropped the piece of paper and the eraser simultaneously. The eraser fell completely as expected, but the paper shocked us. The paper fell straight. No gliding, no flapping or waving. Just straight down. The two hit the ground at the same time, the plastic eraser rolling away noisily. “Winston, I don’t think there’s an atmosphere in here. I don’t think we’re breathing anything right now.” The old man went stark white. 

“B-b-but…” He began, ironically, to hyperventilate. I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or join him. “Hold your breath.” I blurted. He stared at me, stunned. “Hold. Your. Breath.” I repeated, staccato. I notionally took a big breath in and motioned for him to join me. He did. We stood for minutes, staring at each other, lungs full. Then ten minutes went by, then fifteen, then twenty. Neither of us released, neither of us showed even the slightest inclination of discomfort. Finally, Winston released his breath, but not out of necessity, out of sheer boredom. 

“W-w-we don’t need to breathe.” He stammered.

“I’d guess it’s more out of habit than anything else.” I put two fingers to my wrist. I still had a pulse, at least. A pulse is good. “You should check too.” I motioned. He put two fingers to his wrist as well. “Still got a pulse?”
“Of course I do, why shouldn’t I?” 

“Well we aren’t breathing. Is it a crazy stretch to think our hearts aren’t beating?”

“I guess not.” He looked defeated. “Hey wait a minute.” He looked up. “How come I can hear you?”

“Hm?”

“Well sound moves through air, right?”
“Of course!” I don’t know why I didn’t think of that, stupid.

“So how can we hear each other, or anything else, if there’s no air?”

“Great question.” Winston started to laugh. “Something funny?”

“It’s just…” He stopped to laugh again. “I know what this is.” He wiped his nose. “I’m in Hell. This is Hell, right? The endless void, we’re not sleeping, we’re not eating, we aren’t even fucking breathing, apparently. I guess I died on the subway, or maybe I got hit by a bus, or choked on a slice of pizza, who the fuck knows. But this is Hell!” Another burst of nervous laughter. 

“I don’t think we’re dead…We have heartbeats” I offered.

“Oh, well of course you don’t. Mister big shot cop thinks he knows what the fuck’s going on here. You don’t know shit. We’re in Hell. This is our atonement, it’s what we deserve.”

“I don’t know you, so I don’t know what you’ve done to deserve Hell, but you don’t know me either. I’ve always tried to help people.”

“Oh please!” Scoffed the old man. “You’re a fuckin’ cop. All cops are dirty pigs, and if anyone deserves to be in Hell it’s you, kid. I’ve been around a long time! I remember the riots during the sixties! Vietnam? Cops, military, politicians, all of ‘em!”

“Well I’m sorry we can’t all be as ‘Free Love’ as you.”

“Yeah? Why the fuck not?”

“Is that what you want?” I asked. “Really? Everyone high as a kite hanging out in the Mystery Machine all day? All play, no work? Who’s going to keep you safe? Who’s going to make your food? You feel so high and mighty when you’re safe and sound tripping in the back of an abandoned department store, but you’re more than happy to run to the police if someone hurts or threatens you.”

“Trust me to get stuck in Hell with a fucking pig.” He grumbled.

“We’re not in Hell!” I exclaimed. 

“Where the fuck are we then?”

“I don’t know.” That seemed to be the end of the argument for the moment. “Why do you hate police so much?” I asked. “You were a hippy during Vietnam now you hate all of us?”

Winston took a deep breath in, or rather he pretended to take a deep breath in the empty space that had no air. 

“My little brother.” He said. “He joined the army to fight in Vietnam. He didn’t come back. Same as our Dad, back in the big one.” 

I felt my heart shrink, suddenly this old man looked like such a lost child. “I’m sorry.” I offered, knowing it meant nothing to him.

“Everyone says they’re sorry, kid. But no-one actually means it. It’s just what we say.”

“I guess it is.” I paused a moment. “But that was the Army. Not the police.”

“They’re all the same.” He carried on. “Organisations that brainwash young men into committing acts of violence on behalf of the Government.”

“To keep people safe.”

“Oh really? Who was my brother protecting in Vietnam? How is holding the rest of the world hostage with the biggest, deadliest gun keeping anyone safe? Wouldn’t we be safer if we just got rid of all of them? No more militaries, no more governments, no more big brother?”

“Well that’s a lovely thought, but how can that possibly happen? What happens if we demilitarise the UK, or hell even America? We’d be invaded the next day. Sure it’d be great if we didn’t have crime but we do. It’d be great if we had world peace but we don’t.”

“And because of boys like you we probably never will.”

-

That’s it for part 1, come back next week for part 2!

Thanks for reading!