SPACESHIP EARTH
8 pm Wednesday
Sophie had been at home with a broken ankle (soccer accident) for the last week and a half. The fourteen year old was bored out of her mind. Her coach kept on telling her not go slide for no payoff but she was not the one to listen. She was up in her room just on her phone watching wannabe influencers do weird things for attention on Tik Tok or whatever. She streamed something on Netflix that she looked at every now and then. The doctor said she’ll be in the cast for a month and she highly recommended to just stay put at home with minimal movement. She had another three weeks.
Her mother texted her from downstairs if she wanted anything to eat. The protocol was if she Sophie didn’t answer within five minutes, it was understood that the answer was no. It was a balmy summery night and she had the window wide open staring out to the city. The sun was just setting and the sky started to turn to brilliant burnt umber with silhouettes of birds making their way home. She was starting to get sleepy from doing nothing all day and also from the pain meds. The skyscrapers in the distance began to light up one by one. Her phone’s battery died and she staggered up to charge it when she noticed a black disc like object some two kilometres away. For few seconds she didn’t think much of it, thinking that it’s a plane from a weird angle. Then as it got closer at a speed that she’s never seen anything before, the colour black turned from black to a kind of blue-silver. It was a pretty looking thing. Now the flying object was the size of a playground, pretty big. No sound was coming from it. It was way to massive to be a drone Sophie thought. The thing seemed to be coming straight for Sophie. How was no one seeing this and not calling the cops or something she thought. The phone flickered the battery symbol that it was charging. She quickly grabbed it and turned it on, come on, come on!
The thing was about fifty metres away. By this time it was the size of a football field. Something didn’t add up. It was just hovering there without making any sounds. Sophie couldn’t see any windows and hatches. It was a freaking UFO. Sophie looked down on her phone, it finally turned on. By this stage, the UFO had covered all of the view out of the window. Sophie was starting to get scared and couldn’t even yell out to her parents down stairs. She pointed the phone to the UFO to take a picture. Because it was so big, the photo was just a pitch black. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She knew that, the UFO was aware of her looking at it. The craft was now directly above her house. It felt as though she was the only one looking at this thing. She couldn’t hear anyone screaming or dogs barking. She couldn’t get up, her ankle was still throbbing. For a second she thought maybe she was dreaming, that she fell a sleep from the pain med. Sophie pinched herself and leaned out the window to see if there were others out there. She was totally helpless.
She struggled out of her bed only to fall to the ground. Her ankle now felt like it was snapped again. Sophie looked back as she crawled slowly towards the door. She yelled for her parents, no answer. The phone went dead again. Suddenly, she floated up suspended in mid-air. She punched the air and tried to grab anything that she could but she was floated without anything holding her. It was the most disconcerting feeling she’s gone through, ever. Sophie blacked out from the shock of it all.
She opened her eyes. Sophie couldn’t tell how long she’s been out of it. She was still floating. She wasn’t familiar with where she was. Her fear was that she was inside the craft. It was a massive empty chamber, white inside but she couldn’t tell where the light source was. The cast on her ankle was off and the pain was no longer there. She couldn’t see the ends of this chamber. Suddenly, everything went pitch black. Her eyes took a while to adjust. She was in space, next to what she could only conclude as the planet Earth. She was literally floating in space, somehow alive and breathing drifting at a tremendous speed next to Earth. After a minute or two, she looked at Earth a little more closely. It wasn’t the Earth that she was taught in school or seen on the net. It resembled a space craft. It was hard to explain. It emitted a mechanical sound like a craft. She could see all the oceans and land but somehow appeared to be made of artificial material. She felt like blacking out again. Suddenly everything turned pitch black again.
Sophie was no longer weightless and floating, she could feel herself falling. She clenched her eyes shut. She felt herself slowing down, and eventually fell lightly on what felt like her bed. She could feel the same balmy breeze. She didn’t dare open her eyes. She sat there for god five minutes before slowly coming to terms with what just happened. She looked out the window. The craft was gone. Her ankle was fine, she ran down stairs to her parents.
“Sophie! What are you doing? Your legs!” Her mother yelled.
“Mum, you wouldn’t believe what just happened!”