The Sphere
What the Earth Refuses | 2 of 10
What the Earth Refuses is a sequence of ten stories. Each one is set somewhere in the UK, following ordinary people in the middle of ordinary shifts and changes. In each one, something happens that shouldn’t be possible.
This is the second.
The Sphere
Rae and Tom had moved to Brighton from Leyton in the spring. They found the house on a Tuesday and signed the tenancy on the Thursday. The house was a Victorian terrace on a steep street behind the station. Two bedrooms and a box room. A narrow staircase with a banister that wobbled when you gripped it. The kitchen was at the back with a gas hob and a Belfast sink and a window that looked onto a brick wall two feet from the glass.
Tom managed fulfilment for an online retailer. Rae did freelance UX research for a healthcare company. They worked at the same kitchen table, his laptop at one end, hers at the other, their feet touching underneath. In Leyton they had shared a flat with a friend of Rae’s from university. The friend moved out after four months, saying it was the commute.
On a Wednesday in September, Rae closed her laptop at half four and stretched her arms above her head. Tom was still typing. She watched him for a while. He had a way of pressing his lips together when he was concentrating. He looked up and caught her watching.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Nothing. Just your mouth.”
“What about my mouth?”
“I just like it.”
He closed his laptop. He reached across the table and took her hand. She let him. They sat like that for a while, his thumb moving across her knuckles.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you more,” she said.
“Not possible.”
“I loved you first.”
“I loved you the moment I saw you.”
He laughed. She came around to his side of the table. He stood and put his face against her neck. She put her hands in his hair. He said something into her skin that she could not hear.
“What?” she said.
“You smell like toast.”
“That’s the worst thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“I love toast.”
“More than me?”
“It’s close.”
She pushed him. He caught her hand. They were standing between the table and the counter. She leaned back against him. He put his arms around her and locked his fingers across her stomach. She reached behind her for the glass of water on the table. He reached at the same moment. They knocked it off the edge together. The water spilled.
It did not hit the floor.
The water left the glass in a single pour. It fell eight inches and stopped, hung in the air above the kitchen tiles. It trembled. Then it pulled itself inward. The edges drew together the way a drop forms on the underside of a tap. The water tightened into a sphere the size of a grapefruit. It hovered at knee height between the bin and the cupboard. It did not move.
They looked at it. They looked at each other.
Tom crouched down. Rae crouched beside him. She could see the kitchen through the sphere. The image was curved and inverted. The Belfast sink hung upside down inside it. Tom extended his index finger. The water flexed inward around his fingertip. A slow ripple moved across the surface and died. The sphere held. He pulled his finger out. A tiny droplet clung to his skin. It trembled on his fingertip, then stretched toward the sphere, pulled free of his hand and crossed the gap. It merged with the surface without a sound.
Rae pushed the sphere with the flat of her hand. It drifted six inches to the left and stopped. It held its position in the air. It did not rise and it did not fall. The water on his fingertip was gone. His skin was dry.
She went to the counter, picked up her mug of cold coffee and poured it onto the floor. The brown liquid fell and stopped. It gathered itself into a dark, heavy globe. It hovered in the air for a moment. Then it began to move. It drifted across the kitchen toward the sphere, slowly at first, then faster. It hit the surface and merged. The sphere darkened for a second where the coffee entered and then cleared. It was bigger now, the size of a melon. The coffee was inside it, a brown cloud dispersed through the water like ink.
They started laughing at the same time. She gripped his arm. He gripped hers.
Tom pulled a bag of peanuts from the cupboard. He tossed one at the sphere. It hit the surface and sank in. It hung in the centre. Rae took the bag. She threw one. It went in beside the first. They sat on the kitchen floor and threw peanuts at the sphere. Some went in. Some bounced off and skittered across the tiles. Tom tried a grape. It was too heavy. It passed through the sphere and came out the other side trailing a comet tail of droplets that formed their own tiny spheres. Six small globes hung in a line between the cupboard and the fridge. They watched. The small globes trembled. Then one by one they drifted back across the kitchen and rejoined the sphere. Each one hit the surface and vanished into the mass. The sphere swelled. It was the size of a football now and the peanuts floated inside it like something preserved.
Rae lay on her back on the floor and looked up at it from below. She could see the ceiling light through the curved water. Everything was bent.
Her phone buzzed on the counter. They both looked.
“Leave it,” she said.
“Definitely.”
“I know.”
They ate dinner on the kitchen floor. Crackers and hummus from the same tub, passing it between them. They could not stop looking at the sphere. Tom prodded it with a wooden spoon. It wobbled and drifted toward the fridge. It pressed against the metal and flattened and held.
“Do you think we should tell someone?” he said.
“Like who?”
“I don’t know. Someone.”
She looked at the sphere. She looked at him.
“It’s ours,” she said.
“It’s ours,” he said.
They went to bed at the same time. She lay in the dark with her head on his chest. He put his hand on the back of her head. She could hear the sea through the window and his heart through his ribs and she did not know which was which.
“Are you awake?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She fell asleep with his pulse against her cheek.
Tom woke first. Grey light came through the curtains. In the bathroom he turned on the cold tap. The water came out of the spout and fell into the basin and swirled around the plughole and then stopped falling. He turned off the tap and watched as it gathered against the porcelain, trembling, and then rose. It lifted free of the basin in a single mass, hung in the air for a moment and drifted out through the open door. He followed it. The water moved along the landing, tilting around the corner at the top of the stairs. It stretched and thinned as it went, feeling for something. It reached the staircase and descended along the hallway ceiling. He followed it down the stairs. It turned toward the kitchen, passed through the doorway and merged with the sphere.
The sphere was bigger. It had been the size of a football when they went to bed. It was the size of a beach ball now, hovering in the space between the fridge and the cupboard, almost touching both. The peanuts were still inside it. A faint brown trace of the coffee remained. Rae was behind him. She had followed him down.
“Same,” she said.
“Same.”
She turned on the kitchen tap. The water fell toward the Belfast basin, pooled for a moment, then lifted in a thick strand and drifted across the room to join the sphere. The tap kept feeding it. It rose from the sink and started crossing the kitchen. The water met the surface and the sphere grew. Rae turned the tap off. The strand pulled free of the spout and trailed across.
The sphere was touching the fridge. It was touching the cupboard. The surface pressed against the wood and the metal and flattened where it met them.
The kettle was on the counter. She had filled it the night before. She turned it on. It boiled. The steam did not rise to the ceiling. It moved sideways across the kitchen in a white stream and condensed against the surface of the sphere. The air grew hot and wet. Tom turned the kettle off. The last of the steam drifted across and joined.
The sphere filled the space between the fridge and the cupboard. It pressed against the ceiling. The underside hung a foot above the floor. The coffee and the peanuts had drifted to the centre, forming a small dark pupil. The surface was smooth and curved and the light from the window bent around it. Through the water they could see the far wall of the kitchen, warped and magnified.
“We can’t drink anything,” Rae said.
“No.”
They went through the kitchen cupboards together, keeping to the far side of the room. Tom found a plastic bottle of mineral water. A litre. Sealed. He unscrewed the cap and tilted it over a glass. The water hit the bottom of the glass, pooled for a moment and then lifted. It rose in a strand and drifted toward the sphere. He tipped the bottle upright. The glass was already dry.
He screwed the cap back on. He took a screwdriver from the bits and bobs drawer by the cooker. He pressed the tip into the centre of the cap and twisted until it punctured. A hole the width of a nail. He held the bottle upside down over his cupped hand. A thin stream fell from the hole. It landed on his palm. It trembled. It began to pull toward the sphere but it was too small and too close to his skin. He closed his hand around it. He felt it trying to pull free. He brought his fist to his mouth and opened his fingers and drank before it could leave.
“Quick,” he said. “It has to be quick.”
Rae tilted her head back. He held the bottle above her face and squeezed. The thin stream fell from the cap to her tongue. She could feel the pull in it. It did not fall straight. It curved in the air between the bottle and her mouth, bending toward the sphere. She swallowed before it could turn. She put her hand on his wrist and held the bottle steady. He squeezed again. The stream fell and bent and she caught it. She kept her hand on his wrist. She kept swallowing.
She took the bottle and the screwdriver and pierced a second hole in the side to let air in. She held it above his mouth. He tilted his head back. She squeezed. The stream fell. It curved toward the sphere and he moved his head to follow the arc and caught it in his mouth. She adjusted the angle. The thin silver line descended from the punctured cap in a curve and she had to hold the bottle further to the left so the water’s arc ended at his lips. He swallowed. She watched his throat move. She held the bottle steady with both hands.
Tom’s phone rang in his pocket. His hand went to it. He pulled it halfway out. The screen lit up in his palm. He looked at it. She looked at it. A name they both knew. He looked at the sphere pressing against the window. He looked at Rae. She put the bottle on the floor. He put the phone back in his pocket. It rang twice more.
“You should probably answer,” she said.
“Not yet.”
“No,” she agreed.
The sphere had reached the kitchen window. It pressed against the glass. The glass creaked. Through the water they could see the brick wall outside, close and distorted. The surface of the sphere was pushing against the ceiling. Across half the kitchen. Touching the floor. They had moved to the doorway, standing in the threshold between the kitchen and the hall. The bottle on the floor shifted. It slid three inches across the tiles. The water inside it was pulling toward the sphere.
A sound came from upstairs. A dull, wet thud. Then another. Something moving across the landing. Tom went to the bottom of the stairs. A sphere the size of an orange was descending, step by step, bouncing gently off each riser. Behind it was another. And another. Condensation from the bathroom mirror. Water from the U-bend. Moisture pulled from the air itself. The small spheres bounced down the stairs one by one in a slow procession. They reached the hallway floor and drifted past his feet toward the kitchen. They crossed the threshold and joined the mass.
Rae watched from the doorway. The sphere now filled most of the kitchen. It pressed against the table. The table legs scraped across the tiles as the sphere pushed it toward the wall. Their laptops slid across the surface. The sphere pressed against the cooker, the counter, the window. The glass cracked. A thin line ran from the corner to the centre. The sphere pressed harder. The crack spread.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you more,” he said.
The sphere shifted. A ripple moved across the surface. A bead of condensation on the hallway wall trembled, pulled free and drifted through the air and joined. The sphere was still growing. The curved surface bulged toward them. The light from the kitchen window came through the water and threw a pale, rippling pattern on the hallway wall behind them.
“Should we go inside it?” she said.
He looked at her. She looked at him.
“I was just thinking that,” he said.