Sara's Story - by Jonathan Malory - Chapter XI - Time Out

‘Sometimes I see things, like images hypo-imposed; another place beyond, yet the same.’

‘Hypo-imposed?’ Sara asked the man who was sitting on the shiny floor of King’s Cross train station next to her.

‘Yeah, like superimposed only behind instead of in front. Things we aren’t supposed to see.’ He held a blue can of very strong beer in his grubby left hand, took a sip from it and made a satisfied sound like he hadn’t had a drink in days; fingered some tobacco from a green plastic pouch and sprinkled it onto a cigarette paper.

Sara knew the man was quite mad, and pretty drunk, but she hadn’t spoken to another English person besides Mrs Cooper in weeks. She’d kept to her own thoughts on the flight from Russia to England; lost herself on the boring hour-long train ride from London Heathrow to King’s Cross, hadn’t even noticed the train had gone underground until her stop was announced.

She emerged into the semi-light of King’s Cross station in front of the big electronic board and discovered she had a half-hour wait for her train North.

Sara felt as if she’d been on the move for eternity when she finally stopped and sat on the floor; she used to think station floors were dirty but now it looked like finely polished marble, the homeless guy just started talking to her like they were old friends and Sara saw no harm in it.

‘Things we aren’t supposed to see… do you mean someone or something is trying to prevent it?’ Sara asked as she lifted her own can of strong beer the man had offered to her lips.

She was so dishevelled and fatigued she thought the guy must have figured she was homeless too. He shuffled closer to her over the smooth floor.

‘There’s all kinds of things they don’t want us to see.’ They were co-agents now, Sara and Homeless.

‘They? You mean the government.’ Sara looked at him intently, feigning interest slightly. She was kind of enjoying the absurdity of the drunken pow-wow, she’d sooner sit with Homeless than Mrs Cooper every time.

‘Oh not just the government; they’re all in on it – CIA, MI5, MOSAD, they’ve all got their fingers in all the pies!’

Homeless was starting to sway a bit, his eyes wandering and coming forcefully back to focus on Sara.

‘So where do you fit into the picture, how do you know about these ‘other places’?’ Sara had finished the can she was given, took another one of H’s and cracked it open without asking; he didn't protest or even seem to notice when she took a big gulp, the alcohol numbing the beer’s tar-like flavour by now.

‘I can see it all, everything makes sense when you think about it; all the voices aren’t in my head, they’re out here, people watching us from other worlds. Making notes and following my every move, making sure we don’t find out.’

‘Are we talking space aliens?’ Sara figured she may as well ask and get it out of the way; and, anyway, she was feeling quite drunk now and wanting to be swept away in the dialogue.

‘No, no, no, no, NO,’ Homeless shook his head emphatically, and waved a meandering finger under Sara’s nose. ‘There’s no such things as aliens; they invented all that stuff in the 50s so no one would s’pect the truth.’

‘You mean to say that out of all the suns in all the galaxies in the universe, ours is the only one with a planet going around it with intelligent life aboard?’ An announcement for Sara’s train echoed around the forecourt and into her head, ten minutes to go; which was a pity as things were just starting to get interesting. It was clear to her how one could easily get caught up in this lifestyle.

‘Well no, there must be other stuff, but they wont come here ‘cause o’ them.’ He held his empty can aloft and used it like a torch with an invisible beam that could pick out hidden life-forms, making a wide sweep of the King’s Cross forecourt; his eyes took on a knowing sheen as if the hidden light were exposing the hypo-imposed people amongst the crowded reality.

Sara found herself following the imaginary beam, the crowd blurred into a sickly rainbow that brought on an alcoholic vertigo that stopped abrupty with a jolt as she realised where she was.

‘I am sorry; I have to go now,’ She forced herself to stand without swaying too much, then angled off towards her platform and the train North.

‘No one has to do anything; that’s what they want us to think!’ Homeless shouted after her.

Sara never looked back, mostly because she thought the movement would topple her over. She boarded the high-speed train with moments to spare, the electric door hissing closed behind her with a ‘bleep, bleep, bleep,’ and a little sucking sound like an airlock.

Sara stumbled into the first unoccupied seat and collapsed instantly into a deep sleep… Homeless’s last words were fluttering around her developing dreams as she climbed the huge grassy steppes of Russia; do they want us to think that we have to do stuff, or do they want us to think that we don’t have to do stuff?