Total darkness. What felt like a bed beneath her.
"Where am I?" thought Laura, as her mind returned slowly to consciousness.
Reaching out to her right she could feel the smooth surface of a wall which transmitted a faint vibration to her fingertips. Reaching to her left there was nothing.
Gradually, memory of her last meeting with Jake returned. She remembered slamming his front door behind her, then stumbling away along the mews then…falling into darkness.
Hospital, she thought, I had an accident and I'm in hospital.
There was a faint click and, above her, a bare ceiling was revealed, gently curved and glowing with a dim light that seemed to come from the surface itself. She sat up and could now see more of the room. The wall opposite the foot of her bed was bare of any detail, except open trunking where it bordered the ceiling and, just below, a circular outline with a metallic frame that might have been a closed window.
“How are you feeling?” said a voice.
Startled, she turned her head to the left to see the outline of a man sitting a few feet away from her bed, but the light was still too dim to make him out clearly. It confirmed what she had thought.
“I'm in hospital, right? And you must be a doctor, or a nurse?”
“None of those,” replied the voice.
Fear plucked at her stomach and she struggled to keep her voice normal.
“If this isn't a hospital and you’re not a doctor or a nurse, then where am I -nand who areyou?”
“Are you thirsty?” he asked, ignoring her questions.
“Who are you?” she repeated.
“I’ll tell you in a moment, but I really think you should drink some water first.”
Suddenly, she realised that she was indeed very thirsty.
He leaned forward and held out a beaker. She stretched out her arm to take it from him, then pushing herself up onto her elbows she sniffed it. Didn’t smell of anything - so probably was water. She took a cautious sip: it certainly tasted like water. Then thirst got the better of her and, mentally crossing her fingers, she took a large gulp.
She sank back against the pillow - and began to cry, partly from fear of her surroundings and this stranger, partly from the break-up with Jake. After a minute or so she collected herself, swung her legs off the bed and faced towards him.
"I think an explanation is in order," she said in her best courtroom voice.
“My name is Teo,” he replied, pronouncing it ‘Tay-oh.’ He had a faint accent which she couldn’t quite place, but it was pleasant enough.
“I know it's a great deal to ask,” he continued, “but I want you to trust me. I intend you no harm, but I do need you to prepare yourself for a shock.”
Now that her eyes were more accustomed to the pale light, she could make out more of his features. It was obvious, even though he was sitting, that he was tall, quite broad in the shoulder and had no hair. He also seemed to be dressed in what looked like close-fitting black overalls.
‘Eastern European,’ she thought. There were so many in London now that it seemed the most likely explanation.
“I'd like to show you something” he said, standing up and moving over to the wall opposite her bed.
She hesitated for a second, then stood up. As she did so, she realised he really was tall - comfortably over 6 feet. And now that he was closer to the light from the ceiling she also noticed that the skin of his face and hands had a faint amber glow, as if they were slightly reflective. But that might have been a trick of the light. His face, still half in shadow, was thin, almost delicate, with very large, dark eyes above a chiselled nose and a wide mouth.
He touched a small panel next to the circular outline she had taken for a window and she was pleased to note that her guess had been right as the central disk began to roll back into the wall.
She was immediately blinded by a dazzling white light that flooded into the room. Then as her irises adjusted to the glare she looked out - and gasped.
Almost filling the entire field of view was a colourless landscape composed entirely of blacks and greys, criss-crossed by jagged mountains and pitted everywhere with craters. Even more insanely, she was looking up at the landscape which seemed to be hanging above them.
“That cannot be what I think it is,” she whispered, as much to herself as to him, “because it looks very much like the Moon.”
“It is,” he said quietly. “To be precise, we are looking down - or up if you prefer - at what you would call the dark side of the Moon. And we are presently on a spacecraft in geo-stationary orbit above the Daedalus Crater.”
© Adriana Nicolas 2014