Bunac

He landed flat on his face. He could taste blood. It had all been a very strange ordeal.

First, he was walking. Even though it had only happened a few seconds ago, he could barely remember it. Walking in the dark… It was all coming back to him now. He was in an alleyway, at 9:45, and it had been dark, and he had been attacked. He had beaten off the young man, and run off. Then he had stumbled over something, and fallen, fallen further and further, getting faster all the time.

Then he had hit something, and instinctively guessed that it was the floor. Suddenly thinking that the man might be nearby, he leapt up, even though every muscle in his body ached. He looked round.

It was a totally different place. It was the same alley, but the ground was a sort of dark smooth plasticy substance. The sky was purple and swirling slowly. People had left fluorescent spray paint memories on the walls of the alleyway like KATE 4 JAZ and JOK WOZ ERE. It all looked so menacing and dangerous.

It took a few moments for him to get his bearings. What had happened? Had he been knocked out for twenty years? This was impossible.

It was the noise of footsteps that disturbed his thought. They were heading towards him at a brisk, steady pace. Thump, thump, thump… Getting closer. Perhaps whoever it was could help explain what had happened, or where he was.

A middle-aged man stepped round the corner, with a look of experience on his face. He was wearing a black rubber suit and a sturdy-looking helmet of the same colour. He was holding a small black box with 2 pins in the front and a trigger and handle at the bottom, which looked like some sort of weapon. On his feet were heavy boots, and he had thick gloves on. Dangling from a belt at his waist, he had a knife, a radio, a strange spiked instrument that looked worryingly like handcuffs and a black pouch. He had a badge on his chest reading ‘Bunac’. The man guessed that he must be some sort of policeman.

The policeman seemed slightly startled at first to see the man, but he quickly held his weapon up and said,

"Who are you? You know the laws. No-one out after ten." He stepped towards the man, threateningly. His eyes searched his body and didn’t miss a single detail. The man could feel his eyes scouring him top to toe.

"I wondered…"

"Name!" the policeman demanded again.

"Nicholas Thompson," the man said.

The policeman looked at him oddly.

"What? 2 names? Which is your real name?"

"Erm… Nicholas, I suppose," the man stammered.

"Hmm. What an odd name," the policeman murmured as he whipped out a sort of screen from his pouch and wrote everything down on it. The man noticed that although he was writing, nothing was appearing on it. The policeman seemed not to notice or care.

Satisfied, the policeman put away his writing-screen and looked up.

"Excuse me, but could you help me?" the man asked. "Its just that I tripped up, and fell over and I was here, and its totally different! And when…"

The policeman suddenly sighed impatiently and glanced to his right. He unclipped the radio from his belt, and pressed a button on it.

"Jim, I’ve got an outsider," he said. "Yep, it seems pretty confused. All right, I’ll bring it in."

"What?" the man asked.

"Just hold your hands out," the policeman said, unclipping the torturous looking handcuffs.

"No!" the man looked like a frightened mouse, backing away from some unknown danger.

The policeman sighed again, and put the cuffs away.