short fiction · 2026-10-15

Sideways Glance

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet hour between breaths, the world tilted sideways, not as a fall but as a gentle shift of perspective. Streets became rivers of light, flowing upward where gravity had forgotten its pull. I walked on the walls of buildings, my footsteps echoing like soft chimes against glass that now served as floor. Above me, the sky was a deep ocean, its waves slow and silent, carrying clouds like distant islands. A cat slipped from a windowsill, not falling but gliding along the vertical plane, its tail brushing the edge of a puddle that hung suspended in the air. I reached out, and my hand met the cool surface of a raindrop that hovered, perfectly round, reflecting a version of myself that smiled back with eyes wide open to the impossible. In that sideways reality, ordinary became extraordinary, and the familiar whispered secrets of dimensions just beyond the veil of perception.