The Day the World Turned Upside Down - 6

Tom stepped over the doorway to the kitchen. Piles of plates had slid off of shelves and lay splayed upside down in a rubble of broken glass, spice jars, sugar and fruit. The fridge leaned across the narrow space and rested on the cupboards. He turned to the door and reached across to the doorknob, chest-high and to the left. He opened it and looked up at the wooden porch and the stairs that led into the back yard, a sight he'd seen a thousand times that now seemed sinister and strange. He lowered his head slowly. There was a pale patch of grass where the sandbox had been; the swing set had completely vanished. All that remained of the playground was the seesaw, its board now parallel to the ground above. The patch of forest behind the yard remained but all the branches bent the other way, revealing the pale undersides of leaves. Occasionally things came loose - rocks and leaves and weak, old trees - and plummeted away. Finally, he looked down. There was nothing there. An infinite, pale chasm. A white void.