Not in Hackney Anymore Part 1: Arrival, Banter, and the Setting
Laura clawed her way up from velvet blackness, the last scraps of sleep dissolving into a world that felt too vivid to be real. The first thing she noticed was the ground beneath her cheek—not the gritty, familiar prickle of a London park or the comfort of her battered mattress, but something strange and almost sensual. The grass was cool, impossibly soft, but it clung to her skin in delicate, sticky threads that left shimmering blue smears on her face and arm when she finally rolled over.
She blinked against the light, trying to orient herself. But this dawn wasn’t right. The sky above stretched endlessly, painted with bruised violet and streaks of deep, shifting teal. There was a sun—if you could call it that—a swollen, golden orb that looked as if it were breathing, pulsing with every beat of her heart. Clouds moved in slow, dreamy circles, trailing wisps behind them as if reluctant to leave.
Everything was just… more. Louder, brighter, stranger.
Somewhere to her left, a familiar groan broke through the syrupy air. “No. No, no, no. This is not happening.”
Laura propped herself up on trembling elbows and squinted through the surreal haze. Georgie was there—a mess of tangled hair, last night’s mascara streaked like warpaint, curled up in a ball, pinching her own arm hard enough to leave white marks.
“If you tell me this isn’t real, I’ll throttle you, Laura,” Georgie muttered, voice thick with panic.
Laura didn’t answer right away. She turned, forcing herself to take it in. They were in a clearing by the edge of a lake—a lake that shimmered with impossible clarity, its surface so still and glassy it looked fake, as if someone had stretched a sheet of clear syrup over a bed of sapphires. Laura reached out, trailing her hand along the water’s edge. It clung to her fingers in iridescent ribbons, thicker and stickier than honey, leaving a faint, sparkling residue.
The world hummed with life and weirdness. Grass wasn’t just green, but tinged with purple and blue. Clusters of fat, glowing mushrooms winked among the roots, their light shifting from pink to gold as she looked at them. Oversized clover leaves popped gently under her fingers with a sound like bubble wrap, and every so often, the ground seemed to shift beneath her, breathing or pulsing in time with the sun overhead.
The air was thick with scent—sweet and musky, a mix of overripe fruit, candyfloss, and something hot and animalistic that made Laura’s nose wrinkle and her cheeks flush.
A bird—if you could call it that—flapped lazily overhead, its feathers rippling in every color of the rainbow, wings too broad and glossy to be real. Its cry was a half-giggle, half-moan, as if the sky itself was in on some secret joke.
Behind her, in the tangled undergrowth, came a symphony of sound: strange insect chirrups, the low croon of something big and unseen, wet squelches, and distant, echoing giggles that faded into the trees. Every now and then, something in the woods shivered, sending up a cloud of sparkling pollen.
Georgie scrubbed her face with both hands, smearing glittery grass juice across her cheeks. “Alright. Recap. Your birthday. The bar with the whale-noise toilets—”
Laura nodded, mind racing. “You made me do those purple shots.”
“And then Tom brought the vape.”
Laura winced. “DMT. He said it would expand our minds. I remember you daring me.”
“I still have that Pikachu onesie photo, you know,” Georgie muttered, poking at a glowing mushroom. It quivered, then zipped back underground.
Laura checked her pockets out of habit: a crumpled gum wrapper, a half-used lighter, not a single useful thing. “No phone. No wallet. This is the worst comedown ever.”
Georgie snorted. “No phone, no escape. At least in a real nightmare you wake up.”
But there was no waking up from this. Every detail was too sharp—the cold, sticky grass, the heat rising from the lake, the electric hum in the air. It wasn’t a dream; it was a place, alive and intent on being noticed. Laura’s pulse skittered with a mix of fear and an odd, involuntary excitement.
Then, Georgie muttered, “I was so high last night, I was literally about to borrow your vibrator.”
Laura shot her a look. “It’s you who uses it? I always wondered where the crust comes from, you dirty bitch.”
Georgie gaped, then broke into giggles—sharp, helpless, just this side of hysterical. “You absolute cow. If I get out of here, I’m never letting you near my stuff again.”
Laura grinned. “You’d probably end up licking it, perv.”
Their laughter rang out across the clearing, desperate and real. For a fleeting moment, it almost felt like home. Then the sound faded, dying away as a new, deep shuddering groan rumbled out from somewhere in the woods behind them.
Author’s Note
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