Something hit me in the face. “Ow!” I yelled, more annoyed at being woken up than actually hurt. I opened my eyes just in time to see a hand hit me a second time, this time landing a finger in my eye. I squeezed it shut again, cringing away from the fingers. “Stop it!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing?” A voice came from above, “Trying to get you down.” It was my roommate Jim. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I’m laying on the floor. Why are you slapping me?” Apparently Jim disagreed with me. “Nope,” he said, “You’re on the ceiling.”

Slowly I opened my eyes, trying to blink away the pain. Finally I got them open all the way. I looked up at the ceiling. What was Jim talking about? I wasn’t on the ceiling, he was. But so was my bed… and so was my dresser. As I looked around I realized everything in my room was on the ceiling, including the carpet. I started to panic. I whipped my head around to look at the door. Sure enough, it started at the ceiling- or rather the floor- and stopped a few feet shy of the floor. Or was it the ceiling? I really wasn’t sure anymore.

I slowly stood up. Whatever was happening I didn’t like it. “Jim?” I asked, “What’s going on?” I looked over at him. He was now only a few feet away. Now that both of us were standing up, our faces came just past each other’s collar bones. “I was asleep,” Jim said. “You remember what I told you about my dreams?” Indeed I did remember what he had told me. I hadn’t taken it seriously though. He had told me some stupid story about how his dreams become real when he wakes up or something. I couldn’t remember the details, only that I had laughed at him and dismissed it as a joke. “You were serious about that?” I asked. “Yes,” Jim said. “I was having a dream last night. Some pretty weird stuff happened. My eyes were a different color and you had a disease that flipped you upside down so you were on the ceiling. I was trying to fix it so it wouldn’t come true when I woke up, but there was a car accident outside that woke me up. Also, you should probably know that in my dream the bac--” I cut him off. “Will you shut up about your stupid dream already? I am literally hanging off the ceiling like a bat.” I walked over to the door and reached above my head to grab the knob. I swung it open and stepped over the top of the frame. “I’m going to make some breakfast,” I said, and I slammed the door behind me.

When I got to the kitchen I realized my mistake. How could I possibly make breakfast from the ceiling? It wouldn’t exactly be a piece of cake. No matter. Where there’s a person who really wants bacon, there’s a way. I walked over to the refrigerator and reached up to open the door. I pulled it open and began my search for food. I saw the eggs and sausage, but where was the bacon? My heart dropped. The bacon was on the floor of the fridge. I couldn’t reach it, it was too high up. Who on earth had decided to give the apartment ceilings this high anyway? I’d have to jump.

I decided to give it a running start. That was how they did it in the Olympics right? They ran and jumped over the pole thingy? I backed up to the wall by the stove and started to run. The ceiling shook with every step. I came within five feet of the fridge and jumped, reached my arm out, and closed my fingers around the bag of raw bacon. I had done it! Then I hit the ceiling and kept going. My feet went straight through the ceiling and I fell upwards for another foot before landing on a beam. I lost my balance and fell forward, losing my bacon in the process. “Jim!” I yelled, “You’re fixing the ceiling later.”

I looked around to see where my bacon had ended up. Somehow it had made it on top of the fridge. I stepped out of the hole in the ceiling and opened the fridge again. I could actually reach the eggs and sausage. I picked up the sausage links and noticed some pancake mix behind it. Pancakes sounded good, but no. That was an adventure I didn’t think I was up for. I set the sausage on the fridge and went for the eggs. Carefully I grabbed the egg carton with both hands, trying my best to keep it level. I slid it out of the fridge and slowly maneuvered it to the top of the fridge to set it down. Wow, getting eggs was more stressful than I remembered. Now for the fun part, cooking all of this.

I crossed over to the cupboard where my pots and pans were stored and opened the door. I picked out a large frying pan and reached up to try and set it on the stove, not quite reaching it. I shifted my grip to the end of the handle and tilted the pan until the very edge of it was touching the edge of the burner and let it go. The handle end dropped towards the stove and flipped the whole pan over the edge, sending it tumbling to the ground with a crash. I looked back towards my room and saw Jim poking his head out, watching me. “Logan, you should probably know about the bacon,” he said. “Go away!” I shouted at him. “I don’t want to hear it.” I turned away and went for another pan, not bothering to see if he had actually left or not. “Oh, and you get to clean up later,” I said over my shoulder.

I grabbed the second largest pan in the cupboard and tried to put it on the stove, but ended up with the exact same result. I needed to rethink my method. I turned back to the cupboard, but to my dismay there was only a small one-egg pan left. All my other pans were dirty! I picked up the pan with two hands, ready to try for a final time to put the pan on the burner. This time I held it flat above my head with my arms out straight and let it drop. It landed with a crash and slid towards the middle of the stove, but most of it had landed directly over top of a burner. Victory! Now it was bacon time!

I jumped a little and turned on the burners on the stove. I honestly couldn’t tell which button was the right one. Turns out being upside down is pretty disorienting. I grabbed the bag of bacon and dropped a few pieces into the pan. I closed the bag and tried to toss it onto the fridge, but of course gravity was still misbehaving and it fell to the ground with a slap. I guess I had all the bacon I would be eating today. I turned back to the stove and started moving the bacon around with a spatula I had lengthened by sticking several utensils together with a roll of scotch tape I had found on the fridge.

After a moment I decided my pan was much too small, if I cooked the bacon and then the eggs I felt sure the bacon would be stone cold by the time the eggs were done, maybe I should grab the eggs. I made an executive decision and grabbed the eggs. I pulled two out of the carton and set the rest back on the fridge. I rolled them in my hands for a moment, trying to decide the best way to get them into the pan. I looked up. The pan was directly above my head, so maybe I could just crack an egg and it would fall right up into the pan. I looked back down at the eggs and hit them together. Liquid egg flew up out of the shell as it cracked and went straight in my nose and eyes. I screamed and fell over backwards, dropping the eggs. It stung so bad! I desperately scraped at my eyes and blew out my nose trying to get the egg out, but as soon as any egg came out of my nose it ran up my face and into my eyes. I had to do something quick! I wiped the egg away from my eyes, and for a split second managed to open them wide enough to get a glance of the room around me. The roll of paper towels on the wall, I had to get there! The egg ran back into my eyes, stinging like lemon juice in a papercut. I shut my eyes again, trying not to scream, and stumbled in the direction of the paper towel rack.

My foot hit something hard and I tripped, falling sideways. There was a sound like shattering glass where my foot had hit as I fell into the fridge, knocking something off of it. Both the pieces of whatever I kicked and the object I had knocked down hit the ground, but I ignored it, too consumed by the stinging of my eyes to really care about whatever it was. I continued in the direction I thought I had been headed, groping for the paper towels. Finally my fingers found them and I snatched up the roll, tearing  away one paper towel after another. As I finished wiping away the egg I took a moment to look at what I had hit and kicked to the floor. Unsurprisingly I had kicked a lightbulb, completely shattering it in the process. As I saw what else fell, my heart fell. The eggs! Why did it have to be the eggs? Somehow I had been so stupid that I had placed the egg carton on the edge of the fridge.

In my grief I had failed to notice that Jim had returned to the kitchen. “Logan,” he said. I looked up, startled. “Unless you are here to tell me that there are more eggs, I don’t want to hear it,” I told him. “Logan, you really should know about the bacon,” he insisted. I stopped him before he could continue. “I don’t want to hear it,” I seethed, giving him a murderous glare. He sighed and backed away again. I turned my attention back to breakfast. The bacon! I had forgotten about the bacon! I rushed over to the fridge and picked up my elongated spatula. I dashed back to the stove and frantically flipped the bacon over. Thank goodness! It wasn’t burnt. In fact, it was actually cooked very well. I breathed a sigh of relief. In a crazy world where life was upside down and my eggs were on the floor, at least my bacon wasn’t burnt.

I eventually managed to finish cooking my bacon without further incident, and set it on a plate I’d found in one of the other cupboards. I jumped to turn the burner off again and set my plate on the fridge (it was the closest surface to the ceiling after all). I sat down cross legged next to the fridge and picked up a piece of bacon. After all that work, I had only a few pieces of bacon to show, but it was worth every bit of effort. I lifted the bacon to my mouth, ready to revel in the glory of bacon, then stopped. Jim was standing in the doorway, arms folded, leaning against the doorframe. This was the perfect chance to flaunt my victory. “Don’t that smell good?” I asked him, holding up the bacon for him to see. He just stared, his expression deadpan. I turned back to my bacon and opened my mouth, but again I paused. I looked directly at Jim. “Oh yeah,” I said, “Wasn’t there something you wanted to tell me about the bacon?” I said sarcastically, a smirk on my face. “I forgot,” he said, expression unchanging. Slowly I returned my gaze to the bacon. That was weird. Jim obviously hadn’t forgotten what he wanted to tell me, so why wouldn’t he say it? No matter, I had delayed my bacon eating long enough. I put the entire strip of bacon in my mouth and started chewing. Oh, it was so good! I hadn’t realized how hungry I was, but it was delicious. I chewed for a long time, relishing the taste. Bacon was so good.

I looked over at Jim again, expecting to see him looking dejected by my accomplishment and by the fact that I was eating bacon and he wasn’t, but he didn’t look dejected at all. He was smiling. My chewing slowed down. What was going on? Why was he smiling? I finished chewing and swallowed. Immediately something went wrong. I fell off the ceiling, twisting and flailing as I plummeted to the floor. I landed with a tremendous crash right in the middle of the mess of pans and eggs I had made. I layed there, dazed for a moment, then tried to sit up. I fell right back down. What on earth had just happened? I was on the floor again, and gravity seemed to be functioning normally now, but how and why had it changed. All I had done was eat a piece of bacon for goodness sake! I gave up trying to sit or stand, I was far too disoriented for that. I layed back down and leaned my head against the floor. Jim was standing right above me. “It looks like the upside down gravity disease stopped,” he said. “I remember now. I tried to tell you about the bacon earlier, but you wouldn’t listen.” I looked up at him, too confused to question him anymore. I waited for him to finish, but he seemed to love keeping me in suspense. He turned and started walking away. I lifted my head to see where he was going. “Wait,” I called after him, “What should I know about the bacon?” Jim paused and turned around. “What you should know about the bacon,” he said, “is that it’s the cure for your anti-gravity disease.” I dropped my head back to the ground and let out a sigh. Of course it was the cure. Of course it was.