Short Story: Free Flight

                The alarm clock buzzed with a sense of hysteria in its scratchy voice. It was five in the morning, and the sun wasn’t out. It was dark and cold and lonely, and not a single soul was awake at that time. Except for me.

                There was an edge to which I clung that morning, and to which I had been hanging for so long. It was like the edge of a cliff with an eternal abyss beneath it. And the sunsets were beautiful to watch from there, with your legs hanging free into the cool afternoon air. And she and I held hands there sometimes, and sat, and talked, and had picnics even. And it was perfect.

                The void was there, though, deep and endless and gaping at us with its lack of teeth. The wide opening you irrationally wish to jump into when standing too close. I didn’t. My head went dizzy, and the world swirled in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine, and she swirled along with it like a graceful ballerina or a falling autumn leaf. I didn’t jump, but I started falling. I slipped, I stumbled or I was pushed. Does it matter really? I had thought about the fall for a while then, not when she was around but all the other time, the solitary time, the lonely time when I felt little and tiny in the face of the earth and the world and the universe, and absolutely insignificant to the vast void.

                I had imagined it to be something more, the falling bit. I thought when it happened, because we all knew it was going to happen, that it would be faster. I imagined the fear and my heartbeat escalating in unison, and then the flight. The flight was supposed to be epic. The hole was so deep that I was to have my few seconds of utter despair and total understanding  and sweet acceptance, and maybe even happiness of dying in the mouth of the mightiest of monsters.

                That was what was supposed to happen. But there was an animal inside me, an ape clinging to life harder than any human will to die. And the animal grasped the edge of the cliff in the split long second of shock and begged disgustingly for alms. I wanted to let go, but it didn’t, and she was gone from there, too scared, or amused, and there was nobody to catch my hand, and only the fingers of the thing held on.

                I was stuck on the edge, and it was stuck inside me. It was sharp and rough and pointless, but everything else was simply death.

                I woke up at five when the world was still sleeping. I woke up at five every morning and my soul was asleep. And I grasped to the edge because it was all I had. My hold on it tight, and tighter when I rode the metro to the gas station and when I took my spot behind the counter. My knuckles went white every time some idiot yelled or shouted or threatened. Although I liked it when they threatened – they believed so hard that there was something else they could take away from me, as if there was anything else that could hurt me. It was amusing, and sometimes, just sometimes, it would perhaps make me let go a little and give my sticky fingers a run for their money. But generally, I held tighter. And tighter I held when I walked back to the metro at half past ten at night without having seen the warmth of sun or sweetness of night all week, or all month, or even all year.

 I let go and let the animal take over when, on my way, I pass the store, the one that holds the abyss in a bottle. I always let the ape take control then because the human in me wants to fly.