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Jump
Afternoon. Just before the start of the daily peak-hour traffic. A few blocks from the centre of the city. This wasn't the tallest building around, but it had the slackest security. He had a half-brick in one hand, intending to smash his way through the windows on the top floor, but when he emerged from the elevator, the offices were still occupied. Of course they were still at work, fuckwit! He thought to himself. It's only four o'clock! He crept down the hallway to the fire-escape doors. There was a large padlock holding them closed, which he bashed off with the half-brick. Quickly, he edged between them and drew them shut behind him. There were three more flights leading up; he took them at a measured pace, emerging into the afternoon sun on the roof. A few pigeons fluttered away as he passed. He approached the birdshit-stained rail that ran around the edge of the roof, peered over. Directly below, about fifty floors down, was the plaza; mildly crowded, maybe a dozen people. He didn't think he'd have to worry about landing on anyone. A small smile disturbed the otherwise-dejected lines of his face. He tossed the half-brick over the rail, followed its progress down. It went through the windscreen of a car waiting at the lights, and there was a minor commotion. Most of the people in the plaza went over to look, leaving him more room. He checked that the note was still pinned to his T-shirt... the note he'd spent hours composing, detailing every miserable facet of his life up 'til now, with more than enough detail to convince anyone that what he was going to do was a rational decision, the only thing he could have done. Yet, he hesitated. He'd read (in a Stephen King short story, The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet) that only serious suicides jumped off buildings. Did he have the nerve?
Once, at a party, someone had dared him to slash his arm with some broken glass. He wasn't particularly drunk at the time, but he was desperate to impress, so... he thought, `well, why not just do it?', and slashed away. He'd opened up a cut almost six inches long which bled copiously; the effect was much more than he'd expected, and from the looks on the faces around him, more than they'd expected as well. He thought about how he felt just before he made the cut; he had been thinking, this won't hurt; it probably won't do anything at all. Lost in memories of that dark, noisy party, he climbed up the side of the rail and stepped over. He found himself leaning out over a chasm, a huge empty void, with tiny ant-like people far below, the distant tooting of impatient cars just reaching him. For a moment - less than a second - the view was fantastic. Then, he realised where he was, and with a scream, wildly waving his arms in a futile effort to regain his balance and GET THE FUCK BACK OVER THE FUCKIN' RAIL AT ANY COST, he fell. Pitched head-first into the air, everything was suddenly moving too fast to follow. It was just like those TAC advertisments that showed car accidents from inside the car; he was at the centre of a blurry, rapidly-moving world, no details discernable. He turned in the air, now on his back, suddenly seeing the sky and the top of the building receeding much too quickly. Eyes wide, he screamed in panic. Something smashed into his legs from below, just above the knee, sending him spinning feet over head. It was perhaps four or five gyrations (he wasn't counting!), or fifteen or twenty floors (he couldn't tell) before his motion stabilised, and he was dropping at a frightening rate, head first. Now, he could see the plaza, and the small crowd of people still gathered around the car with the smashed windshield. One or two people were pointing up at him. The ground below him was clear of pedestrians but was approaching too quickly, he wasn't going to have time to enjoy this flight, those steps, it was too - CHRIST
ow god oh shit oh shit it hurts
He was still alive! He'd hit, his shoulder taking the blow side-on. The rest of his body had been driven into the upper part of his torso, his legs folding back to smack against the rail of the steps he'd landed on. He'd stood there for a moment, as if he'd been doing a variety of head-stand, until his legs had slid off the rail and he'd slumped over sideways. He lay there, his head forced over to sit pressed against his other shoulder, moaning from the pain which stabbed through his middle. Since his head refused to obey any commands, he forced his eyes to look down and saw with dismay that a long, white bone was protruding from his chest, streaked with blood, tatters of ribs, shreds of yellowed flesh dangling from it. He exhaled, and a spray of red spattered from the edges of the wound. He tried to inhale again. His neck seemed pinched off, but the shaft emerging from his front shook spasmodically and air was sucked in around the edges with a wet sound. He couldn't figure out what it was; his spine? ribs? his arm? That was it; he'd landed on his outstretched left arm, which had been forced back through his body and out between his ribs, probably taking a good chunk of his cardio-vascular system out with it. The pain seemed to recede then; he was thinking of an old song by Frank Zappa as he lost consciousness: Well, go on and get it over with then, |
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