“Close your eyes. Do you hear the
wind whistling through your ears?”
“Yes”
“Can you feel the slight pressure
on your back, pushing you forward ever so slightly?”
“I can, yes”
“And can you feel that one inch
of nothingness where your feet teeter over oblivion?”
“Yes”
“Don’t you want to embrace it? Don’t you want to just let go, just get swallowed into whatever is there down below?”
“Don’t you want to embrace it? Don’t you want to just let go, just get swallowed into whatever is there down below?”
“I don’t know. What is down
there?”
“Only one way to find that out,
isn’t it?”
He opened his eyes at that and
looked around. Obviously no one was there. There never was. Time and time again
he had come up to this place and time and time again that voice had egged him
on like it did just now. It had become a cruel twisted game this, make Jack
tumble down that slope. He thought he was strong, god he always thought he was
strong enough to resist those mesmeric tones! But sliver by tiny sliver those dulcet
tones had shaved away the edifice of his resolve till there was nothing left
but mere strands quivering amidst the gusts and swirls of the fickle heavens.
He was spent, truly utterly spent as he stood here once again at the edge of
the precipice.
His gaze returned to the
nothingness below him. He thought he could see some vague shapes in the gloom
below, but it could have just been his eyes playing tricks, like the
fantastical beasts he used to spot in the clouds as child. Oh how long gone
were those glorious days! Nothing was as iridescent in the glades of his
consciousness as that sun-dappled meadow where that little kid used to chase
butterflies and laugh at the joy of it all. He felt like a ghoul, standing
invisible in the shadows at the edge as the carefree child ran past him,
trailing behind musical peals of laughter that made him tear up. He longed to
grab onto that child and hug him fiercely, but was afraid that he would sully
even him, this one bright bauble that he had managed to salvage from the
wreckage. The past was long dead, the future even more so.
A particularly fierce gust of
wind suddenly hit him from the side and almost made him topple over the edge.
His survival instinct kicked in before he could even process what was happening
and he immediately righted his balance and clung on harder with his toes to the
edge of the parapet. His heart thudded hard for a few panic-stricken moments
before settling down into the same dirge-like rhythm that he was used to. He
heaved a little sigh at the suddenness of it all. He wasn’t sure what his
intention was at this point of time but he sure as hell didn’t want to fall to
a whimsy of fate! He thought of stepping back down and calling it a day, but he
could still sense that voice in his head even though it was silent at the
moment. No, the game did not end till that voice did not vanish, it’d be
cheating if he did anything before that. He remained standing as he was, half
of this world, half elsewhere, ne’er anywhere. Persistent transience.
Consistent evanescence.
“Here today gone tomorrow, down which
hole no one will know!” the voice cackled gleefully. He couldn’t hold back a
wry grin at the fatalism of it. The game was never that easy, too many twists
and turns and snakes to slip back down on. The other player never let up, never
surrendered, for he knew he had the winning hand. He had always had the winning
hand and everything else up till this point was but a mockery of him, his life,
his hopes and loves and dreams and ambitions and everything in between and
beyond. This was how it was always going to end, from the day he first set foot
on this grubby insignificant rock in the vast ether and thought he was
different, that he was special and meant for great and wondrous things. And yet
here he was, at the edge, with that voice, always that voice…
“Will you come with me?”
“Yes”
“Promise?”
“I have always been there, haven’t
I?”
With that last syllable, a sudden
force pushed him inexorably over the edge and plummeting down into the waiting void.
He fought back the urge to scream and tried to seek solace in his friend, but
he couldn’t sense it anywhere. His body tumbled over and over again as he
frantically tried to right himself and seek out that warm soothing presence, but
couldn’t sense anything beyond the crippling fear welling in his throat. It was
only at the very last infinitesimal instant before vanishing into nothingness
that he heard a distant cackle fleeing into the heavens. The last emotion he
ever felt was the abject horror of being truly and utterly alone.
