Descent

“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?”

“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.