The Boy From The Bridge - Jakehoon

Chapter 1: The Boy From The Bridge 1/3

The pre-dawn light revealed a gloomy overcast sky. It was not really the cinematic backdrop one anticipates for the day of their death.

 Jake smiled to himself at the detail, such a concern was immaterial when set against the action he planned for the day. It is said that a good life is best measured in simple words, if that is the case, Jake had his down as disappointing, cowardly and constrained.

Jake had been raised from an early age to be the son his parents wanted him to be. Having just turned eighteen he was not only failing to fulfil that ambition but he paled in comparison to his older brother - who met success and acclaim whether he stepped. 

Jake's inability to match the strides of his sibling had always being met with derision from his family. If he was honest, Jake felt he was strong enough to withstand the scrutiny of others who deemed him inadequate, the issue arose from how he viewed himself.

He was neither the person he wanted to be the one nor the one he believed he was capable of being. Instead, Jake was a poor imitation of a person someone else wished for, who was expected to robotically climb a linear path up a mountain that he would never be able to conquer.

Despite the state of melancholia that consumed him, Jake was determined not to waste his one shot at life. He was clever enough, blessed with good enough looks and he held a charisma that was never overlooked by anyone outside of his family. 

Jake did not want no life, he just wanted a new one, a fresh start.

That fresh start had brought him five thousand miles away from his home in Brisbane to a bridge who's name he did not even know. Dawn was coming, and so to his moment of action. A part of him still considered his plan idiotic to the extreme and rash beyond compare. Despite these misgiving, he mustered the bullish resolve of a teenage boy and suppressed those concerns.

 He checked both left and right to see no pedestrians or vehicles sharing the bridge with him. Jake hoisted himself up onto the barrier of the sea-facing side of the bridge before sitting with his legs dangling over the water below.

He reached into the breast pocket of his read nylon jacket and pulled out his green-cased phone. He positioned it, alongside his passport, in a stable position to capture both him and the sunrise that was creeping over the sea's horizon.

Brushing away a strand of his medium length light brown hair, he opened up the Facebook App and begun a broadcast. He looked out to sea, wiped a tear from a his eye and exhaled deeply. He then begun to sing an extract from Elton John's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.' 

"When are you going to come down? When are going to land?" His voice was etched with venom as he addressed his words to his parents, "Maybe you'll get a replacement - there's plenty like me to be found. Mongrels who ain't got a penny, sniffing for tidbits like you - on the ground." 

Despite his anger, the act of saying goodbye, which is what he was doing, was a difficult one. The sorrow he felt overcame any rage he had. Taking a breath to contain the sadness choking his throat he glanced to see the Viewer Count was still at zero.

"So goodbye Yellow Brick Road, where the dogs of society howl. You can't plant me in your penthouse, I'm going back to my plough. Back to the howling old owl in the woods, hunting the horny black toad. Oh, I've finally decided my future lies beyond the Yellow Brick Road."

With that, Jake waited a short moment and then pushed himself with both of his hands against the barrier before falling out of camera-shot and into the sea.

The fall was less of an out-of-body experience than he had anticipated. In all of his planning he had not considered that swimming fully clothed was going to be the most daunting task. Thus he spent the fall bracing himself for the uncomfortable sensation of wet clothes and wet shoes.