into the blue 🖤 campbell bain

one

I close my eyes and all the world drops dead...

Here I am: the precipice. I swallow a gulp of cold, damp air, - it feels purer up here, somehow. Cleaner. The feeling of it filling my lungs makes me feel invigorated, so alive that it's borderline inappropriate, considering the situation.

My eyes fall downwards, settling first on my ugly black shoes with the big gold buckles, then onto the university green, vast and emerald-tinted beneath the dark gray skies. My vision doubles, and nausea begins to set in. Before I can think twice, I take another deep breath and allow my eyes to fall shut.

My mother's voice seems to whisper to me in the breeze that lightly ruffles my hair, a memory that had been swallowed by one of the countless others, finally returning to me in my last moments.

Clearly, I can envision Mom and I, staring down the steep downgrade of a mountain we had been attempting to scale all morning. I was just as dizzy then as I am now, and yet, her words were enough to make me feel as though I was perfectly secure, invincible.

"Don't look down, Dorothy," she told me. "Keep your head up, and you'll feel just fine."

And so I keep my eyes closed as I take the smallest step forward. I won't look down. I won't look at all.

I lift my lids and all is born again...

My foot meets dead, empty air, and I find myself unwittingly startling back, eyes shooting open.

Frustrated, I take a shaking breath. I've been planning this for a whole week now, rehearsing this exact moment over and over again in my mind. Why won't my body let me do it?

The world stretches out below me, daring me, - no, taunting. My peers mill about the lawn, utterly unaware of my plans, and this makes me feel sickly vengeful.

I decide that I won't make it easy on anyone. I'll go careening forward, eyes wide open as I make my way down. I'll watch the world rush by before it swallows me whole.

I think I made you up inside my head...

Eight steps back. Eight more forward. I go slowly, deliberate, as if I was walking a circus tightrope.

Suddenly, I can hear everything, - my heart hammering in my ears, the 'clack' of my shoes against the roof, the obnoxious laughter and everyday conversation of the students on the grass.

It's all too loud, - too meaningless and distracting.

I search in my mind for the poem I read as I ate breakfast this morning, - the last thing I would ever read.

Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl's Love Song.

A fitting farewell, I would say.

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red...

When I make my way back to the edge, I can't help but marvel at the day one last time.

It's beautiful, - overcast, dreary, mild.

No rain.

No sunlight, either.

Neither hot or cold.

A perfect day to die.

I focus on two people below me, - a couple of girls, positioned just a bit to the right of where I imagine I'll make impact. They sit on a picnic blanket, eating their lunch and laughing while they converse.

I grin wryly to myself.

They don't suspect a damn thing.

Another step forward. A very small one, - extraordinarily minuscule.

And arbitrary blackness gallops in...

First my toes are positioned over the ledge, then the sole of my shoes. All that's left is my heels and I'll be a goner.

Hell, the breeze could very well do me in at this point.

I stretch my arms out, tempting fate, feeling larger and more powerful than I have all my life.

A taste of exhilaration before I go. The bravest thing that this coward ever did.

I think I made you up inside my head...

Sylvia's words play in my mind like a true melody, and I cant help but wonder how she felt before she made her own exit.

Did she feel this free? Or did she just want it to be over?

Was there even the slightest bit of questioning? Was it possible for such doubt to eventually bleed into regret?

Or did she feel strangely at peace, in spite of the gruesome circumstances, like this was always meant to be the way the story ended?

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed, and sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane...

One last deep breath.

One last look at the college green, yet to be marred by the evidence of my existence.

One last silent goodbye to the world that I was convinced I entered by some kind of fluke, - nineteen years, spent searching fruitlessly for a purpose.

I blink...

I think I made you up inside my head...

An ungodly shriek pierces the air. "Look up there! On the roof!"

Stumbling slightly but not enough to go over, I try to convince myself it's nothing more than my conscience, attempting to play tricks on me, - some last attempt to snap me out of it, lure me back to the dormitory where I could try to sleep this funk off.

But it isn't. Of course, it isn't.

"No! No!"

"Don't do it! Don't jump!"

"Someone stop her!"

"Help!"

I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. Quiet down, all of you...

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade...

Before I can consider it, it seems it's all coming to a screeching halt. A body, crashing into mine, pulling rather than pushing.

Finally, I am falling, but I'm doing it backwards, back to safety. The last state I want to be in.

I do my best to fight, - kicking, screaming, clawing.

"Let me go!" I cry as I flail about. "Just let me go! Let me fucking die!"

Exit seraphim and Satan's men...

"Stop fighting," warns a gruff, unfamiliar voice in my ear, "or you'll wish that you really were dead."

Part of me wants to argue, state that that's the whole fucking point. All I can do is throw my head back, letting out the loudest scream I can manage before my body hits the roof.

A cracking sound. A sharp pain, tearing from my right rib up to my shoulder. An odd, electrically charged feeling, suddenly seeming to effect every nerve in my body at once. Brilliant, terrible pain, overtaking any coherent thoughts I may have been having just a few moments ago.

Then nothing but the dark. Just like I had imagined. Just like I had hoped for.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead...