It's the first of October. I'm making my way to the edge of the lawn, where the mesh of crunchy pinecones and leaves on the grass meets with a blacktop that's covered with mist, so I can't see the bottom. My boots are great for crushing the crunch. But it's the edge of the world, between fairyland and a pit into unknown.
And can I decide whether or not to cross the line? I blow air into my shaking hands, but it's just cold like the rest of me. Autumn used to do me so well, but today it's all I can do to keep breathing. It's not just today, I remind myself. Three years, and not a day goes by that I don't regret anything I've done. Shouldn't have left my family for an imaginary life in the city with coffee and cereal-fueled sketching. Shouldn't have dropped out of uni, either, just because it made my lips numb from the nerves. Still, they didn't call me. My roommate, who I left when I packed up and ditched town before he came back from class, and my brother either. Whether or not I drop off this cliff, no one'll notice. The drop will be slow, and I'll have plenty of time to think, and at the bottom, I won't have to think ever again.
The air-frost I'm breathing is really getting to me. It's like some fake blood I'm coughing out of my lungs, and I take a step closer to the edge so the tips of my toes hang an inch over the gaping hole in mist. I see now that there's a great swell of waves wrapping around the coast below me, and I'm deciding that it won't be the worst way to die. A shock of ice under my clothes, then in my lungs, then through my veins, and it can all go black as I chant to myself that it's the end it's the end i'm done.
Dan?
My hair whips my cheeks in a hard stroke as I turn around to the sound. There's no one here, though. The seaside is always empty here in October, or any other day in the year. Only an empty frame of air stands behind me, like whatever occupied it moments ago has left only an imprint in heat. The wind plays nasty tricks with my mind when it catches that I'm lonely. No one called my name.
That just means I'm free to go, doesn't it? No one to take attendance and see I'm missing, no one to check in with me at any Starbucks I frequent for a cup of hot coffee. (God, I could use a cup of hot coffee.)
Okay. So I go now, right? I've inched forward little millimetres these past few seconds, and all left on solid ground are the heels of my boots. Those'll tip forward soon. Well?
Is no one going to stop me?
Okay. I sigh. Maybe the seawater will be cold enough to warm my body.
Wait. The cold has made my joints creaky, but I bend down past it, and I loosen the ties on my boots. Slip them off, place them neatly in their pair on the side of a stone cliff tinged with the icy residue snow of an early winter. I need some proof that I existed, don't I? I need some proof that I was here. Dan was here. He stood here like a poet, and he sketched the edge of the cliff from a perspective flying down like a tornado, and he stuffed the drawing into his boots that he left lined up on the cliff. That sounds like a decent enough story. I hope someone covers it someday. I've not done anything worthwhile, but remembrance is something I want, something I feel I deserve. My poetry could fill libraries.
That's it, then. The dew hits my woolen socks when I step into the grass and back to my position on the edge of this. On the edge of the world, I'd swear, if only the Earth were flat. A singular piece of printer paper, thinner than my edge.
I raise my arms at my sides, a wingspan of which to be jealous, and I stand on my tiptoes. Now I'm off. Now the wind is separating around me, and my hair is pasted to my forehead in curly spools because I didn't bother to straighten it today. Now my cheeks are rosy because I can feel the blood flowing to them in this heat of rush. Now I'm flying, and the back of my long coat is flapping up and down behind my like some weird tail. Now I've done it, and there's no going back. Now the ice touches me, and I'm dragged to the bottom from a riptide that I don't fight, because I've been waiting for this. Now my vision goes blurry, then black. Now is the beginning of the end.
YOU ARE READING
When September Ends
Hayran KurguDan thought that when he gave it all up, everything would finally be over. But as it turns out, there's more to life than meets the eye, and Dan is alone in this part. Until he meets Phil, who can somehow see him.
