Once Upon a Cliff-Jump

“Is it screening?” calls a faint voice.

“Yeah!” A hand is raised, thumb up.

“Alright. Ready!” the faint voice says again.

A young boy, no more than his teens, stands on the edge of a giant cliff, far away. He’s dressed in normal jumping gear - a t-shirt and shorts. He is barefoot.

“Jumping!” he calls. Voices cheer.

“3!” He takes a step back.

“2!” He leans forward.

“1!” He runs toward the edge of the cliff. In one fluid, practiced leap, he leaps off the cliff edge, a giant smile across his face. The voices cheer loudly. Free falling to the ground, he flips over in the air repeatedly. The voices cheer even louder. In the middle of his twenty-third flip his body strikes the ground, his face smashed against the sand on the beach. There is a sickening crunch. Silence. And then cheering. The sounds of clapping hands and whoops and whistles fill the air. Blood is splattered on the sand around the boy’s body. His arms stick out at an awkward angle. He is soundless, having mastered the art of silent screaming from so many jumps, so much pain. A person rushes forward to inject syringes full of clear liquid all over his body; his neck, his arms, his legs. And then the screen ends.

“Wow. I want to be like him.”

 

Four girls stood crouched around the holograph screen.

“That’s so cool,” said one.

“Did you see that cliff? So tall. And he just jumped off of it!”

“And those flips. I swear, he did like fifty million of them before crashing to the ground.”

“Twenty-two and a half,” said one girl. “I counted.”

“Shhh, Jenny,” said another. “That’s still more than any of us could do.”

“Heck, I can’t even do a flip.”

“And did you see that blood? That must have been a crazy hard impact if blood’s going to come out!”

“It’s Jake Smith. He’s amazing at cliff-jumping. He’s like, the cliff-jumper.”

“I mean, he’s got over three million ‘cools’ on that one screen.”

“He could have died,” said Jenny.

“Come on. Now all you need to do is inject yourself with the drug and you’ll heal right up. Isn’t that what it was made for?”

“It’s like magic. I heard no one dies after you use that thing."

“I’ve done it myself, several times. Like last time when I rode that motorcycle and I drove into the tree, Kate injected me.”

“I saw that! That was so cool! You posted it on Radem.”

“Speaking of Radem, we should totally do something tomorrow to post.”

“Maybe cliff-jumping like Jake Smith did. Cliff-jumping is so in nowadays. I swear, Mia made a screen of her cliff-jumping and got like four hundred ‘cools’.”

“We should totally go cliff-jumping! All four of us!”

“Cliff-jumping?” said Jenny.

“Yeah totally!”

“I’m not sure I want to go cliff-jumping….”

“Come on, Jenny. Don’t be a wimp.”

“You know you want to go cliff-jumping. We’re all going.”

“Plus it’s so cool. You know, we could become famous on Radem if we do it right.”

“It’s just…” Jenny paused. She clenched her teeth and tried again. “It’s just that so many people are doing it. It won’t be cool if we just follow everyone else.” She faked a smile. No one noticed.

“That’s true.…”

“Wait! I got it! Let’s go synchronized cliff-jumping.”

“What’s ‘synchronized’ mean?”

“I read it in this book my mom forced me to read. It’s basically where we all jump at the same time. It’ll look so cool, trust me.”

“Totally. I’m in.”

“In.”

“Fine.”

 

It was a grey Wednesday morning, and four girls were walking along the shoreline, three barefoot on top of a cliff and one on the wet sand, clutching a large bag.

“Is this a good spot?” hollered one of the girls from way up.

Jenny glanced around. The area around her was just flat sand.

“No,” she hollered back. She looked around and smiled. “Just like twenty feet ahead is an amazing spot though.”

They stopped where Jenny had told them too, and waited while she set up the screening device.

“Are you ready?” asked one of the girls on top of the cliff.

“Nearly,” said Jenny.

“You have the syringes, right?” asked another girl.

“Yeah…. I wish I was jumping with you guys though,” lied Jenny.

“We’re sorry,” called another girl. “Maybe next time. Maybe next week we can ditch school again and go cliff-jumping with all four of us.”

Next time, thought Jenny. There is no next time.

She adjusted the screening device one last time, and then gave the thumbs up. She lightly pressed the “screen” button.

“3!” she called. The three girls atop the cliff took a step back.

“2!” They grabbed each other’s hands.

“1!” They ran, leaping off the cliff in unison, hands tightly clutched, free-falling towards the rocky ground. They never looked down, never realized the terrible fate that was about to come onto them….

Crunch was the sound of the three girls landing hard on the jagged rocks, bones crunching and blood spilling. All three of them hit their head on the rocks, immediately falling out of consciousness.

Jenny stood there, watching the bodies of her three “friends”, lying on the rocks. She packed her screening device into the bag, never actually having screened the jump in the first place. She walked towards the girls. She reached into her bag and pulled out a half-full syringe, holding it in midair as she contemplated the dying bodies. Finally, she poured it out on the ground, carelessly throwing the empty syringe behind her back.

She walked away.