Between them I walked, the wooden platform separating from the fall no wider than a child is tall.
In the waking world heights drew me to edges, the plummet enticing me as much as the crack of bone on cement repelled me. I had friends who had died in such a way and a part of me wondered what their last thoughts were as they impacted the hard earth.
I walked with the heavens as my company.
Below a howl wound through the green, a moment later another answered it.
I stopped.
Beneath me the platform ended, its edge broken in a wide curve as if bitten and I cursed myself for my wandering thoughts.
Of course my Dream Self would offer me nothing but a fall, the devil inside me could do little else.
I had always seen him there in me shadow, his smile was like mine and in his reasonable conversation other devils lurked.
Our darker selves knew all the tricks and this one had left me no choices.
“There is only forward.” I said and leapt.
The supports on which the platform sat rushed past me as I fell, a latticework of irregular beams some braced with brass clamps that glistened in the moonlight while other were tied with sodden ropes being pecked by birds.
I fell, the air pushed against me, a cushion repelling me.
I thought of the tale of Icarus and thought perhaps the inverse of his tale might also be true. If flying too close to the sun is in question would a fall to the depths be advisable?
The ground rushed up to greet me.
Before I hit it, the moment before the flesh of my face met the cold grass, I thought of the old wives’ tale about falling in dreams. You always woke before you hit, they said, or you never woke at all.
Time froze.
I hung in the air, suspended.
I reached out and brushed my hand through the grass.
Time is an illusion, dream time doubly so, and my only enemy in here is myself and the demons that inhabit me; and those things were opponent enough.
I climbed from the sky, like stepping from an invisible swing and placed my feet into the long grass. Around me the green rolled in all directions, mounds of earth lay before me, as wide as I was tall and this made me think of a story I once wrote.
Were my stories my demons or where they ways of exorcising them?
Where they a legacy or sorts in lieu of lack of children?
Where they nothing more than a distraction?
When the cold air hit the tears on my face I realised I was crying; but I didn’t understand why so, to distract myself, I walked deeper into the green.
posted by Alan Preece
on November, 17