The Man Jumped

A short about a man and his final moments.

The man jumped.

As he was falling, all the reasoning he had written in the letter began to break apart and began to seem almost pointless. The wind tearing at his skin and pulling away the cloud of alcohol that muddled his mind seconds earlier. It had all made sense then, and now, seemed completely irrelevant. The castle walls blocking him from his happiness were now reduced to  a chain link fence, a feat easy to overcome. His wife of 5 years had left him, but only after humiliating him by sleeping with another man, but she could have been replaced. How could he have thought that she, a cheater, a s**t, a cast away, could be the only one for him? What about the girl at the coffee shop who smiled, the receptionist who laughs at all his jokes. Laughed, at all his jokes. He was no longer that man.

He lost all when she left. He lost his sanity, his ability to love, to reason. Or he thought he had. If he had just stopped. Put the bottles away the pills, the alcohol, his friends then, but now? His escapes then, but now? Now they seemed to cast evil glares. The blue and red caps, the amber colored drinks made him sick. His knives, oh how he loved his knives. Then, they were a work of art, a quick way to forget all else and fall into pain, allowing his head to become fuzzy. Any which way he could escape he tried, always running away, fighting against the inevitable doom, fighting against himself. He knew he had lost. Never once did he stop and line up anything other than his escape in front of him. If he swapped substances for thoughts. Sat down with a glass of reason, took a handful of rationality.

Through all of that, he still blames her, blames his work for getting rid of him. Who in their right mind would hire a man like him? Who would hire someone who turned away from sobriety and took the step in the other direction? Now look at him. Suspended in air, caught in thought at how… stupid it all was. How all could be fixed, resolved, dealt with, bettered, enhanced, and how he never thought of any of it once.

Now, here he is. Him, his thoughts and his last seconds. I screamed when he hit the ground.

 

1:49am

22/03/15

RDC

Author's Note

As noted at the bottom, this was completed early in the morning after experiencing this first hand in a dream. In the dream I was the one plummeting, solving all the problems that pushed me off. Unfortunately I was unable to solve my stupidity and landed with a comforting crunch.