The Man on the Roof

A short little story.The end is a little rushed and amateurish, but honestly I thought of about three different endings, but the others were just too upsetting to go through with.

I ran my finger along the twisted metal bars of the fence. The blackened iron of the gate in front of my apartment complex. 

Cold. 

Rough.

Serene.

Funny how metal feels during wintertime. It seems harder, stronger. Lethal. 

I stepped back and looked up at my apartment, dreading what I was to find inside. Surely Mikaela had left her key in there. I was sure now that she had finally made her decision. Her crushing decision to leave me after all these years. I would miss her smile. Her long auburn hair and her deep blue eyes. I would miss her tiny fingernails and dainty little toes. I would miss everything about her. 

I wouldn't cry, though. I was sure of it. I would do my grieving in a different way, just as I had used to do in high school. I would do the very thing Mikaela had rescued me from. The one thing I swore never to do again. 

But I didn't care now. As long as my face remained dry and unsalted it didn't matter my methods of refrain. 

I ran my fingers slowly down the edge of the gate and pulled up the latch, listening lovingly for that metallic clicking sound. I tightened my hoodie and let the arms fall down over my fingers to keep them warm. My visible breath in the night air rushed toward me with every step making my cheeks feel like melting ice. 

I stepped up slowly to the main door entry and slid my key card through the liner, opening the door after the beeping sound and the green light. I nodded at Pat, the doorman, and continued walking, slower than my normal pace as I was not eager to reach my own door. I took in the sights and smells of the lobby and acknowledged the tightly wound aromatic smell of the candles and incense that permeated the air with a sour mix of lavender and pomegranate. 

I looked up at the grand ceiling and admired the golden chandelier and its twinkling lights shining through the faux crystal shards. This place, in its grandeur was nothing more than a money-saver's paradise. A cheapskate's home to freedom. I loved it. 

As I stepped up to the elevator, pondering the likelihood of the cords breaking on my way up, I wondered at the same time if dying in an elevator accident was a grand enough death for a person of my standards and qualities. 

No. I would take the stairs.

I blinked heavily on my way up, marveling at the glare created in my own vision by the lights that lined the edges of the steps. The striped carpeted rug that coated every step was so hideously placed that it was almost a treasure how I continued to stare at it lovingly. 

And my reason for loving this building? I had been living in it for over seven years...with Mikaela at my side. All of our great memories had been planted and grown in these halls of doorways and bleary-eyed old men that always looked as if they would drop dead by simply breathing on them. 

I chuckled at the notion, and I remained happy until I reached my own door. Number F-304. I lifted the lanyard of keys from my neck and placed the key in the slot, turning as slowly as possible, and the denial in my own mind now surfacing with my actions. 

I didn't want to enter this place. I no longer wanted to be here, but it seemed a shame to leave such memories behind during such a horrid time of being. 

I stopped one last time before opening the door to observe the hideous coloration that my front door always seemed to retain. A ghastly maroon color with strange tints of brown flecked on the base and the top. It was the first thing Mikaela and I grimaced at as we first planned to move in. 

Oh, her grimace. It always stuck in my mind. One would think that the way a person showed disgust would be the last thing you would want to think about, but in my case, it was the first. I could always place it, the way her lips slightly parted with her downward frown as one of her dimples, specifically on the right side of her face, surfaced, making it look like she was in some sort of innuendo-filled comedy movie. 

I guess it was finally time to unlock the door and go in. I had to face my enemy. Not Mikaela herself, but the spirit she would leave behind with her. The energy that she possessed would always be with me in the apartment, as it seemed now that I would never get the heart to leave it. 

I pushed open the door and flicked on the light that illuminated the living room and part of the kitchen to the left. And on the mantle rested a key. Mikaela's key. I shut the door and stood for a moment, taking in the full magnitude of my situation, telling myself over and over that it didn't matter.

I was on the ground before I knew it, my head pressed to the wooden floor as my hands and arms covered my face. Who was I hiding from? 

Nobody, I suppose.

It was just the prospect of the coming future. How could I live my days without her? How could I live the days in the future without my love? The woman who had saved me from suicide in high school. The woman who had lived and suffered with me through so many days.

...The woman I would have proposed to not a week from tonight had she not left me. In fact, the ring remained in my pocket. 

I wonder if anyone has felt that brand of heartbreak. I wonder if any other person has felt that pang of agony in their chest as they realize that their lives, starting in one moment would be ruined without the person they wanted. 

I lay on that floor for over an hour with my eyes closed, my mind replaying my favorite moments with Mikaela. Agonizingly so, I would now have to stand...and I did. 

I placed my lanyard right next to her key where it always went and stepped into the living room, removing my hoodie and beanie cap. I would now prepare for something I hadn't done in over nine years. I rolled up my sleeves and set down a towel, going through my perfectly memorized procedure as it had used to be. I went to the bathroom and pulled out my instrument of choice. 

Sitting on the couch I looked into the reflection of the silver blade as I opened it, my eyes trailing back and forth from the dead scars that lined my wrists and the old feeling of dread that made a sequel appearance in my head. 

And so I sat on that couch for another hour, running that blade across the old scars that had long healed and began to fade. It seemed like a tribute to reopen them, a reminiscent situation. And as the warm blood rushed down my arms and trickled onto the towel I had placed I began to drown in my memories. The memories of sophomore and junior year before Mikaela had made an appearance in my life. The depression rushed back into my brain, the same depression that I had locked away with a golden key. A golden key that Mikaela had confiscated for my sake. 

It seemed I had found the reclusive hiding place of that golden key. 

My arms were pale now and I could feel the familiar feeling of being oddly cold as the blood left my body. Should I go down the road now?

 

I cleaned up the blood that now coated my arms and washed them out with warm water, admiring the newly formed scars that I had created for myself. I felt like a child. A cowering child that had gone and wet his bed in the middle of the night, dreading the moment where you would have to wake up your grumpy mother from her slumber to clean your sheets. 

I guess I would go to my usual spot now. I looked for dinner, but found myself without an appetite. I would need to go to the roof now. It was cold up there and my arms were burning now with the itchy forming scabs. I didn't bother to grab my sweatshirt as I opened my porch door and climbed up the iron ladder to the roof. 

I looked at my foldout chair, the chair I had sat on with Mikaela on my lap many times over as we cuddled and looked at the stars above. I would be sitting on this chair alone now. I stepped over and sat on the chair, watching my own breath turn to mist in front of my face and fade into the night air. I turned my arms up and let the cold air cleanse the heat from them. 

I looked up, then, feeling an odd sense of compulsion within myself to see what I had seen before. 

It didn't matter now, I suppose. I stood up and headed to the edge of the roof, looking down to the spot where I had been standing a couple hours ago, and waiting for my own strength to guide me into the building. That feeling of subjective vertigo swept through my head as I bent over the side of the building.

Now would be a good a time as any. Should I just finish the job now?

"Now, what would be the point in that?" A voice to my right made me jump and tip back. I looked frantically on all sides to discover nothing. 

I must have been speaking to myself. I sat back in my chair and looked up at the stars. "It's only a matter of time." I heard the voice again. A cracked voice, a voice that hadn't been through enough and had seen too much. A voice that played through my head repeatedly. This was my thinking voice, but as I turned to look at the person who spoke it, I saw a man, maybe seventeen or eighteen.

Black hair, ruffled and short, but long enough to cover his eyes. Short nose and brown eyes with long fingers and large palms. His lips were cracked and in desperate need of Chap Stick, along with some sleep, as the bags under his eyes looked as if they could be used as tools to fly. He was sitting in what appeared to be the identical version of the chair I was now sitting in.

He moved his arms and leaned forward, placing them on his knees, turned upward. His scars matched mine. I felt kinship with this man instantly, though I had no idea who he was.

"It's only a matter of time before what?" I responded to his words.

"Before things get better. You're too young to die now." He leaned forward. "Where is the man that loves to think of the future? Where's the man that loves to explore unknown places?" I was so confused. This man didn't know me. I didn't know him. At least I couldn't remember if I had ever seen him before.

But I understood it all. Everything he said. I did love to explore, and as I sat there I couldn't help but think of all the things I had yet to do. Things I had wanted to do even before I had met Mikaela. 

He leaned forward and placed his hand on my cooling arm, the sensation stinging as the skin touched the open wounds. He showed me things, then. He showed me the world. My world, things I had done and had yet to do. The pain was gone in an instant and I felt myself wanting more with the promise of more visions. 

He shook his head. "Go back inside, man. You're getting cold." He was right, and as I put my hand to my cheek, feeling the frosty cold on it, I stood, turning to look back at this man. This man who had just saved me from suicide... but he was gone. There was no chair. There was no man and yet I followed his orders.

 

It must have been midnight by the time I went to my bedroom to go to sleep. And it came as a complete surprise to me that as I put gauze on my arms and looked at the photos I had yet to remove from my bedside table I nearly fell. Because as I looked and stared at the photo I noticed something strange. 

Black hair, short but enough to cover the eyes. Dark bags and long fingers. This was a photo of me and Mikaela on our first date. The man on the roof...was me. 

I chuckled and slid into bed, waiting for the moment of impact when sleep would hit me. I scoped my way through the visions he had shown me, savoring every moment that I had yet to experience. I came to realize the full impact of the time I had spent on this topic. The things I had done to myself in scope of things as I didn't even know what was to come.

Maybe this life could be better without her...until heard a noise. I thought it just my imagination until I heard it again. It was my front door shifting, moving in the dark. I opened my eyes, savoring the sharp moonlight that slashed across my face through my window and watched my open bedroom door. I shifted and turned, flicking on my bedside lamp and shimmying out of bed.

Is it me again? Come to visit once more?

I'm okay now... There's no need.

As I stepped out to the living room to confront whatever may have been attacking my home. I've never had a home intrusion before. But what opened my door and stepped in somberly was enough to knock me off my feet.

Auburn hair and deep blue eyes, those were now red with tears as they looked down to the gauze on my arms. 

"Oh, babe I'm so sorry." She rushed over and hugged me lovingly, the way she used to do. Her clothes were ruffled like she had rushed to get them on. 

As we stood there, holding each other I finally began to cry, my tears matching hers as I searched for the one vision that I had skipped over during my transition into sleep.

Mikaela had come back to me.

"Why are you here...?" I looked at her as she cried. She looked at me.

"A dream. I had a dream." She looked over my shoulder at the photo on my bedside table. "A dream of when we were in high school. When you looked like that." She burst into tears further and cried in my shoulder.

"I'll never leave you again.  "She said quietly as she lightly caressed my gauze.

And as I stood there, holding her as I took in the information I felt another sense of reminiscence. She would help me once again. She would help me heal these new wounds...the wounds she had created.