Steve Crouch leans out the window a little too much, just by an inch or so. His knee slips, and just like that he\u2019s falling from his high-rise apartment. He tries to spin around and purchase a ledge with his fingers, but it doesn\u2019t work like that\u2013his body, the time, the space, the stuff around, none of it. He\u2019s in open air. He\u2019s looking at the big ground.<\/p>\n
Always thought it could happen, what with him reaching to water the flower bed instead of resting it on the windowsill. No use beating himself up. His wife is back in the living room watching tv or something. He only stepped out the room for a second. How long before she notices he\u2019s gone? Did he make any sound slipping out? Making any now? Maybe his body is whistling like a cartoon bomb. In dreams he\u2019s always survived things like this. They say in dreams you can\u2019t die. He wonders about a miracle.<\/p>\n
Someone is screaming below. He can just hear it over the wind beating his ears. Would you call it wind? That\u2019s what we get on the ground standing still, but he\u2019s making this wind. It\u2019s his and no one else\u2019s. It\u2019s even his fault, his music. Only he can feel it and he\u2019s moving faster than anyone. That\u2019s sort of lonely but he likes it. It\u2019s a gift for him. He never got worried being alone. In a way he\u2019s prepared for this and he forgives himself.<\/p>\n
The screaming becomes a chorus as he nears the ground. Their bodies are getting bigger fast. Their colors fill more space. The ground is like sitting front row for a technicolor film in his honor, a real end of the rainbow. He can think whatever he wants now. He realizes he only thought about himself all these years but maybe couldn\u2019t have helped it. Things are clear now that weren\u2019t before. He\u2019d like to keep falling forever but it must come to an end. Closer, closer, closer.<\/p>\n
A guy on the ground, who just happened to be walking by, puts his arms out as if to catch Steve. Steve smiles because people are sort of good in their befuddled way. The arms fail to reach him. His body smacks the sidewalk hard, bounces, and lands near a small garden. The guy with his arms out doesn\u2019t move. He sits down next to the blood with his palms facing up. He also has blood on him since he was so close to Steve in the end. \u201cI almost had him,\u201d the guy says. \u201cSorry. Sorry. I almost had him.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bud works at the fix-it place. All day people call and whatever the problem there\u2019s a solution for it. I\u2019m overweight. I\u2019m poor. My spouse doesn\u2019t love me anymore. Here comes a call: \u201cMy son doesn\u2019t know if he wants to go to college, but he also doesn\u2019t know if he wants to join a trade.\u201d \u201cIs he smart?\u201d \u201cOf course he\u2019s smart.\u201d Bud pulls up the kid\u2019s IQ test from the third grade. \u201cAny hobbies?\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s known to tear the leather off a baseball.\u201d Pulls up the kid\u2019s high school ball stats. \u201cHow\u2019s his social life?\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s got a group of friends. Better four quarters than a hundred pennies.\u201d Pulls up text messages, phone calls, footage of the kid drinking in someone\u2019s front yard. \u201cFriends going to college?\u201d \u201cState schools. A few on scholarship. Some cast adrift but working at a decent hibachi place.\u201d GPAs, decision letters, signing day photographs with coaches and parents, videos of a boy with surprising knife skills. \u201cDescribe your emotional reaction to the following words. Enrollment. Failure. Dropout. Incomplete. Withdrawal. Dorm. Roommate. Shared restroom. Girlfriend. Boyfriend. Underage drinking. All nighter. Minimum wage.\u201d \u201cStress. Disappointment. Misery. Fear. Reticence. Reticence. Disgust. Aplomb. Nausea. Arousal. Disillusionment. Excitement. Happiness. Unworthy.\u201d Bud reads the results on his monitor. \u201cYour son has an average aptitude. He could play D3 ball with luck but don\u2019t go shooting for the majors. We all have to stop playing the child\u2019s game one day, etcetera. Casual drinking is prevalent in his age group. Be aware of the risks of alcohol dependency. Whether your son attends college or takes up a trade he\u2019ll likely remain in an income bracket less than two standard deviations from the one he was born in. With effort he might break six figures. Your stress response unhealthy. You\u2019ll be mailed a prescription to be taken twice a day after meals. We recommend a half hour of exercise and regular breathing. Thank you and have a nice day.\u201d<\/p>\n
When his shift is finished Bud takes off his headset and leaves. He calls Mary and they agree to meet for dinner. Walking to the restaurant he sees a man holding a sign that says ON YOUTUBE! VISIONS OF HELL VIDEOS. The man has a big grey beard. Bud approaches him and says, \u201cExcuse me. Can you show me the videos of hell?\u201d and the man shows Bud a video on his phone. The video features hundreds of people mashed together in deep ravines of boiling red goo as fire melts their flesh. Lots of screaming. \u201cIs this real?\u201d Bud asks. \u201cOf course it\u2019s real.\u201d \u201cIt looks like it could be fake.\u201d \u201cHeed the warning and rid yourself of wrongdoing!\u201d And Bud is gone down the street.<\/p>\n
A bell rings when he opens the door to the restaurant. Mary is wearing her purple sweater and sitting where they usually sit. She gives him a hug and kiss and Bud sits across from her. She asks how work was and he says it was just fine, every day is the same now. They eat noodles across from each other. This place has two-dollar bowls of soup for sale every afternoon. Isn\u2019t that something? The pair get up and leave. Mary walks down the street and Bud watches her until she\u2019s a tiny purple dot on the long sidewalk. He wonders if they\u2019ll be together forever.<\/p>\n
Bud left the lamp on so his apartment is already bright when he walks in. He turns off the lamp and on the television. He puts on baseball. His team is losing badly. He watches to the very last pitch, doesn\u2019t even change the channel during commercials. They float by like clouds. The rookie favorite strikes out on a knee and the announcers call the game, call the series, and fuck it, call the whole season. Our team is finished!<\/p>\n
Bud gets in bed and thinks about messing with his thing but then decides not to. The men on his phone say messing with your thing is bad and will ruin it by shrinking and rendering it useless, thereby destroying the nerve endings in your thing. Some say you need to mess with your thing or else you\u2019ll get prostate cancer. And so on. Bud\u2019s tired anyway so he uses his phone to tell Mary goodnight and falls asleep. In the morning he wakes up and goes at it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He tries to spin around and purchase a ledge with his fingers, but it doesn\u2019t work like that\u2013his body, the time, the space, the stuff around, none of it. He\u2019s in open air. He\u2019s looking at the big ground. The ground is like sitting front row for a technicolor film in his honor, a real end of the rainbow. He can think whatever he wants now. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-owen-paul-edwards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20164"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20603,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20164\/revisions\/20603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}