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Oct 8, 2021 01:08
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 03:38 |
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Drop 847 words I never called it Blind Man’s Bluff, not even after Taryn brought me up there and I realized I could see again. He felt me tense up as we were standing on the edge together, asked me what was wrong. “Oh my God,” I said. He leaned in. “It’s the Blind Man,” I said. “He’s wearing a wizard hat.” His grip on my arm loosened, and I saw his face melt with relief. It was the first time I had ever seen his face. There was a chain around his neck. It had someone else’s name on it. We talked for the next hour. Or rather, he talked to me, and I listened, stared out at the valley below, the strands of sunlight, the fall leaves darting through the sky like how I had always imagined butterflies, crumpled and angry and refusing to touch the ground. The next time I went, I came alone. It was raining, and no one could see that I was crying, but I was glad it was raining anyway. It wasn’t any more beautiful than my blindness, the swirls and stripes of night, it was just–the shock of knowing. The walls and ceiling and floor falling away all at once. I knew about the people that had died here. Four years ago, seven years ago, thirteen years ago. Every time they found a body at the base of the cliff, eyes wide open. A step off the edge and into infinity. I stood in the same place, the rain pouring down, and I waited. I pictured Taryn’s face in my head, and my spine straightened and burned like a metal iron in a furnace. I had felt and heard that look so many times over before I ever saw it. A crumpled lunch bag face. Looking down at something drowned and delicate you’d pick up if you were only sure your touch wouldn’t kill it. I stared bulletholes in the horizon line, blinked once, and the sky melted around me. The rain swam in front of my eyes, and my head felt like a swelling water balloon. I couldn’t breathe. My knees buckled, and I pitched forward, the tiny tips of pine trees hundreds of feet below me. The rain stopped. I opened my eyes. I was floating, floating in midair. The sun was shining through a hole in the clouds, and around me were millions of raindrops in mid-fall, little isolated glass globes. A handful of them broke open and ran down my arm before I realized I could move. I instinctively kicked out, paddled my arms like I was moving through water, because I was. I launched myself up towards the sky. The cliff edge was ten, twenty, thirty feet away. I flipped and twisted in the afternoon sky, smashed handfuls of glittering droplets with my bare hands. I whirled around, water washing the tears from my face, and there he was, standing on the cliff edge, looking up at me. My face fell. Taryn followed me up here. He had known, somehow. He was forty feet away, and I still felt his hand around my arm. “Sarah!” he called up to me. “Sarah, please, come down!” I swam down to him, until I could see his face clearly through the rain. “No,” I said. “You’re going to die,” he said. “Everyone’s going to die,” I said back. “It’s going to take you. Please.” “What is it?” I said. “Please,” he said, looking up at me. “Just trust me. You don’t know what you’re doing. We’ll talk about it once you’re on the ground.” His face was crumpled and wet and sad. He looked like he was about to cry. I wanted to smash his face like a pile of raindrops. “No,” I repeated. He said something under his breath, and my ears perked up. “What’s that?” I said. He said it again, and I still couldn’t hear. I swam closer, looked into his eyes, dripping with concern. They glinted in the sunlight and turned to stone. His arm shot out and grabbed for me, yanked me down towards him. I yelped in pain, wrenched my shoulders, twisted away. He cursed, cried out through gritted teeth, fell forward, other hand grasping wildly at nothing– –and the rain started again. The air rushed past my face, and the world flipped over. We were both floating in midair. My feet were pointed up, dangling towards the hole in the clouds, bursting with light. His were pointed down. “Sarah!” Taryn shouted, wriggling his body towards the cliff edge, six feet away. “Sarah, put me down!” I thought about all the boys at the bottom of the cliff. Boys with a rough touch. Boys with loose tongues. Boys with expanding heads. Boys with airtight alibis. Boys wracked with guilt. Boys as evidence. Boys condemned after death. Boys staring up at the sky like they saw everything, and understood. “Sarah!” he screamed, his nails digging deep into my arm. I smiled, bent over, kissed him on his forehead, his shoulder, his forearm, his wrist–then bit down.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:50
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