Title: Fearless
Author: Nicky
Email:obsessive24[at]gmail[dot]com
Author’s note: This was a writing exercise at my LJ writers’ group. Basically a songfic free-write type challenge. The song I listened to was Televators by The Mars Volta. The scenario is inspired by the music clip to Placebo’s Pure Morning, which is also where the graphic came from.
Thanks: To the members of _chickenscratch for critique and feedback.
One day this chalk outline will circle this city.
- The Mars Volta, Televators
He suffered from vertigo. He'd only ever told Jacob about it, but surely everyone else had also seen his general avoidance of high places, the indiscreet pallor when they dragged him up to picnics on the roof or for photos atop tall landmarks. Or, he thinks now, perhaps they hadn’t seen after all. Perhaps everything that means something about a person has to be told, in slow, concise words, leaving no room for guesswork.
He looks up and the pale sky stretches out overhead, the sun breaking through the porcelain veneer like a shard of glass. None of this is frightening anymore, and he feels it acutely; the lack of fear, a cavernous absence in the back of his throat where a sickly bitterness ought to reside. He rather likes it this way.
The fear, Jacob had said, studying him from behind a haze of cigarette smoke. It’s the same as when you’re standing beside a giant swimming pool, fully clothed. Just imagine it. The sun glancing off the water, a dappled net of light inside the big, big blue: unbroken, unblemished, like a wet dream.
Pervert, he had teased good-naturedly, laughing.
Jacob didn’t laugh, however. It’s an altogether different kind, he had said, his eyes like smouldering pieces of coal in the darkness. Now you tell me some part of you doesn’t just wanna jump straight in. You tell me you’re not afraid, just a little, of not being able to control your own body, despite your better judgment, if you don’t take a step back.
He puts both hands behind him, bracing himself against the windowpane before he looks down. From this height all the people below are indistinguishable, their various shapes and colours melting together until they form one slow writhing morass beside the road’s grey razor line, the bright yellow dots of passing cabs. His feet are bare upon the sun-warmed concrete ledge, and as his toes curl over the edge he feels the comfort in it.
A woman below is shouting something through a megaphone. He tries to listen, but only garbled fragments of sound float up to him. Much to live for... Parents... not worth it. He narrows his eyes, trying to make out her features, but she is only one of the many faces gazing up at him, blank slates, features bleached to nothing by the silver-gilt sunlight.
There are sirens off in the distance. He can hear them now, very faintly, the sounds Döppler-shifting even as he tilts his head, searching for the source. It doesn’t seem like they should be coming for him, however; how many police cars, how many ambulances does it take for something like this? He thinks about the stretched resources in the city, the murder trails gone cold, the hate crimes, people left bleeding on the pavement, and is surprised that he can still find some vestige of anger in his chest, like a dying flame. He thought the despair had already come in and lifted all of that away like a tide, leaving only the muddy rubble of what was and what could have been, but perhaps he was mistaken. ‘Go rescue someone else,’ he says, and his voice is released into the thin air, reedy and hollow. ‘Someone who needs rescuing.’
Still the sirens grow louder. The megaphone is passed to somebody else now, a voice crackling with barely-constrained hysteria, the sound of sobs curling up like tendrils and wrapping around his limbs without his quite realising it. He looks down; it is too far for him to see, although he suspects it’s his mother. Don’t do this... if you could just... we love you...
‘Love,’ he echoes, and at the same time he tastes the weight of the word in his mouth. ‘Terror,’ he says also, because that seemed to be the natural state of things, once upon a time. He wants to say Jacob, too, the name like a papercut on his tongue. If only you could see me now.
The fear is not of the thing itself, Jacob had said, his tone meditative as he stared out the window to the night outside. It’s your knowledge that your body might have a mind of its own as you look over the edge. The immersion, the cold shock, the unknown. If you know you’re gonna jump regardless, then you wouldn’t be frightened. The fear only exists as long as the possibility exists, that you might just momentarily lose your mind and cannonball yourself right in.
I get that, he had replied quietly, clasping his sweaty palms together. He had felt like he was beside that metaphorical pool, then; he could feel all the fine hairs standing up along his forearm. His skin was humming a tune unto itself, something he only half-recognised.
Of course you do. There had been a careless tapping of the cigarette on the tabletop. Quick inhale, slow exhale, a release of pressure. There is danger because there is seduction in it. The falling, I mean. Some part of you wants to take that step into the water, into thin air, even though you know what’s gonna inevitably happen.
There had been a brief glance in his direction, a half-smile. It’s an irrational desire: it suggests that in the back of our minds we might still believe in miracles, the ability to fly.
It’s like, he had said, swallowing nervously and glancing away. It’s kind of like falling in love, isn’t it?
Jacob had looked at him, then, a knowing grin floating to the corners of his lips. Maybe it is, he had said, with a gleam in his eye, and after that there was no more talking for a long while.
From below the voices continue, static-laced and still only half coherent from where he stands. What happened... Jacob... not your fault...
‘I know it wasn’t my fault,’ he says as he stares into the heart of the sun. Things are white and shining there, like petals from funeral lilies, flickering stars in the cold night sky, or the sharp glint off the edge of a knife. He lowers his head and now he only sees red-gold imprints dancing behind his eyes like a violent expressionist painting, nothing more; but he can still feel the vast emptiness stretching out in front of him, the unfulfilled potential of it, the possibility of flight. A breeze stirs his hair and he smiles, for it feels like unseen fingers.
‘Love,’ he says again, louder this time. He spreads his arms, takes that step forward, and imagines the billowing wind wrapping around his body like a pair of familiar hands.
The End
[ f e e d b a c k ]