Short Fiction - A Second Chance

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It’s a well-known cliché to say that before you die your life flashes before your eyes. Cliché or not, as the wind tousles my hair in great, whipping blasts behind my head and grey, craggy rocks rush forwards to meet me in a final, callous embrace, time does indeed seem to move slower for me. Granted, it’s likely that my amygdala has kicked into one final, frantic gear to try and preserve my life. But it’s too late now. The ghost of a smile brushes my lips and then is cast off into the wind. I watch it carve a serendipitous path through the air, arching and flying away, the manifestation of cynicism floating off in the wind, ripped away in my final moments. And I close my eyes and give in to the cliché.

The wind, which was a second ago so deafening, takes my place and dies down. And despite my attempts to release my cynicism, a world-weary frown has taken the place of the childish innocence at the heart of my character. I open my eyes, confused, dazed. The sun beats my eyelids into retreat and they close again, pushing me into a state of temporary blindness. Something clicks in my head. Blinding light and I can assume that I’m dead: gotcha.

“Hey, uh, God, are you out there?” I stifle a laugh at how stupid this sounds. I hear the sound of movement close by, and I manage to open my eyes.

I stop. Everything stops.

I am standing on the edge of the cliff which I jumped off, 100 feet from the rocks which only a moment ago were waiting to snatch at the life which still courses through my body. And by the very edge of the cliff is…

Me.

The person at the edge of the cliff turns around and looks at me, bearing a bemused smile on her face. It is, however, a smile tinged with sadness – with a sorrow that seems too deep for words.

“Why?” she asks me, the smile fading in tandem with the sun. “Why would you throw this away?” I stare back at her, unflinching. I stare into the abyss, and the abyss stares back. A confused look consumes her face, and she looks quizzically at me, cocking her head to the side as though weighing me up.

“Why would you keep this?” I retort, staring down at my feet with a shame that I was not anticipating. I flick my eyes quickly back to her, but she is still staring me down.

“There’s always an alternative,” she replies, taking a step towards me. I take a step back in response, backing away from something that scares me more than anything in the real world did. Because, on some primitive, primal level, I know that this is not the real world. “Always a second chance. Always a way out.”

“If you’re me, then you know that’s not true.”

“You know it is. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

“Where is here?”

“A second chance.”

I look up at this, and meet her gaze, which is cold and unwavering.

“A chance to right the wrongs. A chance to do it all again.” Her eyes are pale and glassy, almost unseeing in their frozen gaze.

“I’m dead, am I not? I just jumped off a cliff.” I laugh a callous, unfeeling laugh that does not reach my eyes; a laugh beaten and whipped by life, until it was bent and buckled and dead on the inside.

“Maybe you did. But you did that somewhere else. Think of this as,” she falters, stumbling for the right word, “a confirmation. You can exit stage left,” she indicates, with a curt nod to the cliff-edge, “or you can save them from the pain. Because, in the end, suicide takes your pain and gives it to everyone else.”

I can feel my sorrow dripping out of me in salty droplets, which roll down my face and trace well-worn furrows of pain.

“This isn’t the real world.”

“What does it matter? It’s real enough. Can you really go through with it again?”

I meet her gaze, and shudder with pent-up pain which racks through my body in rushing waves. “You can live here. Till you die.”

“Am I not already dead?”

She shakes her head. “Not unless you tell yourself so. Everyone is still here.” she gestures around her in a sweeping lunge. Then she stares me right in the eyes. “So do you want to live? Or die?”

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Hey there, dex here.
I just want to conclude this piece by saying that despite the events of this story, unfortunately you don't get a second chance in real life. And while it might be horrible now, there's always a possibility of it getting better. Time is on your side - don't act on an impulse that you can't take back. It's unlikely that you'll take the advice of some random person on the internet, but please, seek out professional help if you're feeling that way.

dex