The Fall
by Curt McDaniel
T]hat moment is one of the very few in my life of which I am able to say they were utterly happy.
- Ernst Junger, Storm of Steel
Jack tumbled over the railing and into emptiness. Michelle screamed.
Gravity tugged Jack downward as he flailed at the receding balcony. He passed the Stimson's apartment, noting with envy their new big-screen TV showing through the glass door.
Now the eighth floor apartment slipped by. "What was his name?" Jack thought. "Edgar? Evan? Hadn’t there been talk of jury tampering? "
Michelle’s scream faded as Jack plunged. He saw faces looking down over the railing. He wanted to wave and tell them it was okay. It was an accident. But he was spinning without control. Now he saw the street rushing at him; now the gentle blueness of the sky.
He streaked past a startled grey-haired woman watering her petunias. Jack laughed. “Haahooooooooo…”
The floors zipped by now. “What’s the formula for the speed of falling objects,” Jack mused, thinking back to university at Purdue. “Speed equals time times … what … 9.8 meters per second … squared?”
His rotation again faced him to the fast-approaching street, refocusing his thoughts.
“Perhaps I should pray.”
He eyed the white canopy covering the building entry-way. “Too far,” he thought, mildly disappointed. He imagined himself bouncing on it, like in a cartoon, and then telling the story at cocktail parties. He pictured Tim’s wife, Carol, laughing at his story, her blue eyes twinkling at him.
Now he looked upward again at the blue sky. Perhaps he’d see his mother soon.
“I wonder if it will hurt,” he thought, as he neared the pavement. “No more than life, surely”
The End
Curt McDaniel lives in Lausanne, Switzerland with his wife and two children. He spent sixteen years as a lawyer for a large multinational corporation, where his roles included helping open the former Soviet Bloc countries to the turmoil of the free market. His short fiction has appeared in The Sink and the Noneuclidean Cafe and he recently completed his first novel. Contact Curt.
