Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 21

The rain that has been falling steadily all afternoon has retreated to a steady mist of drizzle that sprays my cheeks.

How can I feel? The rain clearly falls on me, but I leave no footprints on the wet ground. There’s no water collecting at my feet. I clearly exist in some form, but I defy every law of physics I take for granted.

I scream , infuriated to have upset my parents. I am powerless. What is the point of living on? Is this punishment? Have I done something to deserve this?

The ground beneath me caves in. Splintering out from the point beneath my feet as though a single stone has been holding the world together. Screaming still, I fall through utter blackness, spinning past flashes of light.

Memories, good and bad, exciting and pointless reach out to grab me, to settle me somewhere stable, but I slip through their fingers like a fish caught out of the water.

I try to concentrate on my memory from before. But all I can hear my heart beat thumping in my ears, faster and faster by the second, drowning out any hope of remembering my mother’s. Her cry follows me down, feeding the Edge. But this isn’t the Edge. The chaos is receding, this is something more…

‘Take me back!’ I yell into the darkness. ‘Back!’

I feel the darkness closing in, as my panic  intensifies.

I make no sense, I make no sense, I make no sense.

It closes in with tangible shadows, darker even than the blackness that surrounds me. The flashes are blocked one by one.

I try to close my eyes to ignore the darkness. Creating a place that is mine, the only place I have left. But my eyelids refuse to close, tempted by the shadows. I wonder what it would be like to fall forever… says a voice in my head.

Frightened by the very prospect I tense myself with all my might and my eyes snaps shut.

The pavement feels wet, gritty and glorious beneath my hands. I get up, shaking. I have to control my emotions. As difficult as it is, every moment of panic or despair feeds whatever lies in the gaping maw which taunts me in the Edge and beyond.

I don’t want to believe in that either but I have no choice. All that lies there is emptiness. Because I feel that’s what lies in the darkness. It scares me that part of my mind, buried in my unconscious or deeper, wants to take me down there.

The fear of that is all the fuel I need to carry on.