Just Fall and Miss the Ground
Just Fall and Miss the Ground
By Sean H.
As I fell out of the twelfth story window the ground rushed at me and I was hit by a force that threw me back up towards the heavens. I panicked for a moment, a moment I had not panicked before, but then, the wind rushing through my hair and my coat slapping and flapping behind me, I realized that, no matter what the reason, I was flying over the city, over and unaware people down below.
The human race evolved on the African plains millennia ago, no predators in the trees, no reason to look up, not worth the processing power. Robots, all of them. Heads on a pivot. Side to side. Except me… and that one there, she looked up; I could see her mouth the famous line under her breath.
“It’s a bird, it’s a plane.”
I was fucking Superman… and if she was willing she would soon be fucking Superman, but first I would have to figure out how to get down… or maneuver at all for that matter, without finishing what I had planned for earlier. Before.
But before what? What had happened? I mean really. Was I flying? Was I being abducted by aliens? Was I still alive? Was I lying on the pavement back at the bottom of that building, people milling about my crushed and decomposing corpse? Was this real life or was it just fantasy? For all I knew I was still standing in that building, looking out across the city and wondering “what if?” That would be almost worse somehow. Worse than being dead? Worse than being crazy?
I looked back to where the woman stood, still looking at me, and my whole body turned and started moving towards her. She was pretty this one. The kind of pretty you see on the cover of Jane Austen novels. Pale skin, dark, curly hair and this one had light blue eyes to set off her other features. She smiled when she saw I was coming back and my heart warmed.
I don’t even remember landing that first time, but I remember looking her in the eyes and without a word taking her for a ride over the city. No one looked up, African plains and robots and all. We couldn’t cared less.