On the Edge and Beyond

“Dum..dum..dum” – my heart is hammering hard against the ribs, sending an unpleasant feeling of neurasthenia round the body.

“It’s too high, too high.” – I whisper slowly to myself, looking down on the earth, crawling so far-far away. I’m standing on the edge of the flat roof, tied up with the ropes of blinking quicksilver moonlight and bonds of the northern wind that is blowing hard against my face. I look again and again deep down into the thin night air that strongly smells of firewood and smoldering grass.

The sky is on fire. The distant thunder is murmuring his song, rolling about the infinite far. Murderous clouds swirl in the distance like gigantic puffs of smoke, capturing mercilessly the faraway horizons, slowly advancing on me. There is something hypnotic in their creeping.

The very mother Earth seems to be frozen and rigid in some inexpressible reverie – just these vast masses of the color indigo are gliding along its invisible edges.

I wait. I hide my breath and continue scrutinizing the moving picture in front of my eyes meticulously.

The heavens are getting dimmer with every second - as if someone concerned is swallowing the crimson sky flames hastily and avariciously. The moonlight had cowardly taken the refuge behind the charcoal clouds. The ubiquitous darkness deviously wraps itself tightly about my body, lusciously caressing my hesitating feet.

The callous wind, however, is no weaker, no gentler than before. He is still daring me for this crucial step, he is still here moving these growing shadows around me.

I’m on the verge. My sight becomes glazy and I feel as barren and deserted as a leafless tree in the cadaverous heat of the Death Valley. I feel the glowing darkness slip through my snow-white smoky fingers like baneful mercury. I feel it.

My swollen mind brews fathom-like ideas of redemption – one kind of redemption possible. I don’t think I have quite the stamina to resist it. My will sways and bends like a sail caught in the tempest.

The air is now gluey; its smell becomes sickening like cheap sugar syrup that you had drunk by glassfuls. The color black is dominating the surroundings and it makes you think that it doesn’t really matter whether you look up or down – now it’s all the same, now it’s so ridiculously unimportant.

I slowly sit down on the edge of the roof and feel the darkness underneath with my feet as if I were getting ready to descend into a swimming pool. It seems so oddly satisfying and soothing – to have my feet pressed firmly against this intense gloom.

I look down trying to pierce the immense masses of black. And I see… I see the depths of the shadows prostrate their many arms to me, ready to take me into a soul-crashing embrace. Between the charcoal particles I see their vague smiles and deceitful eyes - but strangely this obscurity scares me no more, now it looks pleasant, if not beautiful.

I smile to myself – this is so simple, almost laughable.

I stand up and look over my shoulder. I’m free from the binds of light - nothing holds me back from going. A surge of cold heat sweeps over me. I open my clammy arms as if to enfold the world and make a step into nowhere.

Air swooshes through my hair and tickles my bare feet. The moment of falling seems to take up the whole eternity…

But it ends abruptly…