Chapter 2: Breakdown

I stepped out onto my balcony; I didn’t bother to close the sliding door. All I was focused on was the next few seconds, my last few seconds. I pushed one of the two balcony chairs up to the railing, and gingerly climbed up onto the railing. I wanted this to work; while I was pretty sure that a fall from a couple hundred meters up would be lethal, I didn’t want there to be any chances; I’d heard that a skydiver once had survived their fall when their parachute hadn’t opened, and they’d dropped from a few thousands of meters. So I didn’t want to slip and somehow survive this; being stuck as a vegetable in my own body, unable to live without help, unable to die without help, would be a hell I dearly wanted to avoid. I was willing to risk the hell I envisioned from ending my life, than want to suffer the hell of a continued existence.

I looked down, briefly, seeing how small the few cars parked on the streets below looked from so high up, and then shifted my gaze to the city skyline. While the Westin hotel was one of the tallest buildings in downtown Atlanta— I had actually checked that, so that I could be reasonably sure of my demise— and while there were quite a fair few buildings that came close to its height, I could still see a lot of the lit up, sprawling city spread out before me. It was, for a few moments, a beautiful, fantastic view, but then I decided that, having seen all of the wonder that I wanted to see in my time left in the world, it was time.

And so, I jumped.

To be honest, ‘jumped’ is mostly a lie- I fell forward, and pushed off at the last second, just for the distance I would gain, but otherwise, that was all I contributed to the process. I remember trying to angle myself so that I was falling head-first towards the ground; you’d think that there’d be lots of time for that, but falling a few hundred meters really doesn’t take more than a few seconds— I think, about five or six, really— and all I know is that I had just managed to get myself aligned right, when I hit the asphalt.

My head hit the ground, and then the rest of my body whipped down around, so that I ended up in a massive bellyflop- and between those two things that happened so quickly, I ended up making a sizeable crater in the middle of the street, or almost in the middle of the street. I can’t say about how hard I hit the ground, but it was enough that the alarm systems of two cars closest to where I’d impacted went off, blaring loudly at the disturbance.

My first thought was, ‘Am I dead? I’m not dead, am I? Why am I not dead?’

That thought, though, was very quickly chased away by others- ‘oh shit, I’m not dead! fuck! What do I do now?’ was the very next thought, followed by ‘fuck! the street! If someone sees me laying here, they’re gonna figure out I tried to kill myself!’ And honestly, that was where my head was, in those few moments; it was still a crime to attempt to commit suicide, and I didn’t want to go to jail, nor a psyche hospital, and I didn’t want to lose control of whether or not I could do it again at some future point. I wasn’t thinking, yet, about the idea of what I’d just experienced, might mean for me. It’s not everyday that a person falls hundreds of meters from the sky, and not only lives, but then gets up and walks away with no injuries, but that’s just what I did.

Okay, I didn’t walk; I ran like my ass was on fire and only the wind could put it out.

Alarms were still blaring for the few cars who’d been disturbed when I hit the asphalt; I rushed to the closest alley near to the hotel, trying to hide, to pretend that it wasn’t me who had just made that big-assed crater in the road.

But that was when it hit me- I had made that crater in the road. A fucking crater!! What the hell? A crater? And I survived?? And I walked away?? And without a scratch?!?

My thoughts ran in a loop like that, as I rather quickly made my way to the next block, and then walked around the block back tot he hotel. It was a bit of a long walk, and by then, as I was coming back to the front of the hotel, a small but rapidly building crowd had formed not too far from the crater, and I could see people gawking, could hear them talking, even if I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I decided to pretend that I was just coming back from a walk, and spent a few minutes, mingling with the crowd and listening to what was being said or asked, and every asked a question or two like everyone else. I didn’t want anyone thinking that I had had anything to do with the fact that the street was likely going to have to be closed until they could get it fixed. Though, once I thought about that, I groaned to myself, wondering how badly I’d fucked up other peoples’ lives by damaging the street.

But it wasn’t long before I’d had enough of trying to pretend that it wasn’t me, that I was just an innocent bystander, and so I went back into the hotel ... where I then had to convince the person at the reservation desk that I did indeed have a room in the hotel, and then had to escort a security officer up to my room, where the reservation desk person took me and opened the door. The security guard came with me into the room, and thankfully was satisfied when I had picked up my wallet from the bedside table— where I’d left it, not thinking I would ever need it again— and showed him my ID, where my face matched my picture and the name assigned to the room. Once they had gone, though, I was left alone with my thoughts.

What was this? How did it happen? When did it happen? I wondered. Was I immortal now? Or just merely invulnerable? I wasn’t sure about whether or not I wanted to deal with being invulnerable, but right then I definitely wasn’t wanting to be immortal; roaming the earth for the rest of time, watching yet even more people I loved or cared about die while I kept right on living, felt like more of that hell on earth I was trying to avoid. Maybe this was my punishment, a part of me thought, for trying to kill myself; not only prevent me from dying, but then to lock me into the very kind of hell that I wanted to escape from.

And if I was merely invulnerable, how would I know the difference between that and immortality? How would I even know if I was invulnerable? I mean, yeah, falling a few hundred meters to the ground and walking away without a scratch did kind of point to that conclusion, but...

I needed to try and test it out.

Sleep- well, what the hell was sleep? I hadn’t planned on sleeping, and the massive adrenaline rush from falling— and surviving— what would normally have been a fatal fall from the sky, certainly weren’t going to let me sleep, especially after that disturbing line of thought. Not even an hour had passed since I’d stepped out onto the balcony and tried to take my life, and while I wasn’t quite so single-mindedly intent upon my own death, I was still, at least in the back of my mind, trying to plot out ways to put an end to things. Not even an hour had passed, and while I was now thinking of other things besides suicide, I hadn’t yet stopped thinking about it. I’m sure it sounded redundant, that line of thought, but it really described the slightly disjointed way I was still thinking at the time. It might also explain why I then decided, in the middle of the night, to go back down to the lobby of the hotel, hail a taxicab— from around the corner from the hotel- remember the street? It was still fucked up- remember, hadn’t been even an hour yet— and told the driver to take me to the ‘rough side’ of Atlanta. I was repeatedly asked about why I wanted to go there, and then repeatedly warned that what I was doing was ... well, foolhardy would be a polite term to use. But I was adamant. Bullheaded, I’m sure someone would say; personally, I think a part of me wanted to see if I could be killed, now. I mean, I’d originally wanted it to happen in a way that would be relatively quick and painless, and something I wasn’t likely to survive. Now, though, I just wanted to see if I could die.