The Barrens (NaNoWriMo Day 6.5)

sofer (53)in #writing • 7 years ago

Still had a little more in me for today. Previous days below:

Day 6.5 Word Count: 768
Total Word Count: 10,079
Goal: 50,000
Remaining: 39,921

My mother jumped out of a window when I was four. Is that my fate too? Did it feel like this for her? She wanted to do it. Maybe the sensation of the world rushing up at her so quickly was like a release. Maybe she found the weightlessness thrilling and liberating. Or did it terrify her once she made the leap? Did she spend her final moments begging for a correction, to go back just seconds before and not do it? Did she think about the son she was leaving behind?

Rasul spun around in the air. For the first time since he had awakened from his seizure, his vision felt blurry and confused. The darkness of the sky matched the darkness of the ground. The stars and the lights of the city were indistinguishable. Rain hit him from every angle. The sound of air rushing past his ears was deafening.

He couldn’t even think to brace himself. Instantly, the events of the night were like old memories. He could barely picture Isaac’s lifeless body on the hallway floor. When people say your life flashes before your eyes before die, they neglected to mention how frightening it could be. All Rasul saw was chaos. Moments and memories and present sensations threw his mind into a vortex of confusion. All he could do was hold his breath and grit his teeth and wait for the darkness.

His body spun forward and he saw the ground charging towards him. He knew it would be quick, but as the pavement rushed up at him, he couldn’t resign himself to death. He didn’t want to die. The thought entered his mind and it seemed absurd. There was no choice in the matter at this point, at yet he found himself raging against the death that was an impossibly long handful of seconds away.

I don’t want to die.

Rasul closed his eyes, determined to let his final thoughts be protests against mortality. I don’t want to die. He repeated it over and over in his mind, rebelling against the impact that was to come.

It never came. Rasul felt his stomach lurch forward, and a wave of nausea crashed over him. When he opened his eyes, his body was still in the air, but it was moving a different direction. The rain was heavier, and he felt himself falling upward. A crack of thunder snapped him to his senses, and he looked down. The ground was moving away from him, and he was tumbling up and forward through the air.

I’m dead, he thought. I’ve hit the ground.

The reservoir opened up beneath him, and the black water replaced pavement. Impossibly, he watched the water underneath him as he fell upward. Rasul turned his head back, and he barely made out the dim shape of his apartment disappearing behind him. He was moving through the air, away from his apartment and over the reservoir, towards the oldest factories at the edge of Avalon.

Rasul continued to move upward through the air. Ahead, he could see the shape of the old Adelaire grain silo. The offices were adjacent to the towering silos, at least twenty stories tall, and had been abandoned and closed off for years along with the rest of the district. At the rate he was going, he would crash into the side of the offices.

He willed himself up, and found that his body responded. Farther up he went, and at last his feet hit the roof of the office tower. He skidded along the ground and tumbled forward, smashing into the top of the roof. When he finally came to a stop, his clothes were torn and his body covered in cuts and bruises. For a moment, he sat shivering and shaking, crumpled in a ball. The rain continued, and he brought himself slowly to his knees before vomiting.

After his stomach had calmed, Rasul sat himself up in a kneeling position. He felt cold, colder than the rain, and he couldn’t stop quivering. He leaned forward and placed his head in his hands, trying to remember if he had actually struck the ground and died. When he moved his hands away, he saw that they were healthy and whole, with no indication that he had just been clinging to broken glass outside his apartment. He rolled over onto his back and looked down at himself. An especially large gash along his leg above his knee, made visible by his ripped jeans, was beginning to close itself up. Rasul watched the wound stitch itself together, and he fainted.

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