Short Fiction: Afraid of the Wind

Good day all! This is my first entry for the “Inspiration Monday” short fiction challenge that is run over at BeKindRewrite and it’s been a blast! I’m not used to writing such short fiction, but I think it can only do me good since anyone who’s read my stories (or most anything I’ve ever written!) knows me to be someone who loves a good sprawling tale with lots of ideas and details that could at times never end if I didn’t self-restrain.

So I hope you all enjoy it, would very much like to get any feedback at all on this piece – like so much else I’ve written, perhaps someday I’ll build a larger story from this humble beginning. For now though, I’m just going to enjoy doing this every week and get the joy out of writing it and for it just as it is now. Cheers!

Afraid of the Wind

The buffeting gusts roared in his ears as he stood at the roofs edge of his high-rise building.

He looked every which way, especially down, thinking how instinct and conditioning told us to never look down yet that thought alone was enough to make you peer into the drop below. Up here the honks and bellows and plethora of city sounds were drowned out and an inaudible hum and buzz of it was all that weakly reached this high up from the distant streeets below.

Heart pounding and breath ragged and short, he just stared out into the night. The sweat and tears were streaking all around his face as the wind directed each droplet into random patterns all across his face.

“How could this have happened to me?” he wondered as he stood shivering. “This isn’t a story or a movie, this kind of thing doesn’t happen to normal people! Not in the real world!” his mind screamed, still trying to make him see rational thought and step away from the edge.

By now he was rocking ever so slightly on his heels and the balls of his feet, the wind aiding even the slightest such motion as it enveloped him from all sides, making him think of it as a living being that cajoled and caressed him while gently pushing him along at the same time.

His thoughts raced back to the events of the evening past – it had been just another night, another party with his sort-of-girlfriend and friends. They had clubbed and partied and he had been on his way to his car after a particularly intense couple of hours at an “invite-only” warehouse club that had been the end of the evening for him when it all began to fall apart. He had been on his own, his lady clearly having too much fun to want to leave and him barely seeing straight was no longer fun company. Story of his life. Of course in a moment out of some movie, the last thing blaring on the speakers as he stepped out had been Hold onto your heart which elicited an involuntary groan from him at the time.

“Maybe I need to change my lifestyle” he had thought in an odd moment of lucidity as he meandered.

But then he saw something in an alley and drunken curiosity got the better of him and he had stumbled over to look. He thought it must have been just a homeless guy, but he couldn’t be more wrong and now… now here he was… waiting to jump.

Slowly though, the rocking increased in intensity and somehow his mind quieted down… and rocking forward, he jumped.

As the wind screamed past him, his elation was indescribable. The creepy old alien-homeless guy had been telling the truth! He could FLY! That meant all those other abilities would be real too!

Euphoric, only one thought came to him, “What can I do now?”

(494 words – wee bit o’editing again after comments from readers.)