With one last dignified, anxious breath, my knees bend obediently, my calves tighten and my feet give a push from the hard concrete below. For one minute as my 22-year-old body is released from the 8-story building, I start to wonder. Is the only solution? The only way? As I scan my surroundings with my vivid green eyes, I contemplate, very quickly, whether I want to leave this behind. All of this, whatever it is. Images of the last ten unbearable years awaken in my mind. Yes, this is right.
The slight momentum from my weak attempt at a jump allows me to fly upward for only a moment: one indescribable, freeing moment. The air is fresh, like it always is when I come up here. But this time it's different. It is the last time.

The second of hovering is over before Gravity greets me, and together we progressively soar down.


down.



down.

My arms transform into wings when I hit the air. I'm flying. I always wondered what it would feel like to fly. The soft sun, wind in my ear.
Further, further toward the ground I go.

Flashes of memory spring into my mind.

The screech of the brakes. The flare of the fire. The pierce of the screams. Waking up a week and a half week later, fuzzily reading the bright, white sign above my head, "Critical care." Feeling death in every muscle, yet escaping it by an inch. And then Mom and Isabella's funeral. The jet black coffins laying side by side, awaiting the final close of the heavy top. A piece of the Volkswagen they had been killed and I had survived in remained on the grass next to them. Engraved on it read, "Rosalie and Isabella Garenteu, forever rest in peace. We love you." The black lids shut as the image in my head switched.
Becky, my ninth through eleventh grade girlfriend came alive inside my head. I felt her lips on mine. Her hand in mine. I believed we were going to get married someday. Maybe in Alaska or something, where gay-marriage was legal. I thought we would eventually have a family.

I vaguely remember being happy. The foreign feeling of being cared about, even loved. Loneliness oozes in every corner of my being. The darkness of depression hasn't completely erased my memories, although most of them are now blurs, taken over by the terrors of my past. I have waited. Envisioning that feeling might might might return. But that feeling has long since evaporated, leaving me with an empty, dry, almost soulless body.

I hear a scream.


What if ----