Kojo's body spasms violently under the wet white sheets, on top of a single bed. A bed whose metal parts squeak with each of his sudden jerks. An arm thrown in the air, then a leg. Then his head. He grimaces, groans, and grits his teeth. Before throwing his eyelids wide apart. He stares at the dazzling ceiling for a while, before a face appears, first in his peripheral vision, before it blocks the light stunning his retinas with its kaleidoscopic brightness like the moon does the sun during a solar eclipse.
He feels his hands form a tight noose around a neck. Whose Adam's apple attempts to bob up and down, an exercise in futility. He grips the neck with extra power. Suppressing speech and any sound from escaping from the man thus under attack. Then come other sounds. The sound of a door opening. Feet dashing against furniture articles. Calls for backup just in case.
A group of human forms close in on a still spasming Kojo and only succeed in holding him down after expending much effort. Half a dozen men plus two. Slowly he calms down. And hands begin to let go. Until at last it's the bedridden man and a doctor in a white waistcoat, a doctor with large-rim glasses. A doctor still nursing his neck and checking for broken bones.
"Welcome back Kojo," the doctor says after doing some checks on the fighter.
The room reads like an improvised hospital room. White in colour when the doctor looks around, a concoction of different colours when Kojo does the looking. There's the bed, the ventilators and all the "hospital bed stuff", an empty chair on his left hand. A small cabinet on his right, complete with a vase of flowers. A rainbow of them.
"What am I doing here?" says the warrior. "I'm supposed to wake up in my room. Did I get that injured?"
"You got injured alright. Nothing you couldn't handle on your own really though. But as you know, the saying here is protocol first, and last. And since this was your first time out there, we'd to make sure. . . ."
"Protocol, huh? I didn't know it was possible for you guys to steal me from my cell. While I'm connected."
"There's more to this place and its processes than is dreamt of in your philosophy. We're continually discovering new Natural Technology. Next time we'll be taking you to God's throne, maybe.
He says this with a smile that underlines how he could be serious about what he's saying. Just could be.
"Did I beat the thing convincingly?"
"You lost a life doing it."
"That hard, huh?"
"Oh yah. But worth it. And you'll be getting your reward in just a minute. He's on the cliff again."
Kojo jumps up with a start. "He's on. . . ? Then what the hell am I still doing here?" He's naked. Completely. The doctor says there's but a few more checks left. Then the study's complete. "I don't care about the goddam study. Please take me back to my room. I wanna put something on. Then I go."
_____
The sky turns red. The wind intensifies. Birds chirp above and below him. Waves still crash on the rocks below, and foam.
Meanwhile, Bruce still hates life more than a vampire loves blood, and his greatest fear still is that there's more of it beyond death. Which is ironic, because most people have the opposite fear. The fear of either death in and of itself or of the fact that maybe the majority of the world's religions are wrong. What if life is nothing more than a mere mist, we often asks ourselves, which when liberated from its flesh-and-blood containment is distributed by the wind withersoever, until it totally vanishes? Leaving only a trace of crumbling flesh in its wake, which itself will be nothing more than particles of dust in a couple of years. What if all this was just a meaningless blip in the grand scheme of things? If one day you just woke up as one dimensionless entity having neither thought, speech nor even self-identification. Not able to identify, let alone read and make sense of, letters; not able to feel the wind on your skin or smell the salt of the sea. If everything became darkness, how about it?
Granted, he didn't take philosophy in college, perhaps he'd have if he hadn't dropped out. But at a certain age and especially at a certain place, after making certain decisions you can't help but think philosophically. As your entire life flashes before your eyes, and mind. As memories flood the little reservoir built over a relatively short lifespan for their containment. As your weary eyes scan the empty abyss below from the vantage point of a tall and steep rock structure and you can't help but see similarities between this empty space and your own existence eversince the very day you started breathing, an existence as hollow as bone without marrow.
The birds sing and flap their wings. Bruce only wonders: If reincarnation is real, wouldn't he want to return as a bird? Flying in the broad expanse of the sky? Singing. Eating the plenteous things of the earth.
Wouldn't you want to be a bird? He thinks he hears something or someone say. Is it what he think it is, or does everyone go crazy before they take the ultimate plunge?
"It is what you think it is," says a still, small but powerful voice, the voice of the wind to be sure, but in this instance it is as real as that of a real man. A bold whisper, or even, dare he presume, a little more than that. The wind whispers, yes, but usually its a lot of nothing. Unless you listen to it with real intent is what his grandmother used to advise. Then it will whisper wisdom through the element. The wisdom the universe has gathered over the ages. This is something indeed. A guardian angel perhaps? A demon? God?
"Why do you want to jump from the cliff?" the voice asks. This time making itself clear that it is a voice from some otherworldly realm, but as real as any from this world.
Well, because I want to end my life, Bruce thinks. And he thinks he's not being heard thinking.
"You want to end your life, don't you? You want to die, but why?"
Oops! His thoughts are blatantly known to the mysterious entity? Maybe it's just bluffing. So let's make sure, shall we? We don't want to waste time talking to this thing only to find out in the fourth watch that it's nothing but a mirage. This he says out loud. In his mind that is. The gift of his voice is a privilege he wants whoever or whatever is behind this voice to earn.
"You won't talk to me, huh?" The voice asks. "It's okay. I won't reveal myself to you then, as I should, and you'll never know who sent me here, or why?"
The voice is getting louder, and more confident. And it's being projected from various places around Alpha. The invisible thing is encircling me like a shark's fin encircles a topsy-turvy boat full of helpless people, injured and bleeding.
"I don't know you," he says, turning his head around. Hoping his face coincides with where the figure is at any given time.
"You'll know all about me as soon as you answer my question?"
"Which one?"
"Do you want to die?"
"I think it's pretty obvious to anyone who knows anything about humans, especially humans who come to this place at the end of September."
Statistically speaking, a dozen men take their lives by taking the plunge that he's been contemplating to take for the last several years, which ruminating has only intensified over the last several months. Until he couldn't procrastinate anymore. Especially now that life has dealt him another blow, just another episode of life being life by kicking him in the bloody nuts. They say death calls you to the ultimate rendezvous. He was called when a newspaper headline reminded the town that only eleven people have jumped this year. And October will be starting tomorrow.
"It's not obvious to me," the voice says.
"Pity, so you ain't as omnipotent as my initial impression of you would've made me believe?"
"If I answer your question I'd have made a very important characteristic of my entity known to you at no slightest effort on your part. Do you want to die?"
"Yes, I want to die," Bruce responds. He shakes his head after hearing himself confess out loud to such a thing. But it's the truth. And maybe the wind, or whatever this talking element is, will tell him a thing or two that a therapist or two hasn't been able. "But so what, right?"
"Why?"
"Because life is pointless, that's why?" He looks. At the white birds in the sky. A sky that's turning orange. Which soon will be bleeding. As his body will be too, but on the jagged rocks below, unless the entity reveals something he doesn't already know about life. The basic fact of which is that it's dark, cold and lonely.
"So you think the birds have it better than you, don't you?"
"I don't care. I just want to die."
The element got it wrong this time. Bruce really doesn't want to be like the birds. One thing he's learned is this, particularly when it comes to breathing entities: The grass is always greener on the other side. You think he or she has it better than you? Well, wait until you hear what he or she is going through. Then you'll want your problems back. You'll pay anything to be you again. That's what his grandma used to tell him. She was the most amazing woman he's ever met. Or will ever given the impending expiry date of his life. She still died of bloody cancer, after the longest time lived in unspeakable pain.
"What do you think death is like?" the entity queries.
"I know what life is like. And that's enough to send me over here. I've revealed myself, now, who are you?"
"I'm a spirit. In other words I'm dead. And I'm tired of being dead."
"Tired. . . You're dead? What are you talking about?"
Bruce is trying too hard to suppress a laugh.
"I used to be like you is what I mean. Made the same choice that you're about to. Succeeded in executing the plan. Before I died my guardian angel appeared to me as I have appeared to you today. Told me not to jump. I still did."
"Why did you, when someone cared about you enough to tell you not to?"
"Because I was tired of living as you think you are."
"So you regret it?"
"I don't feel anything here. No pain. No joy. No hunger. Nothing. What do you think?"
"I don't care."
"You don't care if there's heaven or hell on this side?"
"There's only one thing that I care to know: Will I meet my grandma when I die? And will she be happy that I did what I'm going to do nomatter what you try to tell me?"
"I've talked to your grandma. She won't care. She won't even recognize you. She's the definition of dead."
"Okay."
There's the sound of a chopper up above. Then a voice from a megaphone asking the visible one of the conversationalists to cease and desist. They're going to lower one of their people down to talk to him. He doesn't need to do this. There's so much. . .
But he rise to his feet. Feels the natural wind of the cliff, and the artificial wind manufactured by the helicopter's rotor blades. He's on the very edge, so the combined force of the two threaten to throw his lanky frame over.
Smell. Touch. Taste. The sight of all the glories of the world above and below him. Sounds. Both sweet and defeating. Make him start to reconsider?
"Are you sure you want to do this," guardian angel asks with some unabashed excitement.
Heck no nothing's gonna make him reconsider anything.
"I already told you," the suicidal fellow says. "And you haven't told me anything that's revolutionary enough to change my mind."
"Very well then."
"Just like that?!"
"What do you want me to say? You've got something that I want and you don't. The rule says we should fight. The harder you throw them punches, the more difficult you make it for both of us. Hope you remember that, if anything."
"Bruce, don't," Bruce hears a familiar but faint voice say. Too late. He already feels the wind attempt to buoy his body upward as he takes the plunge. Then everything is dark. Dark, dark, dark.