A DAY IN THE DEATH

Cool mist kissed George Markus's cheeks as he took one deep breath, then another. He wavered, swayed a little bit as his body relaxed, then steadied again. He opened his eyes to midnight darkness, illuminated only faintly by a distant streetlight and a lamp shining from a dinghy far below. The girder George was hanging on to was slick, but he didn't pay it any mind... there would be no use for a handhold shortly. It was all going to end in the next few minutes, the culmination of a sick and sorry life. He looked down at the inviting water lapping at the support columns of the bridge.

So it had come to this, had it? Divorce, bankruptcy, ruin; it had all come with this life, had it not? Now, this eve of Thanksgiving, he found himself broke and alone, with nothing to look forward to, ever. His accounts were all looted by the tag team of his ex and her snipe lawyer. His home was a twenty-by-twenty roach motel that charged a special hourly rate for the depressed, with half-mildewed sheets and a virtual zoological garden behind the sink. Life, indeed, had settled in the toilet of the universe and settled there to rot and bask in foul stench. It was time to flush, to end the slow erosion of his daily existence.
He said a prayer, to who or what he didn't know, but perhaps he would be forgiven. Surely the Almighty would understand; or perhaps even hell was better than his current situation. He took another greedy, lung-stretching breath, perhaps his last. Closing his eyes again, he stepped off the girder into the open air, beginning his hundred-foot plunge to the base of the bridge below.
He felt a tremendous blast of upward-rushing air, the gravity tugging at his clothes, beckoning downward. His muscles relaxed; he felt well at ease, tumbling end over end into the darkness below.
Down.
Way down.
Dark.
Nothing.

But wait.
There was feeling, something familiar after the darkness. It wasn't the tunnel of light one read about in new age novels. It was a memory that was being relived, a feeling.
Dampness.
Against his face, the mist settled.
He opened his eyes, and gasped with unbelief.
He was still standing on the girder.
No, no, this couldn't possibly be.. his reality was quite vivid, he could remember the feeling of falling freely through space, then darkness. But alas, he was still here, getting chilled to the bone by the frigid breeze blowing from the northeast. He looked around, frantically, forgetting how slippery his hold was on the beam, and let go prematurely; he felt his left knee bounce off of the platform he had been standing on, as he tumbled once again into the depths below. The scenery whizzed by him at hyper-speed, a blurred black-green-yellow mass, making him suddenly dizzy and disoriented and weak, yes this had to be it
He looked down, and could see the surface of the water below before he blacked out again.

Darkness returned.
So did the damp breeze that penetrated to the bone.
Other than the chill ache of his joints, nothing else seemed to hurt. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes again.
He was still alive, still holding onto the slippery beam, still shivering.
This was madness.
Was he?
He looked back at his car, seemingly miles away, on the other end of the railing, parked by the side of the road. Shakily, frustrated, he turned and slid across the girder to the railing and climbed back over it to safety. He walked toward the car, and unlocked it, easing slowly into the driver's seat. This wasn't going to work. He slumped over, took a few deep, painful breaths, and started the car.. after a few false turns, it hummed to life. He put the car into gear, and made slow progress toward his house.

The idea came to him as he drove, spotting a glimmer in the distance, twinkling lights of headlights approaching him. A fall couldn’t kill him. How about a crash? Yet… yet, in his self-indulgence, he didn’t want to harm innocent people. He paused a bit, shrugged off the thought of a head-on collision as the first set of headlights whizzed by him, and came to something of a decision. Concentrating on another gleam of light, this time off the embankment to his right, he swerved in its direction, toward the solidly planted light pole just ahead. He closed his eyes, took his foot off the brake, stepped on the gas, and waited for the moment of impact.
And waited.
Seconds passed, but the moment never came.
George opened his eyes.
This was impossible – the pole was still as far away as it had been before he had turned his car toward it and shut his eyes! He cursed violently, stomped on his brakes, sending the car into a spin, until it blocked the road, facing sideways.
It was time to give up. George had to at least go home and rest – this was far too much for the regrettably living. He unblocked the road, and continued his drive home.


The neon signs of the seedy motel mocked him as he parked in its pothole-peppered lot. He dug out his key card, getting out of the car, not bothering to lock it behind him. Sliding the keycard into the slot, he turned the handle when a green light signaled a key match. He was buffeted by a gust of stale, smoky air from within. A roach the size of a small rat scuttled out of his way and under the queen bed. George unbuttoned his shirt, then picked up the TV remote and clicked the television on. He was just in time to catch the local news.

“…. Tragedy has hit the community of Valencia this evening, as it has now been confirmed that two have been killed in a multiple suicide at the Flanders River Bridge. Tom Hutchins is there with the latest. Tom, what have you found out?”

George paused. The scenery looked familiar, terrifyingly so.

“Well, Carol, in an unusual series of events, two young men have committed suicide by leaping, one after the other, to their deaths from this very spot…”

No. That was his spot. The one he had intended to end it all from. How…

“It appears that the second victim might have actually bounced against a lower-level platform, as there appears to be severe damage to one of his knees…”

His left knee throbbed faintly. Was it possible?
These two innocent people had actually taken his place?

“Another breaking news story just in. A family of four has died as their minivan collided with a pole along State Road 55 and burst into flame. All the occupants of the van were dead before the emergency personnel arrived.”

Now his head was spinning.
Somehow, as fate had allowed it, he had been responsible for those deaths! He flipped off the television set and began pacing around the room. If not him, then who? And why? Those other people had not deserved to die for his inane, selfish motivations. His life may have been worthless, but the lives of those others were over, completely, forever.
He had to call someone.
He had to let the police know about this.
Maybe they would understand, and he could turn himself in.
He was a murderer!
Yes, yes, he would pick up the phone and dial 911. They would probably think him crazy, out of his mind, but maybe there was the faintest glimmer of a chance that someone would believe him. He had wanted so much to exit this earth, but not at the expense of others – certainly not to see innocent people die in his stead.

He picked up the phone and began dialing.
9…
The handset felt cold and metallic in his hands as he lifted it to his ear.
1…
It settled into his hand as he touched it to his head.
1…
But there was no sound, no dialtone, nothing.
He turned and looked at the handset, that wasn’t a handset.
The gun went off, blowing a tremendous hole in George’s head.

***

The shivering man waited in the hotel lobby in his bathrobe, looking visibly embarrassed and perplexed.
“That’s r-right. I l-locked myself out of my room. D-don’t know how it happens, I was just—“
And then the man stopped mid-sentence. He didn’t want to say anything further.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’ve never seen you here before. And that room’s registered to a Mr. George Markus,” the desk clerk said.
“That’s impossible! I checked in this afternoon! Ch-check again.”
This was truly baffling. The man had been in the room just seconds earlier, contemplating his true lot in life, pointing his eternal destiny at his head. It was better than the drunken stupor he had been living for the past few months… and then, not BLAM… but POOF he was outside of his room, barely dressed, and clutching, not his prized revolver, but the handset of a motel phone which had been ripped from its jack.
The clerk was suspiciously eyeing the broken phone as he replied, “Sir, I’m sorry. Mr. Markus has been in that room for a good month now.”

Just then, an elderly gentleman sporting a handlebar mustache and overly decorative shorts burst in the office. “Come quick! I think there’s been a shooting in the room next door! 138!”
The clerk nodded and picked up his desk phone.
The man sunk to the floor in disbelief… as somewhere, half a block away, a troubled teen opened a box of razor blades in a back alley beside a dumpster... And the circle continued.