Beginnings - Seven Steps To Heaven

Jack slumped against the rough edge of the cold gray rock outcroppings that the locals had coined “Lover’s Leap” and let the cool evening sea breezes, coming off the bay, blow against his cheeks and through his hair. Far below him, in the growing darkness, the ocean rumbled and crashed, like the cymbals and base drum of a distant brass band. Lowering his eyes over the muddy edge, towards the water, he could still faintly see the waves punishing the jagged shoreline and the shimmer of the silvery mist coming off the spray.


Jack’s life wreaked of broken promises and unfulfilled dreams. School had become a career unto itself, stretching across the good part of a decade. The people, walking the halls of that hellish community college, grew younger and more naïve by the day. He had chosen a dozen majors over the years, accumulating sixty three unusable credits.

He had finally committed to Business Management about a year ago, frankly, because it would accept more of his acquired credits than anything else and, more truthfully, because the major seemed to have a handful of younger single women as evening teachers. There wasn’t much in the way of originality between them, they all seemed to shop at the same clothing stores for their teaching attire, but with form fitting business blouses and short skirts that tended to climb their thighs as they taught, there was more than sufficient motivation to continue the trek to class, evening after evening.

His day job mirrored his schooling. He had rubber balled it from one career path to the next, with short stints driving a delivery truck, trying his hand at fast food, grocery stores, office warehouses and even three months as a bank teller. Nothing completely paid the bills or gave him the fulfillment for which he imagined that he wanted.

At the moment, Jack was working at a hole-in-the-wall bike shop in an aged industrial part of town where he spent the majority of his time behind the shop, sitting on his butt, surrounded by old bikes in need of repair. The old guy had owned it for more than thirty years. During which time, the owner had developed a propensity for purchasing old broken bikes from the young kids in the surrounding neighborhoods for whom he felt sorry. This had led to a lot of tedious work for Jack and very little income for the shop. No one wanted to buy a fixed up old bike anymore.

Jack didn’t much care for how the shop profited. In fact, as long as the old guy kept paying him and the checks didn’t bounce, he cared for very little at all anymore. What was there really to care about anyway.

His family was a strange lot. He had two married sisters who alternately ignored or shunned him for presumably very righteous reasons. Two more self persecuted people, he had never met. His mother was an absolute trip. An overly emotional person by nature, she had nurtured the trait to the point of out and out paranoia. She overreacted to things in the spirit of a preadolescent, causing both of Jack’s brother-in-laws to walk on eggshells around her. His father was a serious, self righteous man whose opinion was the only opinion and subsequently unquestionable law. He had ruled the house with a downcast eye upon the subjects of his tiny kingdom, making comments and judgments as he saw fit, which was, curiously enough, the only trait shared by both parents.

It was dark now. Towering pines obscured any light that might have been visible from town. Lover’s Leap sat off the road about a hundred and fifty yards, down an obscure overgrown path through a thick mass of trees and brush. It had been the retreat of choice fifteen years ago in the hay day of high school but the occasional accident along its picturesque outlook, intentional or otherwise, had damped its appeal. The actual outcropping of rock, deemed “the leap,” rose slightly to a point and overlooked a rather treacherous section of coastline.

Jack had abandoned his lime green and rust colored VW bug near the edge of the highway and had pushed along the path, wandering out around the leap, along a narrow ledge, to the face of the cliff. Here, the wind had carved out a few feet of room where Jack would often retreat, to think and watch the sunsets.

It was getting colder and the wind was picking up, plucking at his thin jacket. Jack slid his legs up from over the edge and worked himself back until he stood up, using the undercut rock wall for leverage. The wind howled at him and helped him along the ledge as he inched his way back toward solid ground. The ground had disappeared in the darkness and he needed to feel with his toes for each subsequent step while clutching at the weeds and earth along the rocky face.

Jack looked up at the moon, fat and yellow, playing hide and seek behind black faceless clouds. Dread swept through him momentarily. He shook it off….. crazy…. then he fell.

The earth crumbled beneath his tennis shoes and he threw himself towards the cliff, grasping for anything that would save him. All he came away with were handfuls of muddy, soft dirt, clutched in between whitened knuckles. He teetered momentarily and eternally, then, as if in slow motion, he slipped into space. He tried to scream, to call out to someone, anyone, but nothing escaped his lips.

The wind rushed past, pulling at his clothes and hair. His mind slowed, as if detaching itself from the situation. His legs began to run, twitching in the air, accomplishing nothing. His mind focused on the revolutions, ignoring the increasing sounds of pounding surf. One, two three, he ran, grabbing at the night. He could feel the wetness of the mist against his cheeks. Five, six, seven….the impact was short and immediate. He heard but didn’t feel the bones crumble and splinter. His body folded and his forehead impacted the side of a wet and slim covered rock. There was a burst of color, light, a searing pain and then nothing, simply nothing. Jack’s limp and crumpled body slipped beneath the waves and slowly began to drift.