Chapter 1
A Heroic Beginning
Chapter 1
Sam Brody stood on the ledge of the 30-story building contemplating jumping off. His behavior could be classified as suicidal but it was not because he expected to survive. Sam wasn’t planning on committing suicide. If everything went right, he would be flying.
Yet the potential consequences had not escaped him. He knew very well that he might be ending his life. Yet, he had to know if he could really do it. Waking up every other night, and more recently, every night, floating four feet above his covers had convinced him that he could actually pull off this madness. He had successfully defied gravity, at least for very brief moments. This wasn’t the first time he had tried to fly. There was the stepladder. Then there was the roof of the house when Mom and Dad were out for their anniversary. He had failed both times. Despite his failed attempts, he still woke up hovering above his bed.
Sam knew he had to give it one more try. He had to know for sure. “I Believe I Can Fly” popped into his head. Even though it perfectly encapsulated his belief, he banished it from his mind. If he was successful, Sam would break the surly bonds of gravity and touch the face of God (in the metaphorical sense).
If he failed, he would literally meet God, who would probably tell him that he committed one of the most insanely idiotic, half-brained, deluded, moronic, things a human being has ever attempted.. Sam kept reminding himself of the risks, even when he left his house, drove on the highway 20 minutes down to the city, got off at Thurman Street, took the second right onto Tulsa, and especially during the 5 minutes he sat in his car arguing with himself. Sam knew a simple fact, which everyone else knew. People don’t fly, at least not without mechanical assistance. Yet he floated, repeatedly, night after night.
As he stood on the precipice, Sam looked around the cityscape. At half-past midnight on a Thursday night, it looked peaceful. The Burroughs building, on which he was standing, was incomplete. There were no workers or night watchmen to disturb him. He admired the beauty of his view, the countless other towers of steel and glass. They stood empty, or mostly empty. There was very little noise. Even the wind was still, which meant the shivers had been from nerves and not from the breeze. He was truly alone.
Then Sam made the mistake of looking down. The sudden onset of vertigo snapped Sam out of his brief moment of tranquility.
“Sam, you’re a fucking idiot! Get the fuck off the ledge, go back home and slap yourself many times for the stupid shit you are thinking about doing!”
What was left of his rationality was screaming at him to get off the ledge. Jumping off the roof had been crazy enough. Jumping off a 30-story building made the previous act of madness seem rational. The truth was simple, people don’t fly when they jump off buildings…they die.
Sam stepped back from the precipice and turned around. Walking back to the elevator, he exhaled deeply. He wasn’t completely nuts. No matter what had been happening to him, no matter how weird things continued to get, he wouldn’t go all in on crazy. The knowledge that he could fly wasn’t worth the cost of failure. Because not only was his life on the line, the happiness of those he most cherished was also on the line. It wasn’t just him he had to think about. There was Mom and Dad. There was Serena. There was Will. He couldn’t be that selfish, not again. If he killed himself, he would be, in a way, killing them, too.
Sam pressed the down button for the elevator and the doors opened. He was going home. He would go to bed, and when he woke up, whether in his bed or above it, he would be alive and he could forget this madness once and for all.
However, he didn’t step into the elevator. There was another, more important reason why he was up here and it mattered more than simply knowing whether he could fly or not. The incident at the farm shook his confidence. He couldn’t go forward, do anything he planned to do, if he didn’t have confidence. That’s really why he was here.
He turned his back on the elevator. He saw the ledge and in a split second, made his decision. Sam ran back towards the precipice, covering 30 feet in less than a second. When he reached the edge, he squatted, tensing all the muscles in his legs, and jumped.
Sam did not fall. He went up…and up…and up. He looked down and saw that he was over the street and over the Dallas building, and a nice little 22-story tower that stood directly across the street. The roof fell further and further away as he rocketed upwards and onward. Sam believed he could fly and he was now doing it.
“HELL YEAH, BABY!!!”
Sam’s shouts of excitement didn’t do justice to the rush he was feeling. Crack, meth, speed. They had nothing on the high (both literally and figuratively) he felt at what was happening now. He spread his arms, closed his eyes, and soared like a bird. He was free, from fear, from gravity herself. It was incredible, exhilarating, fantastic, and… not to last.
The slowing of his upward momentum went unnoticed at first. Sam was still too flush from the excitement of his apparent success. But it soon became impossible to ignore. He felt the invisible bands of gravity tug at him. Gently at first, but the feeling grew stronger and stronger. He wasn’t flying, he was falling. Sam looked down, the streets, hundreds of feet below, were beckoning for him and gravity would soon deliver him.
He wasn’t free from gravity. He was just furloughed. Sam was still gravity’s subject and no matter how much leeway she granted him, she was still his master. Down and down he went and his crazy experiment was coming to its inevitable end. As he plummeted to the ground, Sam did not think of whose lives would be shattered because of his extreme act of selfishness and stupidity. His thoughts were on the here and now. Down, down, down he went. The unforgiving pavement to which gravity would send her rebellious subject rocketed toward him. Even at an altitude of hundreds of feet, he could make out each puddle, each empty gum wrapper and coffee cup. None of that mattered now. Only the black void filled his thoughts and he was filled with fear, to which he would now become too closely acquainted.
The final seconds went by quickly. As the windows of the office buildings raced by him, he could do nothing but greet its end with a scream and a curse.
“OH SHITTTTTT!!!!”
The Doppler effect of his scream dragged out his last words before he hit the pavement. They weren’t the most dignified final words ever uttered, but given the circumstances, quite understandable. If he had time to really evaluate his words as he fell, he would have preferred to say nothing and keep at least a small smidgen of his dignity. Alas, another failure.
Sam and street met. Gravity and his hubris were the matchmakers. The fall’s final sound: thud.