Chasm
Spinning round and round in his swivel chair,
the dull colours blurred and passed his half-closed eyes. He
felt his body being contorted sideways, pushed and pulled as
he looped around himself. And then an office slowly materialised
out of the blur, as focus, like a friction dragging against
his vision, seemed to bring the chair to a halt. Mr. Allan Fry,
company director, sat with his back to the desk, facing the
giant window, which served as the back wall to his office. He
straightened himself up.
The tinted glass was three inches thick and on a dark day, with
the sun hidden behind clouds or buildings, the window blackened
into a vast but dim mirror. Allan studied his face, noticing
how deep shadow obscured his hollowing cheeks, how his mouth
and nostrils were black pits. If he moved sideways the shadow
seemed to creep sideways with him, eating into his skin. He
jerked his head, trying to break free from the skull shaped
reflection but as he watched the disembodied and lifeless face
shifting ridiculously against the glass he noticed a bright
light glinting from each eye. He sat still and removed his spectacles,
extinguishing the lights; shadow leaked from his pupils like
murky water rising. He blinked rapidly and the reflection, mask-like,
did not move.
Outside the sun began to break the cloud. A beam of light struck
the window and dissolved into the dark glass, brightening the
tint but finding no way through. Allan's reflection melted into
the light and his focus was pulled directly through the glass
so that he found himself looking through the window straight
into the sky, fourteen stories up. A plane caught in his vision
and he watched it trailing a white line of smoke through the
blue as if it were an insect smearing a line (like a white scratch)
on the outside of the glass. He closed one eye, carefully pinched
his thumb and forefinger around the plane, and then pressed
them together like a young child practising his torture. The
plane drifted on.
As he stepped towards the glass wall the blue fell away into
a chasm, and the city appeared sprawling beneath him into the
distance; buildings pushed up at his feet. Way down in the street
life was stuck to the bottom of the huge space, continuously
shifting. Cars, blocks of colour, were lined up bumper to bumper.
On the pavement a swarming mass of tiny bodies and heads formed
an impenetrable canopy, rippling like water under a strong wind.
Allan noticed how this street life was caught in a dark shadow,
which stretched out from the library building opposite. The
right side of his mouth curled in amusement as, in his mind,
the shadow became an open grave reaching out from an elaborate
tombstone.
Allan tilted his head backwards and looked out over the black
of his lower eyelids until his line of sight raised from the
pavement. It climbed seven stories of the grey library wall,
until the grey merged into the rest of the city. But somewhere
in the grey he registered a white fleck, making him blink as
if a speck of dust had caught in his eye. He closed his eyes
tight. He opened them. Replacing his glasses the fleck intensified
and he realised he had been right. A man stood teetering on
the edge of the library's flat roof. Allan saw that the man
was naked and, unsure of how to react, he let out an uneasy
chuckle, stifling it quickly as the man swayed forward on the
ledge.
As he realised the man was about to jump, the chasm seemed to
open up, propelling Allan and the man further apart. And with
this outward movement Allan staggered back form the window as
if he had been hit by a breaking wave. He braced himself. A
damp sweat crept from his numb skin. The waves continued to
break, through the back of his throat and into a void, which
was opening out inside him. He felt sick and he could feel the
tremor of his hands. Time passed, he heard himself breathing
and then realised he was looking at his (well-polished) shoes.
He looked up from his feet to the man, who remained on the ledge,
swaying as if by the breeze.
The sun was at the man's back, but its rays curled round his
limbs and torso, as if they were pulling him back from the dark
drop into the light, making a filament of his body. Whenever
the man swayed forwards, the light, which illuminated him, would
intensify into a blazing white, radiating from him. And Allan
would also sway forward, blown by an internal breeze, until
his hands were holding his weight against the window and his
forehead felt the cold of the glass as his skin flattened against
it.
As the company director stood transfixed and helpless, his excited
breathing misted the glass, shrouding the light. He raised his
fist to wipe the mist away and at that moment the light blazed
uncontrollably against his eye. And then the body had plunged
into shadow, disappearing like a small flame engulfed by an
ocean. The body fell through the mouth of Allan's reflection
and was gone. He flinched forwards into the glass wall, his
whole body pressed flat against it, but could not see into the
blackening street. He began to moan loudly but, hearing himself,
quickly snuffed the sound out. Backing away from the window
he collapsed in his swivel chair and put his head in his hands,
closing his eyes. His head pulsed.
An afterimage floated inside his head, burning uncontrollably,
tearing the black like a fierce white scratch on the inside
of his eye.
He stepped onto the ledge.
Behind him a pile of clothes lay neatly folded and the librarian
giggled nervously, wondering quite what he was doing. At first
he concentrated on the surface of the ledge, an intricate chaos
of grain creating the illusion of flatness. But as he blinked
his focus fell through the air like a brick, smashing onto the
pavement amongst the pedestrians, the shoppers, the business people;
a canopy of bodies, heads and hair without one upward glance.
As he looked down the wall of the library building became the
floor and the floor was falling away and his body arched forwards
instinctively. He jerked backwards, but then, straightening himself
up, swallowed air, shuffled closer to the edge and closed his
eyes.
An intense sense of freedom contracted around him, verged on total
detachment, and gave way to desperate isolation. His skin seemed
to tighten around the frame of his body, setting the nerves prickling
above his flesh. He felt his body shaking.
With his eyes still closed he swayed forward again onto the balls
of his feet, feeling his own weight as it stretched out above
the chasm. The damp clung to him like a shower curtain; he was
suffocating but couldn't reach his body with his mind, couldn't
make himself breathe. The muscles tightened up through his legs
into his back until his jaw clenched shut. But, when his eyes
sprung open, he was looking at himself.
Directly opposite him a skyscraper reached into the blue and almost
disappeared in the blue (reflecting the sky and almost part of
it). And he could see himself suspended in one of the mirrored
windows, a sharp white floating beautifully in the midst of a
deep blue. And he could feel himself breathing again, swept up
in a wave of calm.
He swayed into the blue.
In the instant as his feet left the roof his vision floated outwards
towards the reflection. Their arms reached out towards each other,
towards an embrace. But the calm shattered like splintering glass
as his body plunged downwards, swamped in a cold darkness.
The reflection did not fall. It slid silently down the side of
the building, disappearing before the pavement.
Down on the street, outside the library, he stood by the road
waiting for the green man. The smoke from his cigarette drifted
out in front of him, and out of the smoke rose a glass elevator
sliding smoothly up the outside of the building which towered
opposite. A pigeon fluttered against the face of the glass, its
double mirrored in the blue windows. The student noticed a slash
of white caught in the blue.
As the lights changed a stream of people bustled past him into
the road, but he stood stock still looking upwards, mesmerised
by the strange reflection which was framed high up in one of the
vast windows. He couldn't make out what it was; he wanted to get
closer. And then it moved. For a split second it grew in the frame
before dropping suddenly down through the long wall of windows.
The reflection appeared framed in one window after another, like
stills in a roll of film.
In shocked reflex he span around as something thudded directly
behind him. His mouth opened and the cigarette dropped from his
mouth, landing on the base of the librarian's neck, spreading
ash over the dead man's bare back.