Elucidation

Elucidation

Written By: Abdel-Hamid Musleh

The nighttime sky was filled with a glow that can only be attained by thousands of street lights, homes and office buildings polluting the sky with their unseemly reflections. His notions of earth were skewed, he noted once in one of his paper tirades that the cancer of humanity destroyed the oceans, rivers, the land and the air. They even managed to change how the sky looks at night. That was all behind him, now he will forever wash his hands of humanity. He knew that the muggy air below was hot, humid and reeked of human garbage, but up where he was, the icy wind cut through him chilling him to the bone. It lashed against his face relentlessly exposing his cowardice. His trench coat, wrapped around his knees, threatened to trip him up and send him flying prematurely. He threw over his brown leather briefcase, spilling the contracts, legal papers, pens, affidavits and all other contents that marked him as a lawyer. As the briefcase tumbled like a ragdoll in the wind an obsidian rock slipped out of the pocket, freefalling with the rest of the bags contents. The shiny rock caught his eye as it fell and elicited memories of long hikes on a granite mountain, studying all the rock formations he could see. He shook out memories of his long loved hobby as the wind picked up.

The wind kept harrowing him, shouting obscenities about his soul, greed, hate, jealousy, anger, obsession, he hastily removed his companion-coat, a dirty brown thing that had seen more rough use in the past three days then it’d ever had to endure the whole ten years he had it, was chucked aside as if it had no meaning. He let fly what he thought was the last emotional connection to this world, into the wind, dingy and brown floating off to the false-earth below. He felt his pulse slow, his breathing became steady. It was slow and steady, through the nose, reminiscent to how a diver readies himself before he takes his plunge off the springboard into the lukewarm water. He spread his arms wide, revealing stains underneath his white long-sleeved shirt, his black suit pants were torn at the knees and his hair disheveled from the wind. The scene he had made when the hotel tried to throw him out shamed him. Just One More Drop in the God Damned Bucket.

His eyes closed tears in the corners, wind threatening to tear him asunder. He leaned forward, bent his knees and in one fluid motion sprung off the fifty story building. His heart went from a slow steady companion to a fanatical thing that didn’t want anything to do with what was occurring. The wind rushed past him as the pavement came towards him. Serene Peace came to his mind; he breathed deeply opening his eyes as the pavement came ever closer. He closed his eyes once more.

His ears registered a thunderous roar and his eyes snapped open to see a bright world beneath him. The jungle was lush with dark green tropical trees and a river teaming with life, meandering through it and beside his freefalling body a mountain plateau that ended in a majestic waterfall cutting the very earth it was born from. He stared at it in wonderment, the serenity of it all. He was in heaven, for this was Angel Falls. But Angel Falls is in Venezuela, I’ve never been there. The rocks the waterfall cut through were all shades of brown, red and black that he’d never seen before. The faults that covered the sheer cliff invigorated the geologist in him and his boyish heart fluttered. His pitiful life never allowed him to spend time living his dreams and desires. And as the waterfall passed him his cheeks became the rock face and his tears the water that flowed down them. He squeezed his eyes shut again. Hoping to shun the world. Hoping the minute it takes to fall from the top to the bottom had almost passed.

He opened his eyes again when he felt his body pass through what felt like a silt-filled lake, cold, dark, restricting, threatening to choke out the life inside of his body. As fear began to claw at him the sensory disorientation of the lake began to clear and he saw a golden light piercing the muddy water, he inched towards the light through the murk passing through it to find himself freefalling once again over the golden sands of Egypt ten thousand feet in the air, the roar of the wind deafening him as he fell deeper into the earth. He was looking down on the pyramids, the sphinx, and the ancient civilization that ruled the world for a defining epoch of humanity. He was seeing them during the apex of their time, not the ruin that lay there now, the ruins he was so dearly wanted to see. He saw the miles-long slave lines that built the tombs of the great pharaoh, dying for one man’s dream of a lavish afterlife. He knew pain in this life as he felt every lash against his body that the slaves below were enduring. Tears stung in his eyes as he was beaten to keep the slave masters time table in order. For five long minutes he endured their whiplashes and cudgels to his head until the timelessly eternal lake took him again. The stain of two hundred thousand dead slaves imprinted his soul and left him bare. The things in his life he took advantage of, the luxurious life he lived, the things he took for granted, the basic rights he was privileged too, the guilt of his life weighed like lead on his heart.

His eyes stayed opened one last time as he passed through the sand into the ethereal water and crossed over into a world that he thought he’d never see again. The Rhone Valley vineyard of his mother’s home in France, the sun was shining brightly on the grapevines and the backs of the workers moved diligently, picking the ripe fruits to make the cherished wine. He lifted his head from the ground beneath him and could pick out his mother’s house and the factory where they turned the grapes into wine. The howling wind that came with the experience ceased and he fell silently through the air, watching his childhood playground grow bigger and bigger until he fell between two of the grapevines into the silt-filled void once again. As he made the transition into the next world, longing filled his heart, longing for his home, his Paris.

Falling out into the Parisian skyline, his hearts dream was answered. It was night the shop lights lined the night and the Eiffel tower was afire in all its glory, filling the night landscape with its noble golden glow the white beacon light atop, twirling, dancing, lighting up the night sky with its white beams. He saw the small café shops lining the streets marketing the din of the night, the people walking along them, looking into the shops browsing the wares, enjoying all the night life Paris had to offer, he saw it all, and a heavy stone laid heavy on his heart. As he approached the cobblestone street he looked into a café catching a time-slowing glimpse at his mother with her white shoulder-length hair eating what looked liked her favorite soup sipping on her vintage wine, blissfully unaware of him, he allowed himself one last glimpse at her and the city that was his home and the life he should have lived. He tried to call out to her but his mouth filled with the mud, the silt of the lake spilled out, preventing him from telling her he loved her, that he was sorry. Mother. He clamped his eyes shut one last time, squeezing out the tears brimming in his eyes as he hit the ground with the force of a life five times lived and vaporized into the eternal timeless lake of lost souls.