The darkness was eating away at him as he climbed. His hands stung from a thousand little cuts still leaking blood, his legs shook from overuse, and he was trembling, trembling all over, from pain or exhaustion or the sobs that forced their way out of his mouth, he didn't know, but he kept going. He couldn't stop now, he'd made his decision and he wasn't going back.
A sharp gasp of breath escaped him when he grabbed onto yet another rock that pierced his skin, but he held on and kept climbing the steep cliff face. The old folk were right, it really was like a break in time and space, and he didn't want to know what was at the bottom.
He had though. Last night, he did.
He still can't quite believe it. That he threw himself off the cliff face. It didn't sound like him, but then again, did he really know who he was anymore? In the morning, he always woke up lost. The room he'd lived in for fourteen years suddenly seemed foreign, the voices in his house were of strangers. He didn't even remember how to get to school in the morning, wandering around aimlessly until he saw others walking home.
He was losing grip on reality, he had realized after a while. And now he was determined to hang on.
A rock broke loose of the soil above him and tumbled down to the abyss. He swallowed; he could imagine himself encountering the same fate.
As soon as he'd jumped, everything had stopped. Time was no longer real, and suddenly it all came rushing back to him. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you're about to die, and maybe that had been his --the part of him that was still there's-- intention all along: to figure out who he was. He saw his family, his friends, and everything he'd been fighting for before he'd lost it. He'd realized just how much he wanted to live, truly live. And he'd clawed at the cliff face, trying to hold on.
He still couldn't see the top. But he kept going anyways.
He knew now, exactly what had happened. Why a part of him had torn itself apart, why he had been living half a life. He had been sick that winter day, so sick that he wasn't allowed out of bed. He remembered being so upset that he couldn't go to the baseball game. Which was why he hasn't suffered the same fate as his father and all three of his brothers.
All dead in a nanosecond. Four lives, his whole family, gone. It was no wonder he went insane when he heard.
His mother was beside herself with grief. She'd lost her husband, three sons, and now him too. She talked, she pleaded, she begged. Trying to get him back to the way he was. She had cried too, cried far too often and far too long. He had ignored her.
A jagged piece of metal scraped against his leg, causing jets of white hot pain to spike. He tried his best not to scream, and when he ultimately failed, tried his best not to hear himself.
This was retribution for the pain he had caused his mother. This was retribution for throwing away the life he should have lived.
Suddenly, dazzling light flooded the sky. He squinted against it, trying desperately to see what had happened. Had someone finally found him? Would he finally be saved?
He looked back and almost laughed. The sun had come up. No one was there. No one wanted to save him, save the boy that had lost his mind. Let him die, they thought. He wasn't truly alive anyway.
Never again, he promised himself. When he got to the top, he would live life like he ought to.
If, he got to the top.
His arms were shaking now too. His legs were numb. His energy was gone, spent. He was left clinging onto the cliff with nothing, just him, and his mind.
But he kept going. Because he'd finally come back to himself. It was vivid color flooding a black and white painting; he was here, and here he would stay.
He wondered what his mother was thinking. He'd left a suicide note on his desk. The words hadn't really been strung together properly, his former self had been lacking the proper skills to write, but nevertheless, he had gotten the message across.
"I'm gone. Don't look for me,"
His mother was probably crying again. A wave of guilt flooded through him and empowered him.
I'm coming. I'm coming back.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*
The sun was high in the sky by the time he saw the top.
Sweat had made his hands slip: three times he had almost plummeted to his death. On the third occasion he had fell a good hundred feet before finally finding a hand hold. He was pretty sure he had dislocated his shoulder from that fall. And at that point, something inside him had broken. He screamed, louder than he had before, releasing everything inside him, the frustration, the anger, the guilt. He had clung to the wall, sobbing, all the while wondering if it really was worth it to climb up the cliff anyway.
But he had returned to climb, despite everything, and now he was almost there. His green shirt was beyond saving, his shoes were ripped and torn. The smell of blood, his own, stained his nose. His arm reached up, his foot found a hold, he pulled himself up. The other arm reached, and pulled. Reach and pull, reach and pull. It repeated over and over until he thought his mind would burst. The sun beat down on him furiously, as if even it knew that he had to pay. He was suddenly glad that he had been a baseball player before he had gone insane. The muscle had finally come in handy.
He didn't even remember reaching the top, just walking toward the house he now remembered, oblivious to the pain of his wounds, but aware of the furious thumping of his heart. The streets were deserted, and he found himself glad. He didn't need people pointing and laughing, or whispering to each other. He walked with a purpose, and a strength he didn't know he had.
A few times he passed places that he remembered wandering past. He had been a shell of himself all those months. Hollow, lifeless. It scared him, to be honest, and he was terrified that it might happen again.
I've spent enough time being a coward, he thought. It's time to face reality.
And finally, he had reached the butter yellow house that sat at the corner of Lilly Grove and March Avenue. Two police cars were parked in front of it, their sirens still flashing. He walked up to the front door, the steps seeming as high as the cliff he'd just climbed. His legs trembled. He took a deep breath.
This was it. The end of his half life and the beginning of his true one.
He raised his hand and knocked on the door, three times like he always had.
The wait seemed like an eternity, the footsteps like gunshots. The door swung open to reveal the one person he had been ignoring all these months, his mother.
She saw him and gasped, her eyes widening in disbelief. He saw the lines of worry etched into her face, lines of pain. She has aged so much in just a couple short months. It was because of him. He wouldn't be surprised if she slammed the door in his face and told him never to come back.
But suddenly her face was flooded with relief, and she rushed forward and pulled him into his arms. "Michael," she sobbed. "Oh Michael,"
"I'm back mom; I'm back," he whispered, his voice hoarse from disuse.
She only sobbed and pulled him closer.
