To The Sky

This is a short story I wrote as an assignment for a school project, and I think it would be fun to expand upon this and maybe even make it a full length novel one day.

As he reached the top of the stairs, and the roof of the building, he couldn’t help but feel guilty for what he was about to do. He must have spent hours pacing back and forth in his apartment contemplating whether this truly was the right thing to do. Perhaps he should have just called one of those hotlines and talked to someone. Maybe that would make it all better.

            But then he remembered why he had even considered it in the first place; He had no friends, no job, and his girlfriend had left him for another man. His family was a mess, and he just couldn’t see a reason to go on anymore. He was truly alone.

      He walked to the edge of the roof, and took a look down. It must have been at least a 60-foot drop. He kept telling himself that there would be no chance of surviving, but deep down he wasn’t sure. If he was going to do this, he needed to be sure.

            He took a step onto the ledge and breathed in deeply. Again, he looked to the dark alleyway below, and closed his eyes. He remembered coming home only to find the love of his life in the arms of another man. He remembered how it felt to hear his boss tell him that he didn’t work there anymore. He thought of those nights where he would just lay in bed and try to pretend that he was too busy to have any kind of social life He remembered it all. In that moment, with tears rushing down his face and his hands shaking, he stepped off the ledge to the pavement below.

His eyes were tightly shut and he braced for the impact. But as his feet left the ledge, he didn’t feel gravity’s familiar tug pulling him towards the ground. In fact, he didn’t feel his body moving at all. He opened his eyes and gasped. He wasn’t falling at all. In fact, he wasn’t moving in the slightest. He was floating in the air, not unlike an astronaut in space.

As the amazement and confusion wore off, he began to panic. Almost like a light switch being turned off, he began to fall to the ground. This time, he didn’t want to hit the ground.

“I want to live!” he shouted out.

            Someone must have been listening, because at that moment, he did. In an instant, he was rapidly plummeting to his death, and in the next, he was a feather drifting towards to the ground below. Not long after, his feet gently grazed the ground and he had landed on the ground unharmed.

            He looked up towards the ledge he had been standing on just minutes before. How quickly his world had changed in a matter of minutes. Those thoughts of death were gone, and now he was focused on his newly discovered ability. Could he fly? And if so, how did it work? Was he a real superhero? In the end, it didn’t matter, because he knew it was a sign; a miracle, even. But more than anything, it had given him a reason to live and keep going on.

He closed his again, and breathed in deeply. This time, he had something to look forward to. He had a purpose. He opened his eyes once again and looked up. It was time to take to the sky. 

Author's Note

Feel free to rip this apart- I think it has a lot of potential, so any improvements or suggestions would be appreciated!

Reviews

[Drew Given]

I like the idea behind it, but I feel like there is a major lapse in character development when he suddenly goes from wanting to kill himself to thinking he has a purpose because he can fly. That might be a matter of having to fit this in a required length, but if you were going to make it a longer piece I feel like there needs to be a lot more in between.