Deus ex machina [Windy // Nell] {Mean Girls!}

This is it.

This – the concrete wall that grazes my bare shoulders, the cold inching its fingers down my spine and pinching at my shoulders, the dull thud of my brain that I cannot detangle – this is all I have ever known. The narrow window ledge on which I perch supports me, just, but reminds me of just how easy it is to fall. The dark surrounds me, pulls into me, separates me from everyone else. All of a sudden it seems that my whole life can be described in three articles – the frigid wall behind me, the brink ground on which I sit and the heavy night air that pierces my lungs with every breath. Cold, unemotional – tonight is the same as I am.

A glance to the ground makes the drop seem further than I know it to be. Artificial lights break down the walls of the night, but cannot break through. It would be so simple, I think, to fall. Spotlighted, and then dark, and then spotlighted again, in accordance with the building’s windows. Hair billowing like a spring breeze, and then hitting the ground with a satisfying thump. A little crack, and the most beautiful last gasp of air bouncing from my lungs, making only a little height before plummeting back and falling just beside my body. Perhaps putting away my life would be something that I could actually get right.

Oh, and the funeral would be so beautiful. It would be the one thing that my parents could get right – my father’s bold words about what a perfect child I wasn’t, my mother’s choice of flowers, and the hired make-up artist’s valiant attempts to disguise the strawberry-jam mess that had once been the back of my head.

And yet, what if I got it wrong? What if it didn’t go to plan, and I got up and walked off – or worse, was made an invalid? What if I couldn’t operate my legs, use my hands, aim with vague accuracy? The only thing worse than – and now, I shudder when I think to this evening’s dreadful training session, with slipped swords, three unblocked touches in fencing and even a handful of knifes thrown off-target – would be being not able enough to make these mistakes in the first place. The though of being labelled inept for the rest of my life is enough, for now, to put me off throwing myself down onto the dimly-lit ground.