Fiction: Group 3
You withdraw your hand and peer cautiously out the window. The Pearl River swirls relentlessly
meters below you.
If I escape now, that will be the last place I will experience consciousness in.
The time is right. Go now… while you still can.
You hesitate.
What
do
you have left, anyway? No friends, no family.... you’ll die old, with no one to care for
you. Why not end all this now and stop the suffering? The nightmares, the guilt, the misery… it’ll all be
over. Besides, who will care about your death anyway?
The offer seems so tempting, that, in the moment, you become convinced by your own hollow,
deceiving words. In a trance, you climb out the window until you are left teetering on the edge of the
windowsill. Above you, the smog parts just enough to reveal the full moon, emitting a soft, pearl-like,
glow. You shiver in the cool night air.
On the count of three.
Three…
your knees begin to tremble involuntarily at the sight of the murky water below you.
Two…
You begin to have second thoughts.
What am I even doing? One...go.
Your feet remain rooted to
the windowsill.
Go! Just go.
No,
you argue, tears streaming down your cheeks faster than the relentless flowing of the Pearl
River.
Death may be the easy way out, but it is selfish.
Selfish? You’ve been selfish your whole life!
The realization slaps you in the face and at once the tears stop.
Well, maybe that needs to change.
You lower yourself and climb back in through the window, your heart still pounding from the
close encounter. As you slam the window shut, you realize that, when you were given the chance, you
didn’t kill yourself.
Why didn’t I take it?
You wonder as you crawl back under the covers of your bed.
Maybe my life
wasn’t destined to be over… just yet. There must be a way to fix the mistakes I made and put what’s left of
my life back together. Maybe “Yuan”
will
help me find a friend…eventually.
With those last thoughts you drift into sleep. And for the first time in a long while, your sleep is
untainted by dreams- or nightmares.
