Control
flash fiction | abyss
The shout - “Hold on!” - came late, like an ancient voice carried on a wind that had already swept by.
In this case, it seemed more than a block away; more than a mile away; more than a lifetime. It was an exhortation crossing all time and no time.
Hence, I was barely able to perceive it.
What I got was its urgency: a presumed proffer of hope fading against the utter loss of control.
But I couldn’t feel it. There was no emotional resonance. Not even a sense of actual meaning. It was like the vague trumpet of a movie character drifting from another room while a door opens and closes.
And the words were out of sequence since, indeed, I was already gone. Despite the desperate intensity of my best effort, I couldn’t hold onto the rope dangling me over the abyss -- a meat-grinder of unseen, jagged forces, and dark, endless nothing.
Before that instant, I was consumed by terror and an emotional pain worse than any physical burning and tearing of flesh from my hands.
Which makes the after-the-fact reality seem so unreal.
As it turns out, there was nothing to fear.
But there was no way I could have known. I was so innately compelled to never relinquish control that there was no opportunity to ever consider another option.
As a comparative example, does one really have control over whether they’ll breathe again? It’s just so automatic that it seems absurd to enter any thinking into the matter, especially if there is no lack of air in any direction.
Even so, there are limits to how long one can hold a breath.
In the end, letting go was as simple as exhaling a breath I didn’t know I’d held. There was no grinder, no doom -- just space, expanding beyond the distance that carried the shout, and well beyond control, beyond the abyss.
by George Alger
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