On The Edge

‘What are you waiting for? The longer you stand there, the higher it’ll get.’

She was standing behind him, much too close by the near sound of her lightly teasing voice. Frozen to the spot and stuck dumb, he could neither turn around to glower at her nor speak to tell her to back off.

What did she mean by “the higher it will get?” Could a high-dive platform be raised like the arm of forklift truck? The thought worsened his shaking and sweating, it stoked his all-consuming fear.

He chose a spot on the far wall where there hung a huge clock sliced through by a shaft of sunlight. He focussed on the movement of the second hand, tried to imagine he could hear its tick and slow his racing heart by falling in with its rhythm.

Falling: that was his recurrent nightmare. The terrifyingly real sensation of plummeting would cause him to scream and wake mid-fall. Quite where he was falling from was never clear in the dream, but now he knew. It had been a presentiment, and here he was, about to enact it for real.

The cries and squeals of small children from the infant pool melded to a sizzle of white noise. It had an odd effect on his skull, as though his bones were becoming exposed, the skin melting from his head and face, his flesh unzipped like Lycra and peeling from his body leaving him standing there a bare skeleton, a frame of bones holding only a stuttering heart.

His ego was to blame. That she had been a competitive diver as a teenager was impressive, he had never tried it – ten metres, how difficult could it be? If that short guy who did the knitting could do it, then so he could he.

And so his ego had shouted down his misgivings, quashed his anxiety, and he continued to be swept away by her athletic magnificence and he climbed the steps to the platform. He himself was a strong swimmer, he knew he looked good in trunks, and what better way to impress her than cutting a few Phelps-ian lengths of the pool.

So much for all that.

The shaking was uncontrollable now, dizziness had kicked in. The clock on the far wall was dancing, its second hand turning counter clockwise. The noise from the children sounded like a pack of baying hyenas.

Slowly, slowly, he lowered his skinless frame to a crouching position until he managed to kneel, then bend forward and grip either side of the board with tremoring hands. Somehow, he shimmied his legs out behind him until he was lying flat on his belly. Face downwards, he clamped his forehead onto the non-slip surface and desperately tried to dredge up a prayer from his youth. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’ It wasn’t entirely suitable, but it was all he could come up with, there had not been much praying in his short life.

He gave up on prayer and turned to his breath. In for four, out for four, in for five, out for five. He felt his skin creep back over his bones, this was good, his body was reintegrating. However, in coming back to himself he felt an urgent spasm in his guts, an insistent twisting and turning, a sensation he’d not had since he’d eaten that paella with the bad clams in it, and that had not ended well.

‘This cannot be happening. This cannot not be happening.’ He felt his lips scrape the roughness of the board as he spoke.

This was happening.

He could feel it. She could see it. He wanted to evaporate, disappear, teleport, maybe die.

She told him what she was going to do – ‘use your hands to work your way backwards and I’ll pull’ – and so he was prepared when he felt her hands grip each ankle.

If he ever made it down – and right now, he wasn’t sure that was a possibility – he vowed he would move house, apply for a new job, change his name, emigrate.