The young man woke up without feeling. That is to say he woke up not knowing how to feel. He didn’t feel tired, didn’t feel refreshed, didn’t feel well rested, and didn’t feel like he could even process having just woken up. Something was off about this morning. The sun was out, but he couldn’t put words to the bright sphere in the distance that had opened his eyes moments ago. There were white things littered in the other blue thing that he strangely recollected, but after a couple moments of staring dumbfounded out of what he could have sworn was called a window, he merely shrugged his shoulders and shuffled his way out of his bedroom door. The hallways that he walked through every day made him feel claustrophobic. He had a tendency to lean as he walked, so there were times where his head scratched the surface of the wall, leading his imbalanced ways to have damaging consequences. It wasn’t but a couple of paces before his head started drooping over and scraping the white plaster. This continued until he made it to the living room, a mess of a space where every piece of furniture had been replaced with feathers. There would be nowhere to sit anymore, nowhere to watch TV, nowhere for guests to sleep. There were just feathers. The man heard a growl coming from somewhere and knowing that there was no cat or dog living in the house he assumed it was coming from his stomach. In the past, he treated these growls with trips to the bathroom in an attempt to “get the growl out”, but to no avail. The growl usually worsened and frequently led to hour long stares in the mirror to see his skin begin to yellow. Jaundice came and went with the little man. It would arrive fairly quickly and when the man’s concentration snapped he would retreat back to the bedroom and sleep for 120 hours straight, go back to the mirror and see that the jaundice had disappeared. On other days when the growls alluded him, he’d head towards the refrigerator and open it up to see what new things it might hold. Somehow it was always fully stocked. He didn’t know how, why, or who was providing the products inside, but whoever it was they certainly had an eclectic taste. Inside the fridge there were three shelves and two on the side for condiments. The top shelf was usually filled with fresh food; frog legs, duck feet, horse hooves, and rabbit intestines. The young man usually looked there first. The second shelf had the slightly less appetizing; rat tails, roach antennas, and pigeon beaks. And the dreaded third shelf, the bottom of the bottom; white bread, cheddar cheese, and ham. The man always thought the condiments were what made everything edible. Barbecue sauce, fish sauce, sriracha, and tomato sauce. Those were the go-tos. If he was in a basic mood he’d resort to peanut butter, jelly, or mayonnaise. Today, he looked in the fridge and felt nothing. Despite being filled to the brim, nothing looked appetizing, so he casually shut the refrigerator door and processed what to do next. The living room window was open. About half way. He always wondered what it would feel like. The young man started to move a couple steps toward the window, picked up the pace, and jumped through it at full force.
Half expecting a fire escape below him and half expecting to be stopped at impact, the young man was fully relieved when he saw that nothing would be stopping him below. He resided on the sixth floor, so there was quite a ways to fall, but he landed with a bone-cracking thud after a couple seconds. If he had another opportunity to try he would have done a cannonball. It took the man a second to move. Despite not having any feeling he didn’t have the option to rise suddenly to his feet due to a cracked tailbone, impaled shoulder blade, and split cranium. It took him about ten minutes to move one of his toes a la Beatrix Kiddo. He regained control of his feet soon after and with a busted right arm braced himself to a standing position. There was a small crowd that had gathered around him with their mouths agape, but that’s about all they had on their faces. They had X’s for eyes, no hair, no ears and swayed like their bodies would drift away from a small breeze. Cars stuttered by. The young man, in an attempt to dodge his newfound attention, limped slowly into the street where he was smacked immediately by Volkswagen Beetle. The crowd that had gathered after he fell out of his apartment took turns punching each other and shouting, “Slug Bug Yellow! Slug Bug Yellow!” The young man once again opened his eyes moments after his collision with the Slug Bug and stared above at the blue thing he noticed from his bedroom window. Breathing took a little more effort. There wasn’t too much air to go around it seemed like. His torso had almost been completely severed and his spine was now protruding from his back. No matter, though. As if he was determined to continue moving forward, the young man once again made it to his feet, his sway and lean now at close to a 20 degree angle. Sweat beads formed on his brow and turned a salty red mixed from all the blood that had poured through his body in the past fifteen minutes. His scraped head. His torso. His entire body was one big shamble. He attempted to straighten up and heard a loud crack and faltered back down in his new stance. If he could feel anything maybe he’d feel invincible. His body wouldn’t allow him to stay down, his brain led the way with a fierce determination, and no matter how much he bled it seemed like there was always enough blood to go around.
The young man didn’t know where he wanted to go. He found himself walking aimlessly, something else inside of him leading the way. Despite attracting more faceless bystanders during his walk, he persisted forward reaching the Washington Bridge after about 45 minutes. He could just barely see over the edge of the walkway, but a large mass of water was in plain view. On the top of the green water he could make out the words “Harlem River,” so he figured that’s what the stuff below him must be. He always wanted to jump. Always wanted to let the water take him wherever it wanted to go. Two women to his left—whom he had noticed had all of their facial features, but no abdomen, just heads and lower body—sensed that he wanted to be lifted to the ledge, so with their teeth they picked him up from the back of his shirt like lions do their cubs and helped him get to the top. Due to his odd angle, the man barely had time to revel in his next jump because the momentum of his lean carried him forward, off from the bridge and into a second free-fall into the “Harlem River.” While his lean didn’t allow him to anticipate the jump, it did make up for it because it gave him a natural spin. The man found himself somersaulting forward and forward and spinning like an olympic diver, so much so that even though he belly flopped, he still would have been given a 8.2 for setting the world record in flips before a “dive.”
Now, after all this time, the young man finally felt something. The force of the fall and the impact with the water resulted in a straightened back and a revived consciousness. However, there was a trade-off. Even though he had regained sensations in his body, he was now fully paralyzed. The water flipped him on his back and the young man started his drift south down the river. The sky, (that’s what it was called!) above him clear as day. The boats floating alongside him. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Frown or smile.
The two woman at the top of the bridge followed the man with their eyes until he disappeared from view.