Falling

Falling

Jackson was dead.

His death was rather fantastic, he liked to think. He was a hot air balloonist, forty-four years old, when a rope snapped. The basket lurched, ready to flip over, but Jackson held on, leaning, balancing, and he was safe. However the balloon was no longer being fed by the burner, and without hot air it sunk, and once it had sunken far enough it caught a vicious draft. Jackson was unprepared for the acceleration. He lost balance, the basket flipped, and he plummeted, down, down, down…

And as far as he knew he was still falling. He doesn’t remember ever stopping.

Instead of the pain of feeling his bones shatter, his organs flatten themselves against his rib cage, brain against his skull, his insides fill with stray blood, then with salty water as he bloated and sunk, instead he felt the pain of drawing his first breath. The pain of opening new eyes to a world of blinding light. The pain of cold air on his tender skin, and then… the comfort of loving arms.

At first Jackson panicked. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t talk. There was so much pain, so much confusion, where was he, who was he, who were these people, was this heaven, how could he think, how could he remember, what happened, what happened, I fell, I fell. I fell.

I am dead.

But he was confused. Because he was not dead. He could feel, see, touch, taste, and smell. He was born again. He had been given a second chance…

“Kevin, my sweet baby Kevin,” said the sweaty, teary woman that held him.

I am Kevin now? But I am not Kevin. When I tell my legs to move, Kevin’s legs do not move. Is it because I am an infant?
But slowly, with every day he lived in the body of Kevin, using his eyes and ears to live again, he realized more and more that he was not Kevin. He had no control over how Kevin lived. Jackson was merely an observer, experiencing the ultimate show, the cinema of life, complete in every sense, to the highest detail.

As an infant Jackson could feel what Kevin felt. He knew exactly what the poor boy wanted every time he cried. I am hungry! Jackson wanted to scream, but Kevin only wailed and wailed while his mother picked him up, patted his back, made funny faces, checked his diaper, tickled him, rattled things in his face, until finally, finally she would make him a bottle. It was excruciating, and at times mind numbingly dull.

While Kevin forced all of Jackson’s physical senses to admire wooden blocks and suck on plastic objects, he had no place to go but inside his own mind. Jackson retreated, losing himself in thoughts of life and death, what it meant to be where he was. Was there a soul trapped behind everyone’s eyes? Was there one trapped inside of him throughout his life? And the most important question – what happens to him when Kevin dies? What comes next?

Whenever Kevin looked a person in the face, Jackson would look deep into the person’s eyes. Who was in there? Were they looking for me in here? Do I know them? Jackson was lonely, and by the time Kevin was seven-going-on-eight that loneliness almost destroyed him.

Jackson began to forget who he was. Remembering himself, his inability to change the world around him, his death… it was painful. Much better was to forget it all, and pretend that he was Kevin. When he forgot himself and lived in Kevin’s world, when Jackson decided not to be Jackson for the day, it almost felt like he was truly alive again. It was so wonderful. So sensational and fulfilling. Kevin’s family was his family. Kevin’s friends were his friends. Jackson became addicted to being Kevin. For a month, Jackson forgot his name. He soaked up every detail of the boy’s life, more than the boy did himself.
He even heard this sentence, and it didn’t faze him a bit:

“Hey Kevin! Guess what? All three of us will be going on a hot-air balloon ride! Won’t that be fantastic?”

Not until the three were in the basket, the balloon was full, and it began to lift those first few feet from the ground… Jackson began to feel very scared. But Kevin wasn’t scared. And that scared him even more, because he was Kevin, he couldn’t not be Kevin, he was Kevin. But the balloon drew higher and higher. Higher and higher. That floating feeling… a breeze created that lovely, dreadful swinging sensation… Kevin giggled… Jackson screamed in silence. In a horrible flash his entire life, and that feeling of falling, forever falling, came back. He tried with all his might to pull Kevin back to the center of the basket, to hug his mother’s leg like it was the pillar of the Earth – but to no avail.

Kevin couldn’t help but to lean over the edge and look down, down, down… If only Kevin could hear the mindless screaming that echoed inside of him…

I am falling, falling, falling…

The wind in my ears is so loud I cannot hear my screams. I can feel Ellie’s arms wrapped around me, her smell like apples. The dog is barking. It won’t stop. Why won’t it stop! I make no attempt to hold myself still. I am falling. I tumble through the air like am made of rubber and fluff. If someone were watching they would think I was fake. But I am not fake. I can see the ocean. I can see the balloon. I can see the ocean. I can see the balloon. I must close my eyes because they are crying in the wind. Behind my eyelids I am not falling. I am dreaming. I am dreaming that I am asleep.

But I never stop falling.

“Woa,” said Kevin, fascinated that the farmland was now a checkerboard painted with brush strokes of white clouds.

“Sit back down Kevin, don’t want you to fall out now,” said his dad.

Once they had safely landed and were driving home through the countryside, Jackson found his consciousness emerging from seclusion. He came to terms with who he was, with what had happened. He never forgot his name again.

Kevin grew old, and Jackson grew wise. The only thing he knew for sure was that his fate was tied to Kevin’s, thus he cared deeply for the choices Kevin made.

Kevin would climb trees, and Jackson would join him telling him “No! It’s not safe! The branch is flimsy, the fall is too high!” And sometimes Kevin would fall. Sometimes he would be perfectly fine. Kevin would make friends with people that Jackson thought he surely should not be friends with. Kevin wouldn’t listen to his parents when Jackson was certain their advice was sound.

But, Jackson discovered, as often as his advice was right, his advice was wrong as well. The world never stopped, it rolled on, and on. From his vantage point, Jackson saw life from a perspective that he had missed during his mortality. He saw that it truly was a stream. When Jackson had no decisions to make himself, to focus on, he realized how unimportant the decision itself was. Life happened. Death happened.

Jackson knew that he was still falling. No matter how much he flapped his arms, or what position he took to manipulate his aerodynamics, he was still going to the same place and nothing could stop that. He saw Kevin, how important everything was to him. How at times he was so careful, and at times so reckless. How when his dog Elmo died he cried like it was the end of the world, or when the girl he liked told him he was gross; these things were so important.

But Jackson knew that Kevin was falling too. He just couldn’t see it yet. He was grabbing on to dreams. But dreams can’t hold you. They are as helpful as the misty clouds. Jackson saw the clouds beneath him. They appeared to be the perfect place to land, soft and fluffy as whipped cream. But as quickly as they came, they disappeared. And he was still falling.
When Kevin found the first girl that loved him, they held each other in their arms. Kevin experienced so much happiness that it was as if he was floating. The girl, with her brown hair against his cheek, strands tickling his nose, had given him wings. He thinks, Jackson thought, that she has stopped his fall. And as one boy was elated by the warmth of another human needing him as he needed her, the man inside him cried. He cried for the love that he once had himself. He cried for the love that he had lost. He cried in happiness for Kevin, and he cried in sadness for what Kevin did not know.

Soon Kevin was in college. Jackson was happy for him as well as himself. He learned what Kevin learned, and he thought, maybe, just maybe, he would learn enough by living two lives that he could have some guess as to what came in the third. He prayed for Kevin to study religion, philosophy, or psychology, but the boy instead chose business, dreams of family and wealth still in his grasp.

He graduated. Made money. Made friends. Friends died. His father died. Married once. Married Twice. Bought a house, a second. Bought a car, sold it, bought another, bought two. Got a dog, named him Elmo after the one he had lost. Kevin was happy. But at times he was sad. And as time passed and doctors visited, Kevin found himself harder and harder to pull out of bed.

Every time the man in the white coat said that word, Kevin’s right finger twitched, and Jackson recoiled in his mind.

Cancer.

But for every bit of fear that Jackson had, he had an equal amount of curiosity. He had died once, and he knew that dying was not so much about yourself dying, but that everything you know dies around you, and you are left alone. This time he would lose Kevin, and he would lose Kevin’s life, but as much as he loved Kevin the hardest blow had already been struck. He had lost his own family. His own home. His own body. Now he feared once again for himself. He cared for the answer to the question, will I ever care again?

And as Kevin’s eyelids drew heavy, his breathing shallow; as old friends and ex-wives held his hands and brushed the hair back from his forehead, Kevin and Jackson whispered the same thing, at the same time…

“I am falling.”

I am falling.

Falling, falling, forever falling.