Jumping at the End of the World

The heavy crunch of a foot crushing the forest undergrowth was all she heard. Besides, of course, the rapid thudding of her own heart beneath her ribcage and the rapid breaths that fogged the air around her. It was dusk. Clouds stripped the light from the sky above the skeletal forest canopy and empty branches nicked her thin cheeks even as she tried to dodge them. How long had she been running?

She did not know. The only thing she knew was that it was essential she didn’t stop. They were behind her. She could almost feel their hot, rank breath, the venomous wet saliva dripping from their fangs, and the tense sinew that held their muscles taught as they chased her. How many were there?

She did not know. A clearing… Yes, a way out of the forest was near. She could sense it in the way the trees were thinning. A large, gnarled root almost tripped her. She gasped as it twisted her ankle, but there was no time for pain. Stumbling into a tree from which she quickly pushed away and into another sprint, feeling the rough bark beneath her calloused fingers for just one moment.

The clearing. The clearing. It was so close. There, she might be able to outpace them. But it was growing dark; did they see better at night? There seemed to be more of them than before. She thought she even smelled their fetid fur and heard their growling low and deep in her ears, sending prickles of fear up her spine. They were close.

Suddenly, she saw a window of gray light through the trees, larger than before. Changing her path slightly and jumping quickly over a wet, fallen log, she finally burst through into the clearing and screamed, screeching to a halt and whirling her arms to keep her balance.

Before her now was a cliff, a sheer drop. In her haste, she’d nearly fallen over the edge and indeed her feet had thrown a few rocks into the depths. Her eyes had locked on the bottom, at least two hundred feet below, where the sea churned violently, thick saline water spraying over sharp rocks and crashing heavily against the cliffside as though there was an ancient and escalating war between the ocean and the land.

Her breath caught in her throat. Where was she to run now? Perhaps she could run alongside the cliff and outflank them and–

“Do not worry,” said a sudden voice from her right. As she turned quickly the voice added, “And don’t look back.”

Standing to her right on the edge of the cliff was a startling figure. She blinked a few times to ensure her eyes weren’t deceiving her, for the person that stood precariously close to the edge like her… was her. She recognized the slim cheeks, the pale skin, the brown hair and hazel eyes… She had only ever seen this person in pictures, really. She noticed the mole on her left arm, for this version of her wore a black halter neck tank top and loose jeans. The tattoos were the same; a flowering vine wrapping around her right arm while a collection of fruits bloomed on her left shoulder.

“They–” she began.

“Cannot hurt you now,” said the figure firmly. “I can see to that for a little.”

Her breathing eased a little bit. Somehow, this figure’s words flowed into her mind as calmly as cool water in a summer stream. She asked, “What’s your name?”

“What’s your name?”

“Evangeline.”

The figure smiled. “I know. It’s mine, too. Yet for the purpose of this conversation, you can call me Angel.”

“I-Is that what you are?”

Angel continued to beam. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose.”

Evangeline felt her heart rate quicken again. “Listen, I’m being chased, I-I need your help! How do I–I mean, how do I get out of here? D’you think I can run on the side of the cliff, is there… is there an easier way down, maybe? Or a way back into the forest?”

Angel took a couple steps towards her earthly doppelganger. Evangeline noticed that her feet weren’t touching the ground. She floated just on just about an inch of air. Her smile had faded into furrowed brows and a slightly tilted head. “Hm. That’s an interesting question. Where do you think you are, right now? Don’t look back, now!” she added in a warning voice.

Evangeline looked ahead and surveyed the horizon. Besides the foreboding blue of the sea and the gray sky, a sky which had frozen mid-dusk, it seemed, there were no other features. Not a single outcropping of rocks further than about fifty feet from the cliff. Not a single island or a lighthouse… or even a little buoy bobbing in the threatening water.

“I… I don’t know,” said Evangeline quietly.

Angel replied, “You’re at the end of the world, my dear heart.”

“The what?” she turned back to her ethereal counterpart in shock.

“The end of the world,” repeated Angel with a smile on her face. “You ran, and you ran, and you ran… look at you! Your feet are bleeding and bruised, your face has cuts in it… You’ve all but wasted away, you’ve been running so long!” Angel’s face grew suddenly somber; every emotion on it was deeply felt and conveyed with complete sincerity. “Well, you ran far enough that there’s nowhere else to run! This is the end of the world.”

“Where are those things I was running from?” asked Evangeline, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.

“Those things?” Angel arched an eyebrow. “They’re here. They’ll be here soon, at least. I can’t keep them at bay forever. I’ve just created some distance, that’s all; some time for us to talk.”

“Well that’s not good!” cried Evangeline. “I’ve gotta… I can’t let them–hey!” she exclaimed, turning fierce, commanding eyes to Angel, who was staring off into the distance, “Tell me what to do now! Where do I go?”

Angel laughed. “You’re not gonna like the answer, but I have one.”

She could almost feel the thumping of their large, clawed paws on the hard dirt of the clearing behind her. Sweat began to form in pinpricks on her armpits. She desperately asked, “What’s the answer?”

“Jump.”

“Jump?!” cried Evangeline incredulously. “Are you crazy, I’ll die!”

Angel tilted her head again, now just a few paces from her subject. “You don’t trust me?”

“How can I trust you, I just met you!” bawled Evangeline. “Great, just… just great! I’m gonna die, I can’t–”

“Calm yourself,” commanded Angel suddenly and in a voice Evangeline herself did not know was capable from her mouth.

“Is this real?” asked Evangeline in a smaller voice.

“What does that mean?” Angel replied, her face blank. “Are you wondering, perhaps, if this is all in your mind? No… this is about as real as it gets.”

“I don’t wanna die,” whimpered Evangeline.

“You keep using that word: die, as though that’s the only option here,” said Angel. “Honestly, it’s a little annoying.”

Evangeline looked at her menacingly. “I’m sorry that the prospect of jumping off of a two hundred foot cliff and getting my head smashed against the rocks doesn’t fill me with joy, Angel.”

“Who said that’s what was going to happen?” asked Angel with a mocking smirk. “I told you to jump. Me. An Angel. An Angel in the form of you. Do you think I’d just let you die like that?” She let out a chortle. “I mean, if I was going to lead you to your own death, you don’t think I’d have funnier ways to do it?”

“Well… But how the hell–”

“Hey, don’t use that word now,” warned Angel. “It’s a bit of a sensitive subject for us.”

Evangeline couldn’t believe her ears. “Okay. So how the heck am I supposed to survive a fall from this height? Like the height of the water alone should be enough to kill me, right?”

“You still don’t trust me, huh?”

“And then,” persevered Evangeline, “there’s those things chasing me. God–oh, sorry, another sensitive subject?”

Angel shrugged. “Eh, not really. Why would you think so?”

“They say don’t take the Lord’s name… Y’know what, why am I wasting my breath?” she ran a hand through her coarse hair, tangled and frizzy from her long run. “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, Jesus Christ I’m gonna die!”

“You’re spiralling,” said Angel frankly, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah! Yeah, I’m spiraling! Y’know why? Because either I jump off the cliff and die from the water or… or I get caught by those… those monsters chasing me!”

“Hm.”

Evangeline was on a roll, feeling sweat trickle down her back and her face again, mingled with tears on the latter, tears that stung the cuts on her cheeks and falling helplessly into the apathetic waves. The wind started picking up around her. “And even if I do jump, and somehow, somehow survive, what then? What, do I just float around there and die of hypothermia? Do I try to cling onto a little rock and just die of starvation and thirst?”

“What if you don’t?” asked Angel quietly. When Evangeline did not answer, her chest rising and falling as she wiped tears from angry eyes and glared at her subject, Angel continued, “What if you don’t die? What if you hit that water and grow gills? What if you hit that water and fly… soar so high over the clouds that you get to see that Kingdom of God that everyone talks about seeing only after they die, but you get to feel it now? Maybe you’ll hit the water and feel such overwhelming love that it makes all the soreness in your legs, the heaviness of your arms worth it in a spectacular way.”

“I thought you said this was real,” said Evangeline gruffly. “What you said doesn’t make any sense. People don’t just grow gills, they don’t just fly–”

“Maybe most don’t because they don’t get this chance,” said Angel, her eyes shining. “Most people never realize they’re running. They never even get to a point where they can test themselves like this.” Angel paused and met her doppelganger’s eyes. “I’m proud of you, Evangeline. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Thanks,” came the sheepish reply. Evangeline took another look over the edge, at the churning, menacing waves below. They seemed to be inviting her to her death. She looked to the sky, where she expected to see a bird, perhaps even a drone that could capture her demise and post it online with a caption like: Idiot girl trusts random stranger and jumps to her death (real)! There was nothing up there besides thick, wooly clouds gathering darkness on their bottoms as night slowly fell.

She heard the wind whistle against the rock, sending her hair aflutter. Angel’s hair was unbothered, her presence warm and comforting. Angel smirked again and said, “I know what you’re thinking, and no, you can’t just stay here forever, Evangeline.”

“What if they follow me down there?” asked Evangeline in a small voice. Her mind threw her back to her childhood, when she’d been scared to come down from a tree she’d climbed. In a similarly small voice she’d cried to her mom about how far the distance to her arms seemed.

“But you made it down from that tree, didn’t you?” asked Angel.

Evangeline turned sharply. “Can you–”

“Read your thoughts? Of course. Why wouldn’t I be able to?” Angel smiled. “How’d you make it down from that tree?”

“I-Well, it took a lot of convincing and crying,” she said with a short laugh, “but I… I sorta hung down from the branch and got as low as I could, and I tried to stay there for a bit and just… I don’t know, honestly; I don’t know what I was trying to do. But eventually I just trusted my mom to catch me and she did.”

“Oh, so you’ll trust your mom but not me?” said Angel. Seeing the helpless look on Evangeline’s face, Angel added, “I’m sorry, bad timing. Listen, they are gonna follow you everywhere. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that, but I think you already knew it, didn’t you?”

She gave her a slow, grim nod, fresh tears falling down her face. “So I’m just gonna run from them forever? Even… Even in the water I’ll be swimming away from them!”

Angel shook her head. “That’s where you’re wrong, my dear heart. What do you think they are?” Evangeline couldn’t answer that question, so Angel continued, “Well, maybe that’s for later. For now, I can tell you that they’re a part of you. So wherever you go, they will follow. Whether or not you run, that’s up to you.”

“So I’m doomed? Is that what you’re telling me?” sobbed Evangeline. She could definitely feel them behind her now, almost close enough to smell again.

Angel clucked her tongue. “Boy, you are in a state, aren’t you? Did I ever say that you were doomed? Huh?”

Evangeline shook her head. “I-I guess not.”

“Right, because who knows! Maybe these things you’ve been running from aren’t so bad. Maybe they are what will give you the wings when you hit the water. Maybe they like the water. Maybe you can harness them and use them to drive you to feel that boundless love, to open your heart and understand that if this is the only life you’re given, it’s pointless to live it running!”

“You promise they won’t eat me?” asked Evangeline, her red, sore eyes looking at Angel in fear and anguish.

“I can promise you they will only eat you if you allow it,” said Angel in a powerful voice.

Evangeline couldn’t get the image of her shattered corpse out of her mind, the rocks stained blood red but only for a moment as more ocean water raced to furiously expunge it. “I’m scared, Angel.”

“It’s scary,” she confirmed with a candid, sober nod. “I wish I could take that fear from you. But you have to trust me. You have to trust yourself. You can’t let them push you. You must do this, or else you will fall and die. It has to be voluntary.”

She knew that in her heart, but Evangeline still looked around wildly, though not behind her as Angel had instructed, for a way out. Maybe there was a staircase, a place where the water was at least calmer–

“Trust me,” repeated Angel. “Trust yourself. In order to receive that boundless love, you must also realize that the power to give it is within you. The power to take the leap, the power to fly and explore underwater cities more dazzling than any that exist on land… all of it is within you. You just have to trust yourself.”

“That’s a hell of a risk,” said Evangeline. Nope, nowhere was there a single place on the cliffside that looked any different than where she was. She added with a wry smile, wiping away some of the tears, “I’m not exactly known for making great decisions.”

“And yet you’re throwing away an opportunity at absolution,” said Angel. “Do you know that life on earth began in the water? I’m sure you do, seeing as you’re so intelligent. Water… seawater, precisely, offers humans absolution. Love shows you the twisted journey of your life and impresses upon you that it was worth it, that the lessons you took from your past have built you into someone brave, someone beautiful, someone who can learn and grow and care for new people. I know every detail of your past, dear heart, and I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. I know, funnily enough, what it is to hurt people. I know the guilt, the pain, the trauma of it. I know that sometimes it feels as though you’ll never be enough. Sometimes, I know, it feels like all you can do is run, because that’s all you’ve ever done. Yet somehow, some way, you’ve come before me today. Do you know what that means?”

Evangeline was crying in earnest now, thinking about the great journey of her life. She had never heard it described like this before. She shook her head and Angel continued, “It means you realized you were running. It means you gave yourself the opportunity to use it to become greater rather then letting it slowly waste you away in the forests and fens of your mind.”

A truth hit Evangeline then, something which she couldn’t put into words. She knew only that there was one choice. Then why was it so hard to put a foot forward and jump? Why couldn’t she just let go?

They were close now, really close. Their demonic barking and growling was deafening. Evangeline took a look at the endless ocean in front of her and felt truth in heart. Fear still percolated in her blood, and she closed her eyes, feeling the swipe of a paw rising up behind her. In her mind, or perhaps from her very own lips, Angel said, “Trust me. Trust yourself.”

Evangeline jumped. And she smiled, feeling the warmth of an everlasting sunrise on her face as she soared.