Path of the Vampire forum

If you listened to her mother, Jayce didn’t have a reason to be unhappy. She had a full ride to college back home, she was smart. She had been beautiful before all those godawful things you did to your skin, Jayce, how could you ruin that perfect skin that God gave you. And your hair, Jayce, why couldn’t you leave it as it was?

A disgusted sigh had her heaving herself out of her chair in the tiny little café in Podunk nowhere Canada. She knew Podunk, too. Louisiana was practically famous for all the tiny towns nestled out of the way in the backwoods. She had been trying to chase her mother’s voice out of her head with coffee and open mic and the warm darkness of the venue. It hadn’t worked, of course. Nothing had been working. Moving to another goddamn country and leaving everything behind hadn’t been working.

She’d had the intrusive thoughts for days now, even now that she was mostly settled in. She could step into traffic. Everything sharp was practically calling to her, high rises, too. Anything that her mind could seemingly put to harmful use. It was distracting and chaotic and above all else, it was working. Jayce had prided herself on rising above her suicidal teenage years with grit and determination and she was backsliding so fast she might as well have been standing on a muddy incline.

The door gave a muted jingle as she pushed out of it, bag slung carelessly over her shoulder. Pressure built up behind her eyes, making her head throb with every beat of her heart, the sound drowning out her own thoughts.

It would be so easy.

The building that loomed near her seemed abandoned, but it was high. High enough that the fall could conceivably do the deed. She dropped her bag carelessly in the alley. She wouldn’t need any of those things where she was going and they’d do more use in the pocket of a homeless person than in possession of anyone she knew.

It was more of a trial hoisting herself up the barricaded fire escape than it was accepting that she was actually doing this for real and not in some delusional half dream she’d cooked up while staring into her coffee. She scraped her knee on the rusted metal, a hiss leaving her lips as she climbed the rickety stairs all the way up to the roof.

There wasn’t much of a view as she crossed to the other side, standing on the edge and looking out amongst the buildings, the dreary skyline and the mottled pavement. She stopped to inhale.

One exhale turned into several, her body naturally resisting to what her brain had already come to terms with. Her arms dangled loosely by her sides and her eyes closed, feeling the light breeze against her face, ruffling her hair.

It was chillier in Canada than it was back home this time of year, especially at night, and she felt goose bumps prickle over the flesh she had exposed to the elements. She wondered, idly, at what her obituary would say, how her parents, her mother, would spin it to make her into some ridiculous martyr. The papers there would mourn the daughter taken before her time, leaving bereft parents and an emptier nest.

If she weren’t on the edge of the roof, she would have scowled at it all. The spectacle that would be made of her even after death. Instead, she just kept a serene expression. At least she wouldn’t have to see the crocodile tears and the words of sympathy from people she’d never met. As if they were the ones who had suffered his entire time. Not her.

One step was all it would take, just one. With her eyes closed, Jayce didn’t even realize there was someone watching her, waiting to see her reaction. Would it have changed anything? Probably not. They couldn’t save her now. Not as she gave herself over to gravity and began to fall.

She would look back and laugh about how wrong she had been.

The fall felt like she was flying.

Gravity did its trick, sending her plummeting towards the pavement below, dropping through the air like a stone. Her eyes stayed closed, even still, as she waited for the moment where she would hit the ground and everything would be over.

It never happened.

Oh sure, she stopped falling. She hit something that kept her suspended and knocked the wind out of her, probably fractured a few ribs from the sudden halt. That something, however, wasn’t the loving embrace of death, the finality of impact. She was still, annoyingly, alive with an ache in her chest and a harsh exhale.

She opened her eyes, intent on finding out what exactly had kept her from completing what she had started, only to stop. It looked like an angel had caught her. Certainly no normal being could have stayed standing as all of her dead weight came to a screeching halt in her arms. She floundered, mouth opening and closing for a moment in her surprise, before a sound came out.

“What the ****?”

Not her finest, most eloquent, moment, but she would have to be excused because this was ridiculous. Had she actually died? Jayce craned her neck to look for a bloody smear, for her body, and found nothing but another woman holding a coffee cup. If this was heaven, or hell even, it was nothing like she’d heard. For one, she was still in Harper Rock. For two, it hurt. It wasn’t supposed to hurt. She really had fractured something. Awesome.

She hoped this woman had a good explanation for charging in to save the day of someone who had really not wanted to be saved.

“I jumped.”

The correction was automatic, like a defensive stance on a judgment she didn’t even hear from the woman. And really, she’d stepped off, not quite fallen or jumped, but the point was the same. If someone jumps, it’s on purpose. If they fall, it’s an accident. This had definitely been on purpose.

Jayce fought the urge to swat at the checking hands; if she died from an injury she’d still be dead. And what did the woman care, anyway, beyond being someone with a weird Good Samaritan complex? How had she caught her without falling to the ground herself? Her arms weren’t even bruised, let alone broken. What was going on?

Her brain whirled with questions and she dusted herself off, twisting to and fro to see if she’d hurt herself anywhere else but her knee from the fire escape. She even managed to spot her bag, taking a step towards it before pain lanced into her chest.

She staggered, hand flying to the side of her ribcage where the point of origin was. She couldn’t breathe and it hurt so much. In an instant, she was on her knees, gasping, wheezing, and blood dribbling from her lips. Her case of fractured ribs was obviously more serious than she had anticipated.

“Help.” Jayce managed to gasp out. Where her dormant will to live had come from, she didn’t know, but she didn’t want to die anymore. Not like this. Not on terms that weren’t her own. “I can’t…”