THE DEATH BUMP
By
Tim H. McEnroe
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PUBLISHED BY:
The Death Bump
Copyright © 2013 by Tim McEnroe
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THE DEATH BUMP
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Justin Luck edged the unforgiving cliff carefully as if it was the barrel of a loaded gun. Fear was beginning to take hold of him, turning his legs to jelly. Last time there wasn’t any fear, at least not at first. There was only the cold wind and his anxiousness to escape everything. Maybe this time was different because he was going to jump for different reasons, unselfish ones. At least that was the theory his mind was offering.
His eyes wandered beyond the rocky depths that waited for him and found a red car far in the distance, heading up the interstate. It looked like a small toy from this height: soundless and rolling along as if on a guided track. Trees thick with leaves lined the highway on both sides, robbing the miniature travelers of the terrific view of endless hills lush with summer green. It was beautiful. He felt the polar opposite of beautiful.
Sick amusement riddled him with the thought that if Rosie was right (and he had no doubt that she was right), this would be the second time he killed himself by jumping from Stinton’s Point. So much had changed in the eight months since his last visit to the cliff. Yet here he was, back at the beginning. He closed his eyes and brought his mind to last November, when he peeked over the lip for the first time and watched pebbles gracefully fall to the barren, ice-slicked rocks below.
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The pebbles seemed to take forever to reach the bottom, confirming to him that the height of the cliff was adequate. “This should do,” he muttered to himself. “This should do nicely.” He wasn’t scared to die. If anything he would welcome death with wide, outstretched arms as he followed the pebbles to his end. It was the pain of surviving the impact that he feared.
Pain of surviving, he thought to himself. The idea tickled his mood. Surviving was a perfect way to describe how he lived most of his sixteen years, and pain was a word that fit in there nicely too. There was the physical pain from the occasional school-yard beating, but that’s not what currently owned his mind. It was the emotional kind that held the reigns and brought him to the brink on this cold, mid-November afternoon.
The unrelenting feeling that he was alone, not loved, and not wanted plagued him everywhere and without fail. Friends, he had none; his family life, while not broken, may as well have been because that’s how his mom and dad made him feel on the inside, broken. Until this afternoon, he took solace in the fact that he was the only one who knew that.
His only outlet, the one thing capable of shouldering the burden was a red, tattered notebook. In it he released his fears, his aspirations, his poetry and songs. Every slur that pierced his heart had a place no matter if it was cast by a schoolmate or his parents. This particular morning, against his gut, he brought it to school to finish a poem. It was to be his latest masterpiece. To his horror, some bastard found the notebook and decided to decorate the hall lockers with its pages, leaving his innermost feelings dangling from pieces of tape for the entire world to see. But it didn’t really matter, not now. He’d never see those laughing faces again.
The cold wind whipped harshly against his raw cheeks, blowing his dirty-blond hair wildly about as if egging him to go on with it. He took the last half-step to the edge and squeezed his eyes shut. No need to see it, he told himself.
After slowly taking in and savoring what would be his last breath, Justin jumped as far as his legs would let him and allowed the open air to take hold. The dry, bitter taste of wind filled his mouth as he fell endlessly into the chasm.
His eyes shot open; adrenaline flooded his veins as sweat did through every pore. Justin looked down at his feet to find them still firmly rooted on the dusty brim.
“What the hell was that?” he said to the wind. He fumbled backwards and fell on his ass. The jump seemed so real! Whatever just happened, it was enough to pump the fear of death into him.
He sat there for what seemed like forever, shivering, hugging his knees and watching the sky turn from a bleak gray to a desolate black through tear-glazed eyes until his anger softened. It was then that he decided to head for home. Perhaps he may work up the nerve to try again tomorrow, perhaps not. Like everything else in his life, it didn’t really matter.
Twenty minutes later, he arrived at his house on Sultan Street, and he probably missed dinner by at least an hour. Justin made his way up the porch steps and slammed his skinny body into the front door. He didn’t want to bring attention to himself, but until his dad decided to get off his lazy ass to fix it, there was no other way to get the door to open.
Instantly he was smothered by the thick smell of bacon. His mother was to the right, huddled over the sink, finally working on a crowd of dirty dishes that had been sitting there for way too long. Her green eyes shot up immediately. They were set deep in her too-thin face and greeted him like daggers.
“It’s about time you got home,” she snarled, her drunken accent as thick as the smell of swine. “Where the hell have you been?” Her wiry, brown hair was tied back in the usual rushed bundle and bounced as she continued to scrub away at the week-old grime.
Justin didn’t bother to answer as he walked by in swift strides to the stairs and headed up.
“James! He’s home!” he heard her holler, “Come give ’em that kick in the ass you promised!”
He knew his dad wouldn’t stir. At this time of the night, he was no doubt already passed out on the couch, his belly brimming with dinner and cheap beer.
Justin lightly traversed the hallway past his sister’s room. Her door was cocked half-opened, and he could just see her brown curls peeking up from behind her bed on the far side of the room. He normally didn’t mind talking to Rosie, but tonight wasn’t a normal night. She was nearly three years younger than him. The age gap was too great for Justin to throw his problems across, and at the moment there was nothing else he could bring himself to speak of other than his problems.
Justin’s room immediately followed Rosie’s, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he reached his door and shut it behind him with an almost inaudible click. Not bothering to turn on his lights, he flopped onto his bed and let sleep come for him.
Screams awoke him in the night, immediately causing Justin to go rigid and alert. He didn’t know what was happening, but he could tell that the yelling was coming from Rosie. As his mind tried to sort out sleep from reality, the hallway light came alive, outlining his door in a rectangular glow. Footsteps stomped past his room towards Rosie’s. He knew they belonged to his mother because he heard her bitter voice soon after.
“Shut your damn mouth before you wake your father,” she growled as she went in, crafting her whispers so they came out as fake shouts. “If he hears you, then you’ll really be crying.”
Justin strained to listen to the rest of the short, mostly one-sided conversation, but it came to him in muffled undertones. As his mind shook off enough sleep to become logical, Rosie’s plight became obvious. She had had a nightmare, the poor kid. Instead of that witch cussing her out, she should have been hugging the fear from her.
Sure enough the hallway light flicked off after the cries subsided. Sleep wasn’t quick to reacquaint itself, but when it finally did, it held him deeply for the rest of the night.
The next morning, all Justin could think about was his red notebook as he readied himself for school. He could already hear the hecklers slinging their fresh ammunition into his ears.
Rosie was sitting at their small kitchen table eating breakfast, her back to Justin as he stepped off the stairs. Her pink sweatshirt was too bright for his fresh eyes, causing him to squint as he looked her over. She was wearing her hair tied back in a ponytail, a telltale sign that she overslept and hadn’t the time to fix it as she liked. It hung down barely long enough to kiss the bottom of her neck and was still damp and darkened from the shower.
“Where were you last night?” she asked as soon as he came into view.
He didn’t answer but went right to assembling his bowl of cereal. His mind was busy trying to grow the thick skin he’d certainly require for the day, and the last thing he needed was to be reminded of yesterday. As he crammed himself into the chair across from her and began to eat, Rosie cleared her throat and stared at him coolly.
“Well, are you gonna tell me or--”
“None of your business!” he barked through a mouthful of corn flakes. Justin was looking down at his bowl, but from his periphery he could see that he