poor ol' Kenny

He saw so many umbrellas when he fell from the sky that he thought the ground had grown a multitude of eyes. They opened wide. Dancing, water proof, multicolored vinyl beetles with pupils. The rush of air pulled back his lips into an ironic smile that he caught in the windows of the building he had just jumped off of.

Every night for two years straight he dreamt about this moment, and now it was finally happening.

Figures it would be raining, he thought.

A bird flew just underneath his torso, squawking madly and losing a feather. He tried to laugh but the rush of air had completely vacuumed out his voice.

Holy shit, he thought.

He suddenly realized how fast he was going. And that he had forgotten to go to confession. His Roman Catholic Grandmother had perpetually warned him of purgatory, and worse-- hell. He never completely bought it but went through with the motions just in case.

He couldn't remember if suicide was a mortal sin, but if it was, he wasted a lot of years reciting bullshit. And if God wasn't real, he wasted a lot of years reciting bullshit. And even if God was real, but he wasn't Catholic, then he wasted a lot of years reciting bullshit. The odds seemed against him either way.

Oops, he thought.

And then the standard pre-death memories started flashing before his eyes, too quickly to digest. Driveways and trains and tree houses and fences and then everything paused at seventeen years old. He was staring down, and he could still see the streets and umbrellas but he could also see threads on a quilt with ants crawling along the stitches.

"Baby let's get up there's gross bugs," his high school girlfriend had said.
"That's how picnics are supposed to be."
"I thought they were supposed to be romantic!"

The rest of his thirty-six years of life didn't have time to play.

And in that split second before hitting the concrete he changed his mind about wanting to die. But of course he did. Wouldn't you?