Gone Wired

SEARS TOWER, CHICAGO, 3:23 PM OCTOBER 6

His head hit the pavement and kept going. It did not bounce off, with the sound of much like the crack of a rifle that a skull hitting concrete should have made. The downward motion put him flat on his stomach, legs and arms splayed out. He was a fallen star. A satellite that plummeted from its orbit millions of miles in the sky, transmissions lost in the ether, no longer capable of communication. Broken and useless. He fell like he was a sick bird that had just died flying south for the winter, looking for a way out of the bitter numb cold of Chicago. Except he had been way past the point of escape. His fall was unceremonious, a calculated end to his life that was supposed to be both brief and painless. He may have miscalculated the painless part. When his head hit the pavement and kept going, white fragments of bone that made up his skull scattered like broken glass. The exposed wrinkles on the surface of his brain gave it the appearance of a rotted grapefruit. The juicy ball plopped against the shiny black pavement with a wet sound. It exploded outward, the man’s body a frightened squid that had shot out its ink. His eyes were miniature explosions, leaving optical nerves to dangle like severed power cables. You get the point. His head hit the pavement and kept going.

3629 W.DELTA STREET, DES MOINES, 4:08 PM OCTOBER 6     

His parents might have thought he was jacking off if there hadn’t been the long vertical scabs on his white fleshy wrists. They found him in his bedroom closet, belt looped around his neck, hung from the metal bar next to his dress shirt and the black pair of slacks they’d bought him for the junior year prom. They only found the scars after they’d taken his body down and put it in bed. Track marks of the habitual razor blade incisions that he’d made each day after shaving, almost as afterthoughts. His father covered his body with a white sheet. He was a pudgy teenage ghost who’d left behind severe acute depression and a completely average suburban middle-class life. Both parents were secretly relieved that he’d asphyxiated himself in the end. A bathroom full of blood would have been much messier. Neither mom nor dad said anything about this, although they both thought it.

NORTH RIM GRAND CANYON, 5:38 PM OCTOBER 6

He drove his jeep south, toward the lip of the canyon. The sun was an orange ball of fire in the sky to his right. It had begun to fade rapidly with the death of another Arizona day. The jeep shot up plumes of exhaust that mixed with brown dirt kicked up by the tires. He had his leather jacket buttoned up against the chill of the wind that he’d brought upon himself as he picked the speed up to 90 miles per hour. It was as fast as he could get the old vehicle to go and still maintain control. He breathed in the night air. Oxygen mixed with carcinogens from the cigarette he had between his fingers. He puffed out three perfect rings and threw the butt out the open top. The radio was cranked as loud as it could go, and the noise would have been deafening had he not been going so fast. The bone saw vocals and the slicing guitar riffs of Metallica were carried on soundwaves out of the speakers, dragged by the wind toward the rear of the vehicle and out into the vast expanse of nothingness that comprised the desert from where he’d come. He pressed the petal down farther with his right foot and the car pushed one hundred miles per hour. Its frame began to shake. He thought he could see the rim straight ahead. The pink rock and scarce greenery dropped off suddenly and there was only air. Only a little longer. The wind caught his long brown hair and pushed it back. It was a lion’s mane and he was a beast, strong and powerful and running full throttle through the jungle to catch his prey. The rim was closer. Twenty feet now, ten. Five. The front tires of the jeep were off of the ground, over the edge of the cliff. They spun forward on nothing, trying to find purchase in nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. His back wheel hit a rock and the chassis turned in a half circle. The vehicle was now completely airborne, being carried downward toward the sloped rocky surface of the side of the canyon wall. He stared straight ahead at the sun and as it slipped below the horizon toward its death, he went with it.