"Jumper"
I remember seeing her light green dress flutter as the wind took hold of it, as gravity began to fight to pull her down, and wondering if I had started my dryer that morning. It was a ridiculous thought to have at that moment, and I silently cursed myself later for even thinking it, but it passed through my head before I got a chance to stop it. That light green dress, a cotton one meant to wear on such a nice day, was the last bit of beauty I saw in this absolute stranger.
I had walked behind her ever since she had appeared from the library. I tried to remain polite but I couldn’t stop myself from noticing how the dress clung to her, how it moved softly when she took a step. It ran down to her ankles, and the material was thin. There was a small floral pattern, but only the barest amounts. It was a simple dress, but it looked perfect on her. I never even got the chance to see her face; I only admired her from behind, a few feet away. Her hair was a dark red, long and freely flowing down her back. There were no bands or hair clips pinning it up in odd, unnatural ways. Her skin, what I could see on her arms and bits of her neck when her hair was pushed aside, was pale, ivory, as if the sun had never kissed it before. She looked, from behind, to be a gorgeous woman in her mid-20s, not a care in the world. She seemed confident, just by her gait, her head held up and her back straight. Observations give no insight to what is going on inside the mind, however.
We both began the walk across the bridge just a few seconds after one another, myself still keeping a good few feet behind her. I wanted her to continue on not noticing me. If she saw me, she’d instantly change her pace, move a little faster, and the confidence, the beauty about her, would be gone. Many women did not feel comfortable when a man of any size or age was around them, even if it were broad daylight. Would I have done anything if she were to turn to me, to say something? Probably not. I wasn’t interested much in starting a conversation; I simply wanted to continue on observing this bit of beauty that had managed to find herself just in front of me. The bridge was high over the freeway. Traffic was a bit heavy, with cars speeding by below us well over the 60 mile per hour speed limit. No one in the city tended to pay much heed to the signs anymore; they were there mostly as a suggestion.
I observed her curves, the flutter of that damned dress as it sashayed around her ankles with each step, and in an instant it seemed, she was gone. I caught just the briefest glimpse of her grabbing the railing on the bridge, another moment where gravity didn’t quite take hold, where she was suspended in midair, and then she was gone. The air pushed against her dress, gravity pulled her down to the cars below, and I thought briefly of my own laundry.
It only took a second for her body to make impact, for the cement and metal to seal her fate. I watched, unable to tear my eyes away, even as it began to register blood. I had never been partial to grisly scenes, always turning away from movies, but this, a real life horror-show, had my eyes stuck. I took in every detail as if in fascination, but instead it was trance. I couldn’t break it. I couldn’t simply decide I was finished looking. I was trapped on the bridge, one had holding on to the railing, my neck slightly craned to look down. I felt as if I would never step off of the bridge again, that I would always be there, watching the scene below me.
A car hit her body, causing it to careen off to the right and into another car, a slightly bigger one. They were the first two cars in what would be a painful pile-up. I saw car after car either hit the one before it or slam to a halt. I didn’t move my hand, which was gripping the railing so tight that I my knuckles were a bright white and my fingers ached. My other hand dangled uselessly at my side. I didn’t notice the ache in my hand as I watched the wreckage, the blood, the screeching of tires and the horrible noise that came when one car hit another, the screaming and yelling of people taken off guard by a body falling from the skies in front of them. These are all noises that will continually pervade my sleep; noises that will make me toss and turn at night until I eventually wake up drenched in a cold sweat, near tears.
Finally I found I could pull myself away. Slowly I unwrapped my hand from the railing, bringing to it a fresh gale of pain, but I still barely noticed. Sirens were approaching, both below me and on to the bridge. The police. They knew I had seen it, they wanted to question me, and perhaps they wanted to make an attempt at pinning her suicide on me, to claim that I had pushed her. The simplest of answers isn’t always the one that is chosen. I turned to look at the first cop car as it approached. An older man bolted out, took one look down at the wreckage, and looked back at me.
“What…?” He started, possibly an accusation by the tone he had given me, but it was cut short. His eyes widened just barely. He had noticed the look on my face, the haunting in my eyes, and had known in an instant that I had had nothing to do with the young woman’s death.
“She jumped.” I said, surprised by the evenness of my voice. There was no emotion, no wavering as a word caught in my throat, no pausing as I worked to gather my words. Just a voice that was flat and even, completely void of any feeling that one should be feeling. “She was here, then she was gone.”
“Why don’t you come to the station with us, give us a full report? We can drive you there, if you don’t feel safe to walk.” His tone had completely changed. There was something wrong about it, as if he were scared of me.
“Yeah, alright.” I hung my head a little, feeling myself slipping further out of the trance that had kept me attached to the railing of the bridge. It was at that moment that I realized that I was smiling.
As the woman had turned to jump, as I had caught the flutter of her dress as the weight of the world began to pull down on her, I thought of my own laundry back at home. My washer had not been started, I remembered, because I had been out of bleach. Nothing gets blood stains out better than bleach.