Otherside

It is cold, and I am on a lake. The sky above is uniform grey, leeching the color from everything. The trees on the banks of my perfectly circular lake are black, decorated by defeated orange and brown leaves, quiet and still in the wintry air.

No boat supports me. I in my black coat and brown shoes merely stand there suspended on the clearest ice, ice that seems to dance and glimmer as the water beneath would, even in the eerie monochrome light. Unearthly silence surrounds me, and I am unafraid.

As I walk across the silent, sober lake, I look at the water below me, so close I can almost feel it. I am chilled to the bone, but I do not shiver. I just walk, measured and even, from the center out. The black forest is striking but not unfriendly, just sad. The boughs of the trees bend out over the motionless shimmering dull water, and I watch the leaves curl into the lake, into one another. I move closer, I with my somber clothes and serious eyes, slowly, steadily. The trees neither welcome nor deny, they just frown. Mourning, quiet.

And in the breathless muted silence, weird and lifeless, I fall. The glassy ice shatters soundlessly below me, and I plummet down. Not into dark water or lurking depths, but into a brilliant blue sky, rushing past clouds in astonishing, immaculate bright sunlight. I lean back, my clothes whipping around me, arms and legs akimbo, and exhilaration overtakes me.

I go back in time, memories flashing past me, friends family tears smiles jokes sighs a blue house a green room my heroes my obstacles my hopes my dreams my shortcomings my failures, blistering happiness and crushing sadness, and it matters not that realizing each frame is impossible, I lean back and fall.

I close my eyes, and I fall through the perfect cloud-spangled sky, free, free.