Falling again

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. Withered hands drew close to a sunken breast, old bones creaking as the man leant forward to regard the fiery cold that entrenched the world.

It was 8:03, said the golden watch face clasped around his frail wrist - the wedding present from his wife. Adjusting it, he grimaced as the metal edges of the strap dug deeper into papery flesh. His hands were bare and blue, gloves lost at the hospital, fingers numb, like a black infection had taken root from the tips, crawling through his limbs, turning them to stone. 

White with fresh snow. He'd never imagined the city this bleak before. The building opposite the road was barren, with black bricks and barred doors, and no matter how much he contorted his stiff neck, he could not make out how high it reached, so he looked away. Ice glazed the three glass walls of the bus stop, burnt and ruthless stars of frost clawing up the frame. 

A car shuddered by, its wheels grating against the ground; its hunched black form carried a whisp of warmth with the ruckus of its old engine and the glare of headlights. It was gone as quickly as it came, but the man stared after it, the fading glow swallowed by the darkness. 

A marvel - a wonder. He used to play with the impossibility of owning a car one day - a shiny ford. His wife dreamed up the same, and wasn't that really why he'd wanted one? She looked him in the eye and said they'd sail down the highway, the windows wide open and the wind in their hair, no stop signs, no regrets, going so fast, it would feel like falling. 

They took the ambulance to the city; his stomach swooped, his heart thundered, and the sirens tore the scream from his throat before he could utter it himself. Untethered. He didn't get to say goodbye - gone as quickly as she came.

The house waited for him roads away from the city, but no one waited for him at home. It still smelt of her perfume. Her rose-tinted glasses sat on the counter, along with her favourite wine. Chilled. She'd cooked dinner the night before - cheese, pasta and liquorice. 'A touch of peculiarity,' she used to say. Every second bite tasted strange, but he ate it, all the same, to see her smile, roll her eyes and tell him, 'Your sense of adventure was what captured by heart, darling.'

He wasn't going home for supper tonight. 

The old man checked his watch - 8:03.

Another car rolled by, and this time, he heard it coming before he saw it, even with the cotton of age stuffed in his ears. This one was red and bleeding across the road at a more careful pace, and the man caught a glimpse of himself in its blackened windows. His face was blithe with youth, a cigarette and a thousand roads at his fingertips, a waxed smile and a tide of friends that rose and swelled and drifted and grew and never left his shores stranded and silent. 

He blinked, and the car was gone. He wished it back, hating how the images played back, a receding dream.

A minute later, another car drew up, a bleached shade of gold. In its squared window was his younger daughter, dressed in graduation garb, the first in the family, eyes creasing with mirthful disapproval as his elder daughter, impish and sugar-sweet, asked him with a wink if he'd like champagne to celebrate. Too easy to be drunk on joy, sailing with the smiles and cheer and roars of laughter that rang through his ears like a knell. 

Gone, again. 

His daughters hadn't made Christmas. He couldn't recall the excuse this time. 'It's fine,' he'd told his wife. They always had next year. 

He leant back with a sigh, resting against the cool glass, just as frozen as him. It was a dreadful effort to make himself move.

He checked his wrist - 8:03.

His body ached, a seeping blade, but pain was a familiar foe, so he forced his gaze back to the blackened sky, and his sore heart went out to the fathomless emptiness, his lonesome companion. His breath came out in little clouds, his frosted lashes fluttered shut, and he brushed the burning cold watch face with his thumb. 

Eventually, when the bus did come, he didn't hear it - barely saw it either, only the blackened tint of its window and the vision of himself in its reflection. 

He was sitting on a silent rooftop overlooking a glittering city in a foreign place he couldn't recall. He and his love brandishing an old tourist Instamatic camera, and her hair was in a scattered bun as she smiled for the photo that would fill the first page in his scrapbook - the page where his life began. The flash, then she saw his face and laughed.  

'Stop clinging to the ledge, darling. You look terrified.'

I am, I am, I was. 

Her brown eyes met his, and there was sweat upon her brow from the climb - the elevators weren't working - and the grin she passed down to her daughters, mischievous and bright, set his heart alight.

'Don't worry, darling - I won't let you fall.'

She never did things in half measures. She pulled him up and took his hand, and when the wind whipped around them all too suddenly, she simply laughed like they were weightless, winsome kites in its gentle storm. 

'Aren't you scared?' he asked her. 

'Not with you.'

They danced, upon that solitary skyscraper, the wind tearing at her trousers and her hair, but her smile stayed on as they swayed. She smelt of strawberries, and he ducked his head into the gulf between her shoulder and her neck, the sweet spray of wild locks sheltering him as he shut his eyes. 

'Don't be scared, love. I'm here,' she whispered.

He knew he was falling, knew there was no more rooftop beneath his feet. 

But falling always felt like flying with her. 

The bus hissed as it came to a stop, the first of the morning, its engine thrumming. The figure waiting upon the frosted bench didn't move, and neither did his watch, stuck upon the hour. He was slumped and haggard and smiling into the wakening glow of day.

'Poor man missed his bus,' the people said. 'Lost track of time.'

But no one imagined what life he'd lived, what memories he'd spun through the years before he'd watched the bus leave with tired absolution in his eyes. No one imagined that he'd embraced the fall, fallen in love with her smile for the millionth time. No one imagined he'd never meant to catch the bus back home.