Not Today
Sometimes today isn't your day.
Sometimes, that's a good thing, if you can take advantage of it.
Thirty stories up, one stride took Marion beyond the edge, fully committed to her end.
Nothing happened. The expected lurch was missing.
One eye peeked, then the other. Her eyes locked onto the skyscraper windows opposite. It didn’t move. She didn’t move.
What the hell?
Wind whistled past her ears, lifted her hair and draped it across her face, sticking it to her lip gloss. Cars honked on the streets below, and in the distance a siren, fading and blaring as it passed behind buildings. Heading away, not here.
The world moved on.
Could they see her? In the building? Were they calling the fire? Ambulance? Police? Or were they like her: breath held, muscles clenched, staring in shock waiting for the inevitable?
She blinked and her heart resumed its beat. There in the reflection, a uniformed woman, broken and distorted through the warp of steel and glass, echoing her heart. From this angle, she still appeared to stand on something solid.
Cautiously she wiggled her foot, her toes dipped down, stretching, meeting no resistance. Emptiness. Cold surged up from toes to scalp then plummeted into her stomach. No invisible platform there either.
Hair tickled her nose and she dragged it from her mouth, then froze, anticipating the motion would trigger gravity to remember its job and yank her down.
Nothing.
She didn’t want to look, but she had to. That was how it worked in cartoons, right? The moment you looked, you fell. Marion didn’t move.
But she really had to look.
She swallowed, mouth dry. Her eyes slid down first, gazing down her nose until her eyeballs ached, and then her head, tilting one jerk at a time. No glass. No floor. No glowing ball of magic light keeping her aloft, just a lot of tiny people and cars. A flock of pigeons took flight.
Dear God, so far… She closed her eyes, fingernails burrowing into her palm until pain engulfed her hand, then double checked she hadn’t imagined it.
Someone… something… some mysterious force didn’t want her to fall, wanted her to live. Why, how, who…?
Don’t ask. Just…
Don’t let me fall.
Her toes reached backwards, seeking the sanctuary of the balcony, touched the edge, further than she realised. Icy terror prickled her skin.
Shit.
Her legs trembled as she shifted back, but her shoe slipped off the edge, not finding purchase, yet enough that gravity woke up, dragged her down, falling! as she turned and flung herself towards the balcony, shin whacking the railing, hands clawing concrete, clutching at life.
Her chest slammed onto the platform, air wheezed from her lungs. She scraped her chin.
Safe.
Alive.
Her phone rang, a pulse of vibration jump starting her heart, followed by a jangling bell. She pulled it out, rolled onto her back and sucked in a breath, staring at the clouded sky above.
Amazing.
“Hello?”
God, she sounded so calm.
“Sure, Mom, I’ll be there. No, I won’t forget. Twelve o’clock today. Bye, Mom. Love you.”