Heights – A Short Story

Patrica Hartwell was afraid of heights.

When the people of Small Island ran out of room to expand out, they began to build up. They crafted magnificent cloud platforms, held up at first by massive balloons. Now there are miles of steel towers, reaching ever higher. Everything was bright and clean on Small Island. The people built the sky lifts to make it easier to get from City Above to City Below and vice versa. Everyone said they were safe, the sky lifts. There had never been a single accident. No one had ever been hurt using the sky lifts. But that didn't matter to Patrica.

The bright polished towers of glass and steel stood steadfast, connecting City Below with City Above. She stared longingly at the tall spires of the sky lift from the window of her apartment in City Below. She had never been to City Above. Her friends had been though, and they told the most amazing stories. Her friends hung out there now. They teased her because she would not ride the sky lifts. "You don't know what you're missing." They said, "It's perfectly safe; you hardly notice that you are moving at all." She still refused to ride the glass lift cars. Her friends finally gave up on her, leaving her to her life in City Below.

Patrica Hartwell was afraid of heights.

Patrica shook the hair out of her eyes, running her fingers through it to try to tame the curls. It was a futile movement; no matter what she did, they always stuck up in all directions. She stood in line, waiting for the next sky lift car. She was the only one left in line, for the moment. There was a melodic ding and the lift doors opened. She stepped forward nervously, looking around. No one was there but her. She stepped into the lift and pushed the button to start her journey upward. She barely felt it as the car travelled smoothly along its cable. "This isn't so bad," she said to herself, more a desperate reassurance than a statement of fact. She looked through the glass panel at the rapidly diminishing buildings of City Below. She wrung her hands, hardly aware that she was doing it. She watched the waters of Blue (as the local fishermen called it), the sea surrounding Small Island, stretch further and further away from her. If she squinted, she could see a dark smudge on the horizon. She knew from her childhood geography lessons that the dark smudge was the peninsula on the near side of East Isle. She could see ships, both on the water and in the air, still days away.

She was about half way to City Above before she started to relax. The view really was incredible. Someone had come up with the idea of placing spyglasses in all the cars. The trip between took several minutes and it was easy to panic when you peer down through the glass floor and see your life shrinking away beneath you, or up through the glass ceiling and see the docking port rushing to meet you. So the spyglass kept Patrica occupied and she almost didn't hear it.