..

You're the flash of light
on a burial shroud

..

Adam sits on top of the bridge's barrier, feet dangling idly, and looks down.

It's past midnight on a cool fall day. At this time and this height the water below resembles nothing so much as a sheet of black glass, calm and serene and above all, he reminds himself, patient.

It will wait for him a few more minutes.

He brushes black strands of hair from his face, adjusts his glasses and exhales shakily. He notices his hands are trembling. He supposes it's only natural, considering the circumstances.

The bridge is deserted and there is no one around to stop him. Someone told him once that hitting the water from this high up was like smashing into a concrete wall. It sounds painful, but at least it would be quick, he thinks.

"There's no guarantee of that," comes an unexpected voice from beside him. "Who's to say the fall will kill you proper? You could just break every bone in your body and wash up onshore for someone to find. Then you'll still be alive, only you'll spend the rest of your life eating through a tube."

The young woman leaning on the barrier notices his stunned expression and shrugs one shoulder. "You were muttering to yourself. Sorry."

She's pretty enough, he observes distantly. Big brown eyes, shoulder-length blonde hair, leather jacket; teeth a bit crooked, but still, Adam knows his high school friends would definitely approve.

"What would you recommend, then?" he hears himself ask.

She turns her gaze upward as if she's seriously considering the question. "Well, hanging's no good, I'll tell you that," she says finally. "Same thing—too risky. No guarantee you'll snap your neck on the first try, and throttling is not a nice way to go. Not to mention it gives people time to cut you down, and then we're back to the whole eating-through-a-tube thing. Or the mental institution thing, which isn't fun either."

He stares at her openmouthed as she gnaws on her lower lip, still looking thoughtful. "Overdose is no good either. Get the dosage wrong, or someone comes home unexpectedly, and you're back to square one. Poison's the same way. You could always wander into rush hour traffic, I suppose, but that takes real cajones and it doesn't promise anything."

She pauses for breath and starts ticking options off on her fingers. Her pink nail polish is chipped. "Drowning is hard to pull off without a partner, and I assume you don't have someone who'd be willing or you wouldn't be sitting here. Gun blast to the head or chest is pretty popular nowadays, but you'd better hope you get that one right on the first try."

"Who are you?" Adam blurts in disbelief. He's talked about doing this before—on anonymous online forums, mostly, and a few mentions to his friends in terms vague enough that they wouldn't go running to the police or his family. His "real" friends had laughed uncomfortably and changed the subject. Fellow posters online had been a little more comforting, some of them even begging him not to do anything drastic. Pretending that they understood his reasons. Pretending they had any clue at all, safe behind their keyboards.

Nobody had ever been even mildly encouraging.

The woman hoists herself up onto the barrier next to him. She lets her feet swing and turns to grin at him, a wide grin full of teeth that somehow doesn't feel predatory.

"Someone who reads a lot of obituaries," she finally answers. "Also someone who's tried all of the methods I just described and then some. None of them worked, obviously, and believe me I got very creative over the years."

He blinks a few times.

Then somehow it makes sense, clicking on a light bulb in Adam's mind. This woman appears from nowhere, calmly lists a dozen different (and apparently ineffectual) ways of offing oneself, and sits on the edge of a bridge two hundred feet in the air without blinking. He's probably trusting too easily in her sanity, but the night already felt plenty surreal; this is just one more thing to add to it.

What the hell. No harm in believing something crazy tonight.

"You're immortal," he clarifies, reexamining her twenty-something-year-old countenance and her leather jacket and wondering what else she's worn in the past. Poodle skirts? Medieval ball gowns?

"That's right," she says with a nod. "Thing about immortality is that it sort of sticks. Really, really sticks. And I did try to shake it off after the first few centuries or so, but-"

"Yeah, I got that from the Suicide 101 lecture," he interrupts. "But why? Why did you-"

She tilts her head at the question, blonde hair falling across her shoulder.

"Why are you sitting up here on this bridge?" she responds.

The look she gives him is solemn, but now that he's paying attention he can sense a weight to her gaze, an ancient-seeming sadness, and it shuts him up immediately.

He's got his own reasons for being here, as she undoubtedly does. And he isn't going to talk about them, so it isn't his place to ask candor of her.

"Sorry," he says quietly.

"'s alright," she replies, shrugging again.

"I know we're complete strangers," he continues awkwardly. "It's just that—I dunno, it's not like I've been broadcasting this, but-" He swallows hard, feeling an unexpected prickle behind his eyes. He's already planning to jump off a damn bridge. It's just unfair for new things to still be able to hurt him.

"What?" she prods gently.

"Four hours," he murmurs. "Four hours, twenty minutes, give or take. That's how long I've been sitting here tonight. My ass is frozen to this spot. Do you have any idea how many people have gone past in the last four hours? In their cars, or jogging, or whatever?"

She shakes her head and says nothing.

"One hundred and fifty-seven," he snaps. "I had nothing better to do, so I counted. One hundred and fifty-seven people passed right by me and they didn't say a word. They didn't stop, they didn't even look-"

Tears are stinging his eyes now, hot and humiliating. Unbelievable. He can't even die properly; he has to spill his guts and cry in front of pretty strangers and sit frozen for hours on end because he just can't bring himself to finish it. Not when someone, just one person out of a hundred and fifty-seven, might turn around in the next minute and say "Get down from there, kid. Go home."

Adam sniffles and stows his glasses in his jacket pocket. They're all smeared now and he doesn't really need them anyway; his friends just think they look cool on him.

His friends. Would they be trying to stop him right now, if he'd told them outright what he was planning to do?

"Adam."

He starts, remembering the woman all at once. Her brown eyes are sad.

"If it means anything at all, I wish I'd come here sooner," she offers.

"Thanks," he says with a sheepish and slightly wobbly little smile. "Would've been nice to have the company a little earlier, but you got here in the end."

She says nothing in response, just stares down into the glassy water.

Adam opens his mouth to say something else but stops, frowning. She glances over at him and he shakes his head.

"Nothing," he assures her, "just déjà vu, you know how it is."

"I've been around awhile," she says dryly, that toothy grin making another brief appearance. "Yeah, I definitely know how it is."

"I guess you do." He hesitates again, but steels himself and asks the question it only just occurred to him to ask. "I guess you know a lot of things, but what I want to know is…how did you know my name?"

The look she gives him then is surprised, but quickly smoothes itself into something like resignation. She sighs heavily. "I screwed up, didn't I?"

This, too, comes with the oddest sensation of déjà vu. He nods slowly.

"Maybe, yeah. Have we—sorry, but have we done this before?"

"I'm sorry," she tells him. "Adam, I am so sorry."

A beeping from his cell phone signals the arrival of one AM, and suddenly everything slots into place. They have done this before, more than once.

I read a lot of obituaries, she'd said, and the first time they met he hadn't known what she'd meant. The second time he didn't even remember her until halfway through the conversation, same for the third, fourth and fifth, and now…

He knows his lines.

"It's okay," he tells her gently. "It's not your fault."

Maybe she hadn't been there the first time, when it might have counted for more, but he definitely remembers feeling that she doesn't need another burden on her shoulders.

He stands up carefully. A sudden breeze sends chills down his back and he makes the mistake of looking towards the water.

It's a very long way down. He shudders and hears himself speaking to her, as if from far away.

"You take care of yourself, you hear?"

She chuckles without an iota of mirth. "I always do."

Every time they do this, he knows, it hurts her to lose someone else. Even someone she didn't know when he was walking around properly and everything. He feels guilty, but not guilty enough to lose the only thing he has close to a friend.

Adam looks up to the sky, black as its reflection below, and blinks back the tears. "See you next year, yeah?"

Behind him she makes a sound like choking and her voice, when it answers, is rough.

"Yeah."

Adam closes his eyes, leans forward and falls. The wind in his ears starts as a whistle, then builds to a piercing scream as he comes nearer and nearer to that black sheet of glass.

He doesn't know if he lucks out or not, blacks out immediately or shatters every bone in his body first. He doesn't remember hitting the water.

He never does.

..

I know something's wrong

..