It's a rush, I tell you, a rush. Not just because of the fact that if the wind were just a little stronger I'd meet my maker, but because the whole act is illegal. You know, the whole...suicide...thing. Except I get therapy instead of 25 to life when I'm caught. I'll probably get caught this time. I hope. And when I do, it means more attention; therapist, medication, suicide surveillance, things of the like.
There's a crowd growing on the sidewalk, next to the light post. Across the street from Bailey's, next to a Starbucks, and I can see a Calvin Klein billboard without having to lift my head at all. They look strung-out, the models that is. Their hair is ratty and untamed and they're wearing jeans that look decades old. They're all laid out on top of each other and looking in the same direction. You know they're hopped up on something. They all look foreign. Looking back down at the crowd, there's a woman with some kind of little ankle-biting dog on a leash shrieking and pointing at me. Her other hand, the one with the leash hanging on her arm, its covering her mouth in that classic womanly "gasp" kind of way. From up here I can tell she's pretty pale. And I'm guessing she has on Rogue lipstick.
I was wondering who would start it. I should've known it would be the woman in the black sunhat with the cat glasses. Just like in the movies. So now all I have to do is stand here for a few hours. The police will come in about 10 minutes, seeing as how someone will call them, and then I'll have to just sit my pitiful ass up here until someone rescues me.
This isn't the first time I've done it. I do it almost yearly. You know, as those "winter blues" come and go, and such. Seasonal emotions are a bitch. I started one day a few years ago, accidentally of course. I was working in the building, putting in some extra hours to kind of cheese over the big-wigs around the office. Plus I wanted to take a week off. I left the window open, and a few files blew out of the window. So being the work addict I am, I worked my sad little ass out onto the ledge to retrieve them. Then came the gasping, the crowd, the cops, medication, but most importantly, the attention. Oh, the attention. More attention than I got sitting behind the desk, filing and typing and filing. Being just another working-class little shit of the world. No, now I was the suicidal working-class little shit of the world, all over the news. The second time I did it I made the newspaper.
Sometimes I take the medication the therapists prescribe me, sometimes. I've been given it all; Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, Serzone, Remeron, Paxil, Ludiomil, you name it I've got a bottle of it somewhere. It works good before meetings with the boss, I've found. When you think you're about to get fired or busted for something. Works real nice.
The suicide watch stops in 3 weeks or so, under the terms that you report to the psychiatric building every two weeks following the discontinuation. These people are so used to their job it's easy to just BS your way through them with something generic. Basically, they do their job, and you do yours. You play the pathetic depressive psychotic, they play the therapist with all the answers, and everyone wins. And it's the same every time.
So I've been up here for about...20 minutes now. The gasp woman is still standing there, and there's more people gathering. Soon they'll flood out into the street and stop traffic. Soon, news crews will show up with live coverage, they'll send someone up to try and talk me out of it. They'll come with bullhorns and nets. They'll all stand around until I come down. Their lives stopping for a few hours, just for some little shit on a building. People who've never met me before. Of all walks of life. People in their homes will stop cooking and talking and moving to watch me, live, standing against a brick wall, 15 stories high in the air. They'll listen to Stacey or Kevin giving the report - the report including a small biographical description of me; where I work, my name, history. So for a brief moment, they all know me. They all fear for my little working-class shit of the world life. Oh, the attention.
The cops are here. With the bullhorns. They're asking me to come down, rather, telling me to come down. To go back inside through the window and come down. I can see some of them are looking me up, looking for relatives or friends for inspirational words. To their disappointment, not mine, I have none. None in this state, at least. Suckers.
The news crews show up five seconds after the cops. Their big white vans are parked in the intersection, with all traffic stopped. The lights keep changing but nobody's going anywhere until I'm down, dead or alive. Red, Green, or Yellow, they have to stop. That's the control part I was talking about. Soon they'll be announcing the traffic jam over the radio. They'll say the cause is someone stuck on a ledge, they might say my name, mmm...more attention.
The police and a few bystanders are spreading out a net for me to jump onto. They keep telling me to push off the building as hard as I can. Jump out as far as possible to reach the net. They're here to help me, to save me. At this point it's been about an hour and a half since the initial gasp. People are shouting for me to come down, the bullhorns keep repeating themselves. It gets annoying, every time. Especially when this is your 5th time. It's always the same lines too.
And it's about now that I realize I'm addicted to attention in massive amounts. This is the only way I'd ever be famous. With the face only a mother could love, a voice that could wake the dead, talent that matches that of a Popsicle stick...this is the only way I'll be famous. I tell myself that it's the last time. With the police still blaring the same desperate lines at me, I wave them an "okay" and turn around to face the wall. I wave another okay, and push off.
The second my feet leave the ledge comes the second initial shriek. From the same woman, most likely. I can hear everyone below me breathing, I can feel it almost. That's probably just the wind around me though. The attention is solely on me at this point, all conversations have stopped, even the dog stopped barking. The engines in the cars were shut off a long time ago, and everyone had got out of their car to see. The reporters stopped reporting, but the cameras are likely still rolling, still live, still stopping people's dinners, conversations, lives. And it's like the world just pauses as I descend. And I'm getting closer to the ground, and there's a third shriek, and all I see is sky. I can feel myself getting closer to the ground, the heat from the cement coming up, then a scream, then I think of all the attention I'm going to get when it's over. Then I let out the breath I had been holding all this time, I smile, and there is a loud crunch, a pain in my back...and then black. Oh, the attention.