Survival Instincts

© 1999 Greg Kruczynski
All rights reserved.

I'm such a coward! A pathetic loser!

I looked straight ahead and took the step forward and down. Immediately my body was buffeted by the turbulence of the small aircraft as I fell from the tiny door. As always, I noticed that the mind-numbing drone of the single prop had vanished, leaving me to my own thoughts ... which was a problem, as it turned out.

Aside from the air that struck me and ruffled my clothing, I had no other sign that I was falling. It was almost like floating. Which is why I chose this to be the way. Not that it had made any difference. Yet, that is. This, however, was the day.

Of course, I had made myself believe that before. As always, the voices came creeping from the depths as I fell.

"Think," they murmured in the wind.

One word. For now. I was used to the voices. Each time I made my way to the airfield, I steeled myself to fight these hidden voices. Prepared myself to deal with them as I readied for the jump.

Reflexively, I turned my head to look for the plane, as I had many times before. It was gone. Lost somewhere in the sky. No safety there. I never had been able to keep an eye on the plane once I had jumped. The initial tumble disoriented me; not to mention the rapidity with which I plummeted to the earth below. The chute hugged me, its straps and buckles confining me, pinching my groin. The reserve chute pressed like a lead weight against my chest as I fell in a full spread-eagle to the now featureless ground below. I was doing it! This time for sure!

"Think." The word rang in the helmet.

They didn't let us jump without the helmet. Something about liability or something. So they had said at the ground school when I had asked. Unfortunate. The helmet, almost like on a motorcycle, cut out all but the loudest of noises. We had to shout at each other on the ground. In the plane, with the engine noise, we spoke with hand signals only. During the fall, however, the insulation provided by the helmet let the voices ring clear in my mind.

"Think about what you're doing," again the voice.

I fell toward the earth. In the past I had toyed with tricks. Somersaults and back-flips. But they had just wasted time. I wasn't here to enjoy myself. I tried falling with my face to the sky, but the voices quickly put an end to that. Screaming at me then, in my mother's voice. She could always, just with her nagging, nasal whine, get me to do what I was told. The voices always turned into my mother's voice in the end. Before that, the voices were familiar, but not necessarily recognizable. I'd heard my dad a couple of times; my brother, Jim; my boss. For some reason, my fifth grade teacher, Miss Jacoby, every now and then. Whom the voices were, however, was not as significant as whom the voices never were.

"Don't do this to yourself, John." It was clearly a woman's voice now, but I didn't recognize it.

I fell. The ground below still had the look of giant blocks of different colors. I was beginning to see thin lines of gray and black separating the sections and marking the roads below. Soon now. Another minute, maybe. Two, if I'm lucky. The voices faded during the first part of the jumps now. I'd been at it for over a year. Persistence. That's what makes someone successful. Everyone says so. I had fifty-seven jumps behind me. Whenever I could get the money together, I found myself driving to the airfield. They'd even given me the "Frequent Jumper" card, which gave me a discount after my thirtieth jump. Three more and I would have the half-price discount. But that wasn't going to happen. This was the day I would bring it all to an end. I waited, patiently.

"Don't do this," spoke the voice softly inside my head, a man's voice now.

Pleading softly. The voices had turned to this pathetic groveling in the past few months as my will got stronger. I was learning to ignore the voices, so that they often were whispers up until the end. They were losing. They knew it. I can do this. I can. My fists clenched at the ends of my outstretched arms. I gritted my teeth. The ground rushed towards me.

"Pull the cord, Johnny," said the woman again.

The gray lines became wider and I could see the cars, like tiny bugs, moving slowly along the roads. I had toyed with other methods. I tried razors and looked off many tall buildings, but couldn't take that final step. Couldn't over the screaming in my head. I remembered how my hands had shook as I fought the urge to take the razor from the skin on the inside of my wrist. I'd even bought a gun. An ugly-looking thing that had cost me only fifty bucks outside the back entrance of a bar in town that I had never noticed before I had found myself in need of a gun. Fifty bucks. It surprised me that it was so cheap. Fifty bucks down the drain, however. I could hold the thing, even fire it. But the second I began to turn it on myself, the voices sounded. A cacophony in my head that tore every other thought from my understanding except "put the gun down, NOW!"

That is why I finally chose this to be the way. I had found that those other methods were too sudden a way to go. The voices knew this. That was why they were so much stronger when the instrument of death was in hand. They could not be refused when my hand grasped the object of my own death, be it gun, razor, or pills. That was why this was the perfect method. The voices had to force me to do something. The only thing I had to do to die was take the initial step. The voices allowed this, I supposed, because they knew they had a way out later. All they had to do was get me to pull the cord at my chest—something they were confident they could get me to do. Their confidence was going to be their downfall.

Over the past year, the voices had been growing silent at the beginning of the jumps. Now, it was almost as if they didn't realize I was falling. Like I said, it was kind of peaceful, floating towards the earth at 185 mph. I was lulling them. It was almost a game now. The force of two wills at battle with each other for control. I knew I would win the battle. Today. Today, I would win the battle with myself. I would take control. I would maintain control until I felt the immediate rush of air from my lungs from the impact with the ground below. Erasing everything. Erasing the pain. Erasing my life.

Closer now.

"Pull the cord, son," my father said, trying to maintain his calm, reasoning manner. It was the same voice he had used all his life when dealing with someone he disagreed with. My mother, however, didn't have the patience.

"You pull that cord now, or else!" she shrieked. quot;I'm talking to you, John."

"Listen to your mother, Johnny, boy." My father followed her whining voice with his stony calm. As if he could get me to see the madness of the situation by remaining almost indifferent.

The ground was rushing at me now, beginning to fill my peripheral vision, where before there had been only the blue sky. It was as if the ground were beginning to fold around me, embrace me. I welcomed the way it took me into its grasp. Closer now, getting to the point where decisions would be made or, if made, made too late.

My mother wailed inside my mind, "You are disappointing me, young man. PULL THE CORD." I ignored her, had heard it too many times before. "PULL THE CORD!" She sounded desperate, now her voice shrill and tinny. I knew then.

I knew this was it. They weren't going to stop me. I wasn't going to listen to them anymore. I rushed toward the ground. Seconds now. I prepared and took one final breath.

"John," she said, "listen to me."

Her voice was soft, almost a whisper, but it pulled the breath from my lungs, leaving me gasping.

"Don't do this, honey," said the soft, pleading, sweet voice.

It was the voice of my life. I had known the first time I heard her speak. I remember knowing that she would be my life. My life and my wife. As I had fallen hopelessly for her voice, I fell equally as hard for her person. Emily was the most beautiful sight I had ever imagined. I could sit for hours watching her, soaking in her eyes, studying her skin. But her voice, her voice I could listen to for a lifetime.

"Please, darling," Emily pleaded. "This isn't the way."

"No!" I screamed aloud. This can't be happening. I had won. It wasn't her. It wasn't. The voices, they were lying. But her voice, sweet and lilting. It was her. It wasn't fair.

Still I fell.

"Daddy?"

My mind recoiled. Time stopped, my plummet to the earth and my death seemingly delayed. Not this, not now.

"Daddy?" she asked again.

Little Anne Marie. If Emily was my life, Anne Marie was my reason to live. It was the voice as I had heard it before with her held tightly in my arms. Her eyes had seemed to be searching for my face, although I was right there, leaning over her. I remembered the blood. Her blood. My baby's blood streaking her cheeks from a deep gash at her hairline. "Daddy?" she had asked, confused, wondering what had happened. Why was the car on its side? Where was Mommy? My sweet Emily. She was still in the car. She wouldn't be getting out. And then, as I looked into the searching, questioning eyes of my daughter, she breathed her last. There was no surprise. No pain. Nothing I could see in her eyes that told me she understood what was happening to her. But I knew.

And I knew who was responsible. Of course, the police at the scene had tried to be comforting, saying that no one could have seen the sheet of black ice on the curve. The doctors were comforting when they told me that little Anne Marie had not felt any pain and that my wife hadn't, either. Everyone said they understood my pain. "It must be awful," they said. "Let me know if I can do anything to help." But they couldn't help. No one could help me. What I had to do, I had to do alone. And so I had started my quest. And I had met with the voices.

But I had won. I was winning now. Which is why they allowed the voices of Emily and my darling Anne Marie to speak. They knew they were beaten. They were pulling out all the stops.

"DaaaaaDeeeee!" she screamed.

I wasn't prepared. Not for this. Not for the voices of my lost family. The family I had killed. Not now.

"NOOOOOOO DAAAAADEEEEE!" screamed Anne Marie as the world again began to rush towards me at incredible speed. "NOOOOOO!"

There wasn't any time to make a decision. No time to react. Only instinct could be responsible for my judgment and my cowardice. I reached across my chest and gave a tug. Immediately my world was chaos, and for an instant, confusion. Then pressure. Not at any one point, but all-encompassing. Enveloping. Then blackness.

In the blackness, I knew. I knew that I had finally accomplished my goal. They hadn't beaten me. I had won. Even when they sprang the voices of my wife and child on me, I had not caved.

Well . . . I had caved. I remembered pulling the cord.

But I had been too late. Yes, the chute had not had time to open before my body plunged to the ground. I wondered if I had bounced.

The voices. I listened for them in the darkness, but I couldn't hear them now. Why should I? I was dead. It was done. I had beaten them. I gave them credit, though. Pulling Emily and Anne Marie out like that was a clever move on their part. They had surprised me. I was overwhelmed with relief. Finally, my pain was over. Finished. I could rest. I would finally be with the family I loved. The family I had killed. The family I had died for.

So where were they?

"Quadriplegia."

That's what the doctor had said when I finally woke. Seems that pulling the cord at 500 feet doesn't do much of anything. It doesn't allow the parachute to open so that you can drift to the ground, landing softly. It doesn't let you maintain the speed at which you had been falling—a speed that would have been sufficient to break every bone in my body any number of times. As it was, I had broken most of them. Most of the important ones, at least. However, not as many as I needed.

My spine, however, I truly had done a number on. That is what has reduced me to the sorry state I am in today. A pathetic cripple! A cripple who wants to die but now has nothing left to finish the job. My legs are dead. My fingers. My hands. My arms. My dick. Everything is dead except the only thing I wanted to be dead—ME!

A coward! If I had only had the balls to ignore those damn voices and turn the gun toward my head. But, no, I had to go out and try to beat them by keeping them quiet for as long as I could. Long enough so that it wouldn't matter what they said or who said it. Stupid, is what I was. Stupid and too damn scared to get the job done right.

The hospital staff knows about me. They know why I'm now in this state. What I had done. Only it hadn't worked. They know. Now they point at me and whisper to their friends while looking at me from the side. A loser. Go ahead, talk about the loser sitting in his damn chair. Probably sitting in his own shit because he doesn't know when he shits anymore unless the smell gets too bad.

I don't hear the voices much anymore. Haven't heard the voice of little Anne Marie. Or the voice of my sweet Emily, whose voice I could listen to for a lifetime but never will. I don't hear the voices much anymore. Only on shaving day, when I twist my head from side to side, hoping that the disposable razor they use on me will leave more than the few nicks I inflict on myself. It never does. The orderlies don't say much any more. They don't even tell me to be still any more. I'm just the freak who couldn't get the job done.

Then, and only then, do I hear the voices, chuckling softly deep in my head.

They have won. I will live.

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