HIGHDIVE (Revised on 3/18/24)

Moss slid over the edge of the cliff and, for a split second, had a beautiful view of the pristine beach far below. He would have liked to have lived long enough to walk on it. But gravity had its own ideas on that score. It reached up, yanked him down and caught the tips of his boots on the top of a leaning shrub. He cartwheeled away like a discarded rag doll toppling into the abyss. As he fell. He was vaguely certain of two things. The remaining moments of his rapidly shortening life would end in a splatter of agony and that his pounding heart was going to explode through his chest.

As he plummeted towards certain death, the steadily tumbling blurs of blue sky above and green jungle below combined. Blue/green, bluish/green, greenish/blue. Two steadily combining colors becoming one as a massive jungle below rushed up to meet him like a speeding windshield greeting an unsuspecting bug. Splat. Flat. Fade to black.

A split second before he passed out, something long and thin struck Moss across the side of his face like a steel bullwhip swung by a gargantuan matador. Pain seized every nerve in his body and he went rigid. The left side of his face split apart and a gout of fresh blood, macerated tongue and shattered teeth ejected outward in a pink spray. His vision tunneled and one eye went black. Through the searing pain, his searching fingers plunged into an empty, oozing eye socket. Horror seized his churning guts and Moss spewed vomit. As blistering acid spread across the torn pulp of half a face, fire consumed his head. Half a mouth opened in a twisted, gargling scream.

That's when it happened. An unseen force reached out, wrapped around his wrist, and jerked him up and away. The bright, ripping pain of dislocating joints and shattering bones had two polarizing effects. First, toppling colors around him stopped and, second, he faded into pitch black. The tumbling and falling he could do without, but the darkness was terrifying.

Moss's senses failed him. Sound was gone. All sense of motion was gone. He floated in the darkness. Not a single pinpoint of light reached his remaining eye. There was no sense of anything. Even his pain had fled. He peered around, trying to center himself, but could not. Up and down, left and right, in or out, meant nothing anymore. His heart raced. Moss hung in a void, pondering the thought he had died. Shit, I hope not; he thought. Because if I have to float here for an eternity, I'll go bat-shit crazy. He wondered how long he had already been hanging there and considered the idea that he may already be crazy. How would he know? Isn't that what crazy is? He tried to move his legs. Tried to walk away. But there was no sensation of body or movement. So how could he expect to walk? 

Moss wasn't sure if he was dead or just insane. Probably both. Silver lining, he told himself. The raptors are gone. Because if they're not and I can't run away, he thought and shuddered. I'm in trouble. He realized he had felt the shudder and felt a sense of relief. Maybe I'm not dead? Another icy chill ran up his spine. But this time, the chill brought with it the return of feeling. He tried walking again and couldn't. But he could feel his limbs. But not his injuries. Did that mean he was alive or dead? That's when he concluded he wasn't either. Somehow between life and death. Or between time and space. He didn't know. He didn't care. At least he wasn't falling. But how did I get here? He forced himself to touch his face with a trembling hand. His face was there. His eye was there. 

Something tugged at Moss's feet, and he sank into the endless darkness. Whatever was down there let go and he popped up, bobbing like a buoy caught in rough seas. An intense explosion of sparks and light filled Moss's vision and his eyelids slammed closed in response. Moss blinked, tears rolled down his cheeks. He looked around, consumed by the reverse of absolute darkness. He was hanging in absolute white. Someone or something had turned the lights on. A deep, guttural reverberation reached his ears. It sounded like whale-song. He was not alone. And whatever was there, it was big. His head twisted right and left, but he saw nothing. The sound came again. Closer this time. He looked down, eyes bulging as an enormous creature swam beneath him. It glided through invisible water, an enormous toothless maw opening and closing. Long snaking tendrils jutted out from its glistening, bony lips. It probed the void.

Moss screamed and tried to run away. But got nowhere. The giant creature's glazed over eyes turned to the movement and so too did the long, flowing body behind them. It dove into the white beneath him, tendrils tasting his kicking feet as it passed by. In a single tremendous movement, it reversed course and a writhing tendril darted out and wrapped around his ankle. It dragged him along, making no effort to pull him in. Moss kicked the slimy appendage with his free foot. It slipped off again and again. He looked like a balloon on a string, trailing behind a running child. His left boot heel caught the tendril. The creature twitched in pain and released his ankle. It glided away, making a lazy arc.

Moss realized the wraith wasn't trying to eat him. Whatever this lone leviathan was, it was trying to take him back. Back to a world where he was falling to his death. Back to the place he belonged. To the place where he was supposed to die. And that's when he knew he wasn't supposed to be there. Someone or something had yanked him up and out, and this thing was trying to pull him down and back. He started kicking again, trying to escape the marionette strings that held him in place. He ended up in a prone position, looking like a comic book superhero flying with their fists stretched forward.

Another spark flared into existence on the tip of his nose. A single lightning bug in an endless white void. The flash surprised him and he blinked dumbly, trying to focus on the dot of orange/gold. It fizzled, threw off sputtering sparks and moved away like the fuse burning towards a cannon. It was hypnotic. Moss watched as its tiny spark grew brighter. It pulled him along the same way the creature had. He didn't fight or realize two forces were fighting for his future. Then, without warning, the spark flared up as if it had floated into a cloud of gas. He shielded his face from the raging flames and radiating heat waves.

The ethereal monster tugged at his feet again. Only this time, when he looked down, the creature was a black shadow cruising through a white void. The shadow solidified into a massive fiery koi fish. It locked him with one burning red eye and opened its gigantic mouth. This was it; when death took him. He screamed and flailed. His futile efforts did little to dissuade the creature's meandering onslaught. The specter swam straight for him, increasing its speed, graining distance and preparing to swallow its prey. The creature's mouth closed around his legs and grabbed his waist. He couldn't breathe. He felt the contents of his stomach explode out of his mouth. The damn thing was intent on swallowing him whole. Moss punched its eye and screamed. His hands impacted nothing. The creature was colored shadow and nothing more. He spotted a pinpoint of blackness at the center of its blood red eye and drove his fist in and grabbed the dark spot. Lightning coursed up his forearm, exploding out of his shoulder. It spit his convulsing body out. It darted away only to turn and begin swimming around him in an ever shrinking circle.

When Moss came too, he saw the explosion had knocked both predator and prey in opposite directions. The great void filled with black stars and galaxies. It was beyond his ability to comprehend. The creature, sensing the time to attack was nearing its end, raged forward at a frightening pace.

Moss rocketed backwards, born aloft on a wave of unquantifiable energy. When he came to, he marveled at the brilliance of a trillion of burgeoning stars. His sense of awe was short-lived. The thing had reached him again. It seized his feet, pulling him away, pulling him back towards death.

He kicked it, but his efforts went to no avail. His foot slipped through as if kicking a shadow. The dark entity held fast this time, intending to bear him back to his final resting place at the bottom of a mile high cliff. Moss didn't want to go. The other force seized him, yanked him forward. Only this time, there was no scream of pain. No tearing of flesh and bone. Only a feeling of building speed. That, and a million stars becoming a laser beam that swept past them. And drawing down into an ever-narrowing, ever-lengthening, hair-thin line of atoms stretching across the open expanse of space.

Two unseen forces played an interstellar game of tug of war with a human rubber band and Moss could do nothing but wait and see which would win or if he would snap. Either way, he was certain no matter who won the tug of war for his soul, the life he had known was over.

As he reached the point of snapping into nothingness, the thing that held his feet lost its grip and his speed redoubled. Like an overstretched rubber band finally releasing its pent up energy, he rocketed forward and a trillion celestial embers coalesced into one eye-searing orb on the other side of space and time. He rocketed straight towards it as great waves of searing heat baked his face and forced his eyes closed. This was it. He was almost there. And then he struck something with the force of a shooting star and everything went blank.

Moss's eyelids flicked apart. He lay face down, choking on a mouth full of gritty sand. He rolled over, sputtering and cursing, until his airway cleared. The ground beneath him was cool and moist and felt nice against his hot skin. The sky overhead was a pale blue. He pulled himself onto his knees, finding himself at the bottom of a ten foot deep pit. White clouds drifted by. Moss clawed his way up the steep embankment. As he neared the top, the sound of gentle waves caressing a nearby beach reached his ears.

His head pounded like he'd just come off a 6 month bender and everything spun around him at a 45° angle. For a moment, he thought he was still falling and his little hallucination was just some cosmic joke. But then a mouthful of acidic bile exploded out his guts and he geysers puke all over himself. The taste and smell of it quickly brought his focus.

Moss lay on top of the bank, looking into the hole and imagining what a meteorite might feel like after impact. He remembered his face and froze in a near heart stopping horror. His hand twitched as if he wanted to touch his face. He forced himself not to. Instead, he ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and was glad to find he still had a tongue and teeth. And a mouth.

Moss didn't know what had happened to him, where he was or how he had got there. Nothing made sense. For that matter, he wasn't positive if he was still alive. The only thing he was certain of was that no one fell off a mile high cliff and survived. He forced himself to feel his face and let out a ragged sigh of relief. Apparently, he had survived.

Something moved between Moss and the sun overhead and he rolled away from the looming shadow, trying to get to his feet. The picturesque landscape spun around him and he fell on his knees, holding his pounding head in his hands.

"The dizziness goes away after a while." an oddly familiar woman said, looking down on him.

The sun was at her back, blotting out most of her features. He thought he recognized the voice. Although, this woman's silhouette didn't match the woman he was thinking of. This woman had wild bleach blond hair. White in places and her skin was a bronzed suntanned. Whoever this woman was, she was a polar opposite of the alabaster skinned, black-haired beauty he was thinking of. But the voice, there was no mistaking the voice. It's what had drawn him to her.

"You look like shit," she said, and then laughed when seeing his donning realization of who she was.

"Lilith," he said, more asking himself than her.

"In the flesh."

Moss rose to his feet, looked around and saw a single star hanging low in a translucent blue sky. Half a dozen moons filled the sky, along with countless twinkling stars. Wherever he was, night and day seemed to happen at the same time. Gentle waves washed up along an endless shoreline, and a cool breeze filled him with the scent of cinnamon and seaweed.

"Where am I? How did I get here? And what was that thing back there? It grabbed me." He gestured over his shoulder at nothing. When she didn't respond, he looked her up and down and asked in a confused voice, "And what happened to you? The last thing I remember is trying to get to you after you were hurt. And now… I find you here, looking like…" he paused, unsure of what to say next. In truth, he liked her new look. He liked it a lot.

"It would appear we have much to discuss." she said, turning and walking away.

"Hey," he cried in a shrill voice. "Where are you going?"

She pointed down the beach at a small hut in the distance and said, "There." Then she gestured towards the surf. "You can come, too. But not until you clean up." She sniffed the air in an exaggerated gesture and added with a grimace, "You stink of vomit and ass."

Moss stood there, mind pondering the million different questions running through his mind, but all of them seemed to be stuck somewhere between his brain and vocal cords. All except for the most important one. "Hey," he called out behind her. "Am I dead?"

Lilith Hemmingford turned, shrugged her shoulders and answered with a question of her own, "Do you feel dead?" Then she pulled open the door and went inside the hut, leaving him to his thoughts and a much-needed bath.

When he finally looked down, he found himself covered in puke and feces. "God." he said, looking up. "I don't know if you can hear me. But I need a favor. It's not a big one. And I know I don't have any right to ask. But please, never let Lockspur find out I shit my pants." Then he ran into the surf, tearing off his clothes, jumping waves and whooping like a kid on summer vacation.