An Extraordinary Man

They stand at a cliff looking off into the tomorrow that has little potential to become today.

“I wish not for my name to die with my flesh”, he says. More like he was addressing the world and not just her.

“Then you must jump”, she tells him,

“They saw an extraordinary man in you. A man you could never really find in your reflection. Did you not chase their praise the way a predator might chase its pray… relentlessly? The only difference, Perhaps, is that you were insatiable. You sold your soul for the applause and the sound of your name rolling off their tongues ”, she pauses, “you are a weary man” 

“Yes”, He replies although she had said it as a statement. He does not defend himself for what she said was true. He was a rich man that lived poorly or a poor man that lived rich, in his case, both meant the same thing. 

“You must jump”, she continues, “it was you that said genius and tragedy were rarely estranged. That men like you aren't meant to die from old age, from sickness or from the hands of another. You must give the audience a farewell they will never forget."

He turns his face and looks at her one last time “It is sad; that they will make poetry out of my ending; that they will find beauty to paint over my tortured canvas. It is even sadder that that’s all I think of in this moment.” it was then that he realized that he was lost in this world and so to be lost in the darkness below his feet suddenly wasn't so scary.

Meanwhile, a crowd cautiously approaches the back of the man from a distance. Screaming “move away from the cliff”, “don’t do it” and other utterances muffled by the sound of the high wind. They see him turn his face to the side for a few seconds as if there was someone there and then…he jumped.

 

~Unconven