I wrote this story for a class in the Fall of 2014. I’m just now coming back to it. I made a few line edits but I’m about to begin the process of revision, and I’m going to document the different versions of the story as they come up. The story:

 

Anywhere But Here

“Earth, gape!”- Faustus, Doctor Faustus, V.iiii

 

Birds must feel so alone, he thought.

He peered over the rim of the carriage of a drab hot air balloon, which wasn’t difficult because the basket’s sides barely reached his waist.  Between the ropes, propane tanks, his girlfriend, and the Imp of his mind there wasn’t nearly enough room for him to breathe, even at 1,500 feet off the ground.

“Don’t you think it’s ironic,” he asked, “how little room there is in this carriage, with all of this open air surrounding us?”  Like a ship at sea, or a rocket in space, or an oasis in the desert, or a lab in Antarctica.

He struggled to remember a time when claustrophobia hadn’t consumed his world.  He felt it now, more severe even than he had felt it in the car on the way to the launch.  His girlfriend had driven them an hour and a half from his apartment –which was designed for one but occupied by two– out to the old farm she frequented as a kid, where she used to ride hot air balloons with her uncles, back when the business had business. 

He looked around, his brain replacing reality with a memory. The basket was about the size of the kitchen table the night she told him that they would be married.  Neither remembered the scene fondly. It started with her asking how he felt about her and ended with her telling him that he would be her husband within the year. Then he made some mistake he wasn’t aware of. Perhaps he forgot to smile at the thought of binding himself permanently, til death do us part.  She became angry, and she had stayed that way since. He remembered her staring at him across the table, silently screaming out of her nostrils, before groaning, standing up, crossing to the kitchen, and turning off the oven, leaving the factory-farm, cage-raised chicken half raw behind the glass.

She was busy with the same task now, adjusting the burner that released propane up, up, finally free, up into the balloon, keeping them afloat.

Wind pressed against his face, moving his long hair (hair that she had told him to cut for several months) out of his right eye and into his left.  It picked his cap up off his forehead, forming a gap just wide enough for his fate to slide in and seal. Before he realized what was happening, his hand had already sprung upward, gripping the bill of his cap between two of his fingers and his thumb, dangled several feet off the side of the carriage.  

He felt a loss of control, realizing that his actions were nothing more than automatous reactions to the stimuli surrounding him. If another gust came headstrong, he would squint. If his cap blew, he would catch it.  If his girlfriend asked another question, he would groan in exasperation. He became vaguely aware that she was chastising him for the sudden movement which had set the carriage rocking out of her control. He became vaguely aware that his body was groaning.

He noticed that the cap was still in his hand.  He hadn’t replaced it on his head. He watched his fingers pull the cap to his chest, then position it in front of his face, blocking his eyes from the view.

“What the hell are you doing?” 

she asked, staring at him as he stood with his face in his hat like a clown hiding his shame and embarrassment and boredom in a pie.

“Come over here and help.  And put the damn hat in my purse or back on your head.  Those are your options. I’m tired of having to be your mother all the time.  It’s annoying. Grow up and do something.”

He held the hat over the edge, wiggling it in the wind to piss her off. It worked.

“Dammit.  I just bought you that hat.  Please don’t lose it. I still don’t understand why you thought today would be a good day for it,” 

she resumed the argument from the car.

“I’m only wearing it because you bought it! All of these clothes are from you! They’re yours! I don’t care what I wear. What’s so wrong with it anyway”  He had involuntarily thrown his arms over his head, cap in hand, at the end of the statement, unconsciously forming an upside-down exclamation point with his body.

“Because it’s a red plaid hat and a green plaid suit.  Why would you wear those together? It’s good that no one can see us, I’m embarrassed to be seen near that outfit,” 

she finished a few dozen inches from his face but as far away as they could possibly be from each other.

Anywhere but here, he thought, I wish I were anywhere but here.

The wind blew again, a gust much stronger than those before.  With it came the realization of how easy it would be to simply float away.  He wondered for a moment if the wind could possibly be strong enough to swoop down under his feet, pick him up and pull him from the carriage. Pull him to wherever wind comes from, or wherever it goes.

He looked down at the ground, unreal so far away.  His hamstrings tensed at the idea of jumping. He had never had a suicidal thought before, and this was definitely not one, but rather a prickly curiosity inspired by wonder at how a universe so disordered and random and prone to fated accident could have, really, such a small number of true accidents.  How many times could things have gone seriously wrong, yet they didn’t? He could have simply slipped at the edge of a train station platform. Yes, these accidents do happen, but imagine how many people ride trains every day throughout the world, and how few accidents happen. When he stood at train stations, he always felt oddly compelled to leap onto the tracks, the only reason being that it might accidentally happen to him anyway.  The Imp must have been with him then, too. Here was his train station; a short wicker fence. It was all right there, a closed track wrapping round him, coiling in its prey. Escaping wouldn’t take any real effort either. It would be like climbing into bed for a long nap.

 

He tried to push the thought from his mind, but once the Imp found itself, it refused to leave.  He flexed each leg in turn, simulating both a jumping motion and a reeling motion, saving himself from leaning too far forward.

Glancing back at her, he watched her small hands navigating the pressure valves and releasing some of the tension trapped in their small expanse of sky, bringing the float down before they got so high that the atmosphere suffocated them. 

He turned back to look at the world, the flat, the trees, the greens.  If the wind relieved him of his hat, it would land somewhere down there among the leaves, maybe in a wood, or a farm, or a backyard.  If it hopped off his head and stopped an arm’s length away and he leaned too far for it, he would fall out. 

He felt himself leaning forward, his stomach suspended over the world, chest further, his heavy head reaching furthest. He pulled back, utilizing the many loose ropes that were left dangling off from the balloon like an over-prepared gallows.

He ran his hand over the knots and imagined swinging under the balloon like he was back at home, back at the tiny playground at the back of the neighborhood, back before he had ever met her or grown up and started worrying about things.  He imagined throwing his weight forward, then pulling back and swinging his legs forward, generating motion and power. And then, at the height of his swing, the furthest he could get from the ground (yet, geometrically bound to the same radial distance from the balloon that he was before) he imagined letting go, just as he had when he was a kid. Except back then, the wonder of flying was broken by the inevitability of the ground rushing up to catch him.  From the balloon, there would be no catch; only the rush, the wonder, the flight, forever. 

He again found his muscles tensed, pulsing forward and backward, his body a metronome synchronized with the thoughts he didn’t have any control over.  Dreams happen to people, not the other way around. Usually, he thought, they happen when you’re safe in bed, too.

The sound of the propane release magnified.  They were rising again, which she was in control of, in some eastward direction, which she was not.

He traced the slow whine back to one of the tanks near his feet.  A metal tank with a simple knob and a basic tube had carried them miles from their launch through space.  He wondered what would happen if the balloon lost the whole tank at once, instead of easing the release of propane to control the descent.  He imagined the deflated balloon outweighing the carriage, pinning them to the ceiling of the basket as it hurdled towards the ground. It could all come about with just a quick toss of equipment and a snap of the tube.  Already, he could see himself doing it. It wouldn’t be very difficult at all. Plus, it might look more like an accident when the people on the ground found them. And she would go, too.

He blinked a few times before coming back to the present. “Do you realize how dangerous all of this is?”

“What?” she asked, brows furrowed at some gauge he hadn’t noticed before.

“How dangerous it all is.  I can list five ways we could die on accident, not to mention-” he said louder, placing a special emphasis on the word accident.

“Please, I ballooned hundreds of times as a girl. I got my pilot’s license at 16. And besides, my uncles ran the company for 23 years before there was an accident.  I told you all of this in the car. Weren’t you lis-…” she continued, but he had already fallen into another daydream he knew he wouldn’t survive. They had been in the car, trapped in the metal deathtrap that flung them from his apartment to the field where they launched.  She might have been talking about his outfit, but he didn’t have any idea because he hadn’t been listening. He had instead been imagining reaching over the dashboard, grabbing the steering wheel at noon, and advancing it three or four hours into the guardrail. 

Maybe if he had been listening to her talk about her uncles and the hot air balloon company and her experience he would have felt more secure in the basket where his head, despite years of lazy posture, rested at the same height as the torch.  If he wasn’t careful, or he felt compelled to cross the carriage for any reason, he might strike it with his temple and knock the flame to the ground, light the wooden basket, the ropes, his clothes, her clothes, everything. He wondered if the flames would consume him by the time the balloon was at rest.

The patchwork fields below sat stagnant, and he could tell that the loud hiss in his ears meant that they were rising now, much faster than before. The oxygen was slipping into his throat much easier now, and his body took great deep breaths.  He remembered being young, but only the face of it. He remembered thinking of his future and adulthood. As a kid he dreamed of hot air balloons and girlfriends. He decided to never do something so risky again. That night at the kitchen table she had told him that she would be his last girlfriend.  She had been his first as well, but that night he had made a personal decision not to date anyone after her. Looking around at the primitivism of the aircraft, he considered his own inability to confront difficult decisions. Fighting the curiosity of the Imp would be the most difficult decision he wouldn’t make.  He finally understood that they had both been right, but for the wrong reasons. She would be his last girlfriend, and this would be his last air-balloon.

She was still playing with the burner when he started feeling light headed.  They had been rising for some time now and as they went higher and higher the oxygen helped the Imp play tricks on his brain.

 

* * *

He woke up, sitting on his ankles, with both arms draped over equipment.  His legs were exhausted and felt sore from the constant oscillation of activation, accompanied by a lightness in his chest, mythical arms reaching around him, pulling him up towards the edge of the carriage. Giving in slightly more with each tug, he found it easier to breathe with the assistance of whatever imaginary being was wrapped around him.

He found his cap resting in his lap, not where he left it, but definitely not moved by her because she was still pulling on various ropes and poking gauges as though she knew what she was doing.

“What are you doing?” he asked without full consciousness, still recovering from the oxygenated sleep.

“Adjusting the carbonator,” she retorted in an instant, as though she had been rehearsing the line for hours, trying to make it sound believable.

“What? What carbonator? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course it does. I’ve been flying these for years!”

“You haven’t flown one of these in decades!!” he exclaimed, slowly understanding how little she actually remembered about flying the balloon.

“NOW YOU LISTEN TO ME. I have been trying to fly a goddam balloon for the past fifteen years and this is the first opportunity I’ve had.  I know you don’t give a damn about it but this is my dream and if we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together you have to start letting me do the things that I want to do!!” For the first time since they took off, she turned her body away from the machinery and actually looked at him on the floor of the basket, thousands of feet above the world she distanced herself from.

“Why did you bring me here? Couldn’t you have just come out by yourself?”

That had done it. Tears burst from her eyes like a neglected bathtub. She turned away from the pressure gauges, tightened her grip with one hand on the railing of the basket and the other on several ropes, and watched the world spin underneath.

He knew that she wouldn’t speak to him for at least a few hours, and that she probably wouldn’t even turn his direction for several minutes. Her signature blend of the “silent treatment” and perfect stubbornness was one of her more appealing qualities.

He took this opportunity to stand up and reorient himself to conscious flight. The moment that his head broke over the rim of the basket he was immersed in a wind so constant and forceful that it was not unlike entering a passing stream headfirst. The relaxed grip of his hand almost lost its contact with the cap, and he was reminded of the image of the cap floating freely through the sky. How he wanted to feel such freedom, to rid himself of this situation!

His curiosity was again excited by the luxurious ease of accident. He wondered how they survived the long car ride to the field, passing so many thousands of other cars without accident. He remembered his own impish longing to cause an accident, but he could not recall why he did not carry it out. He thought about all of the impulses he had felt during the balloon ride, and for each of them he could not summon a reason for his choosing not to follow through with his natural longings other than laziness. Welp, not today. Today I change.

The strongest fear he had upon boarding the balloon was that he might spontaneously fall over the rim into the abyss of the universe, and so the strongest impulse he felt was to throw his body over the railing. The fear manifested itself in his cap’s leap over the edge, and the longing in him was spawned from the first reaching catch he made.

* * *

The cap wants to be thrown; the cap wants to be caught, far away and far below the carriage. He can’t handle the curiosity pulsing through his legs. The muscle spasms grow more intense. A tingling in his brain excites his senses.  The Imp demands to be realized. He knows he should at least make it look like an accident. He tosses the cap.

Anywhere but here.