Impulse

Silven Head had always been a sanctuary for us. A place to retreat, the road winding and just long enough to pretend that we could escape civilization and our mundane lives. My escape started when I stepped into her car when she picked me up from wherever, just a short time after the hurried call. “You wanna go.” She would say, her voice breathless and you could taste the desire on the tip of your tongue. “Yeah” I would reply, and that was all we needed. Her car smelled of her, and it was like her world encased me on the drive over. We would talk, over the music, like stuffing socks into an already full hamper. We spewed, words that meant nothing, and we didn't care, we just wanted to be there. Giddy and free, we basked in the anticipation.

We were jealous lovers of the sea. The Head was hardly a secret and the spell was fractured when we saw the locals and tourists wandering on ground we held as sacred, their cars lined up to look over the sheer cliffs. This place of wild beauty and abandon, where dark salt water met unyielding cliffs and jagged rocks with only a hint of beach here and there as an afterthought. The giggles, the oooh's and aahhh's and the patter of small children and dogs, sounds of couples, quarreling or not, we couldn't stand it. I broke our serenity. So, we came at night, the legality of it tossed into the stew of our words, but we didn't much care, we had never been caught or chastised, so the Head was still our territory. The darkness did not guarantee that we found our lover alone. Sometimes there were others, a pickup truck with steamy windows, a car going up as we came down, or coming down as we came up, depending on the season. The dark didn't seem to repel anyone at all, but that night we were alone, the only trespassers on that dark corner of the world.

We stepped out of the car and into the cold wet wind. It was barely raining, an exploratory sprinkling, outlining our faces with connect-the-dot touches. The wind too was gentle and fickle, sometimes bringing the rich scent of the sea and sometimes only the smell of wet earth and grass. We stood there a minute, separated by the car, staring out into the dark, waiting for our eyes to adjust and bring us something out of the incomplete darkness. I closed my eyes and inhaled, seeking the elusive fragrance of salt water, death, life, and decay that was the ocean. Pitch black turned into deep gray and the white water stood out against the rocks and the sky. We tried to ignore the glow on the horizon of the town lights, blocked by the hills that surrounded us. We forgot about the paved road and the constructed fences as we made our way in the semi-dark down a wide dirt path, our flashlights still off. As the path grew rough and narrowed, heading towards the cliff edge I turned on my flashlight, its wide circle of light illuminating the ground at our feet. I flicked it forward and down, alternating between seeing where to place my feet and where I was heading. We knew the path well, but the steep drop off only a few feet to our right made me weary. There was nothing to stop us from falling over, no rail, no sign, nothing and the path split, leading to short paths that lead right up to, and sometimes over, the edge.

We walked in silence, listening to the sounds of the waves, sometimes nothing more than the gentle crashing that puts me to sleep, and sometimes the sharp concussive sound of thunder at our feet. We loved the sound, wild, unpredictable, untameable, and we let it sink into our skin as we made our way down the path.

We stopped, just a few steps from the edge, at a widening of the muddy brown path. The rich fabric of the night encased us in heavy folds that we wrapped around ourselves, softer than silk. We looked out at the ocean, rock islands separated from the cliff, jutted out like mountains above the fog and the mist. The rolling white waters looked like clouds in the dark sea which melted into the sky. There was no horizon, water and air where indistinguishable and it was like we stood with the world far below our feet, heads above the clouds. Stars tried to poke their way through the fog. We stood, shivered and let it all clean away our thoughts. The sea is never still but the unrestrained power of the meeting of water and land has always made me quiet, inside and out.

We stood, as we had so many nights of our life, side by side, silent companionship. I do not remember starting to move. I was not in control of anything, no thought prompted me to break the serenity, solemnity of water and night. The flashlight made a dull thud as it hit the ground and splashed mud on already soiled ankles. It took only four steps to come to the edge and push myself over. Only a few dreamlike seconds. Then time and sensation resumed and I was falling. The indistinct water and rocks gaining clarity and I heard her. The shock delayed her cry. She could not open her mouth until I was over the cliff and falling fast towards the waiting clouds of sea foam and jagged rocks. The cry was ripped from her, indistinct, as if she had forgotten how to say my name. It was pulled away from us both by the wind. It was not a serene fall. It was not peaceful. I was a prisoner of my body, and all I wanted was to go back. Go back to her, go back to the edge, step back from the cliff and run the opposite direction. The horror of the action, that final step and the falling pressed against my body, companion to the wind. In those few seconds my life did not flash before my eyes. I had time only for dread to take my body and for one last thought. “How could I do this?” I did not have time to remember to love her. I didn't have time to think of regret. I only had time to be horrified and confused. I did not want this.

If the falling was bad, that deep painful turn of anticipation, then the landing was worse. I wish I could say that it was quick, painful but quick. I hit the water first, a bright concussion of pain. The water pushed my bruised body against the jagged rocks and I left pieces of myself behind, raw bloody, gruesome pieces. The cold sank in to those open wounds and much too slowly my world went black.



I woke slowly and with great difficulty. Feeling my way back from the all too vivid dream. The sheets wrapped me and refused to give me up easily. I could hear the panting of my own breath. Could feel the chill of sweat and smell the acrid stench of fear. I could hear the thunder of the ocean, taste brine. For long minutes I shuddered in the dark, trying to wrap my fingers around reality. My breath did not ease until I cried, the warmth of my tears convincing me that I was still alive. I cried because I was scared, I cried to remind myself that I was real, but mostly I cried because I had lost my sanctuary. I could never go back to that peaceful place overlooking the ocean. Every time after that, when I stand on those cliffs, breath in the salt and fog, I will not be in the place I loved, I will be in a newer, darker place, where I will always remember the time I went over the edge.