The Edge

The Edge

There’s always an edge that a person will find in their life that they can’t jump across. An edge that leads into darkness; an edge too far to get across.

You find there is no bridge and there are no tools to build that bridge out of. The only solution to getting around this edge is to turn around and never look back.

That edge is built not out of rock, but out of a lifetime’s worth of decisions, mistakes, and failures. It’s a road block that will never be finished; it’s sharp jagged points will cut your skin if you get too close. Little pebbles fall from that edge as your feet brush the very rim, they tumble and tinkle down but never do they reach the bottom. There is no bottom to this edge, and there is nothing beyond.

How could I have?

If you step across this edge, or even slip just beyond it, you float into nothingness. Into a darkness that not even the brightest light can penetrate. You’re utterly alone, cold, and miserable.

How could I have let that happen? I knew it was coming, why was I so keen to see where Harry was? Why? I knew he was safe, in my heart, I knew he was safe.

That edge will fade away as you fall, a slow measly pace, and soon enough the edge and it’s sharp points will disappear into the darkness.

You’ll find that you can’t move your fingers or your toes. You can’t blink and you can’t choose the direction in which you will drift. You can only hope that your feet will hit bottom and you can take the long journey home. The long trek of climbing up that steep wall of sharp rocks and jagged stone. You will cut your fingers and shred your clothes but you will be happy and the pain will be nothing compared to the loneliness of your stupidity and isolation.

What have I done? Blacks aren’t meant to be stupid. What have I done?

You find yourself thinking. Thinking hard and long about the most irrelevant things, about the sky and why it just can’t be purple. Or why you never have matching socks or why you didn’t choose to wear something warmer the day you fell off the edge.

Slowly you grow to wonder why your magic hasn’t helped, why your wand is gone and then you remember your can’t move your arms anyway. You wonder why you never dyed your hair or talked to that girl in your Transfiguration class. You wonder why you didn’t take the time to say goodbye to those you love before you fell, before you were gone forever.

The thoughts seem to help for a while, until they override any emotion and you start to wonder when you will decay. When you will rot right in front of your eyes as you float. You’ll wonder whether or not that when you scream from the pain, will there be any noise? And if there were, would anyone hear?

You start to wonder what happened to all of the others who fell from the edge, and why they’re not keeping you company. Why you’re not seeing the dry white bones floating by like the candles in Hogwarts. Then you realize that you could be surrounded by the ghastly bones but the darkness hides them. You start to wonder if your flesh is peeling away because darkness is so whole that you can’t see your eyelashes.

Then, slowly, you start to see that edge again. You try hard to move your hands to grasp the edge, to pull yourself up again, to keep on living and never making a mistake again. But it slips away, it fades as if it never were and you realize that it never was.

The edge was just pieces of your life, just pieces of a puzzle trying to figure itself out, and when it’s solved you wonder where you’ll be. If you’ll find a place somewhere else where it’s warm and comfortable, that offers a group of people for a pleasant conversation.

Maybe, just maybe, if I think I never fell, will I have?

Your mind deteriorates until you think of nothing but finding that edge and climbing back up. You forget those you love and things you’ve seen. You forget how you came to be floating in this darkness, and in the end, you accept it. You accept the fact that your body may be rotted and covered in maggots, you accept that you make be nothing more than raw meat with a glimpse of white bone because your skin has decomposed.

In the end you wonder if there was ever anything other than the darkness that envelops you wholly.