Please note: this story was provided by the author and published as is.
I typed out the final paragraph of the email I’d been working on and didn’t bother to check for typos before I hit send. My outgoing mail whooshed as I pushed back my chair and stood, stretching my arms above my head and rolling my stiff neck. As I lifted my arms I got a whiff of myself. Oof. A little ripe. I shrugged. When I’d made the transition from crew to admin at Summit Builders I had wondered if I’d have to invest in more “office-appropriate” attire. On my first day I’d shown up in the same cargo pants and t-shirt I’d worn every day for the past five years, daring the suits to tell me to change. But when I walked in, I saw a bunch of guys in the same Carhartt uniform as me.
Like me, they’d mostly come from the crew—not because they’d wanted a desk job but because their bodies had been broken by years of physical labor. I was no different from the rest. Well, I was a little different. I hadn’t had a choice. There had been a fall, a modest settlement, and a shiny new desk job, along with a fresh scar on my collarbone and a latent fear of heights.
My fractured clavicle had never quite healed, and remained as an aching reminder that I had given up physical labor a few years too late for my aging body to ever be the same.
One thing I could say with confidence that I loved about my new job was that there was no foreman constantly keeping tabs on you. I smiled. Time for a leisurely bathroom break. I grabbed my phone off my desk and slid it into my back pocket. Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that’s why I scroll on company time, I thought to myself. As I walked towards the bathroom I squinted at my coworkers screens over the cubicle partitions.
Email…spreadsheet…solitaire…compliance form…email. It was slow at the office today—our big project near the coast on the north side of town had been put on pause due to “environmental concerns.” Something about a nearby estuary and the threat to local species. I winced as I remembered my buddies’ joking about the nest of baby birds they’d accidentally crushed with the soil compactor a few weeks back. Working in construction I tried not to think too hard about things like that. The bird population didn’t need anyone to protect it. Crows were practically a pest they were so ubiquitous. At any given time there were sure to be a dozen of them watching the office on the telephone wire by my window like the judges on a court that was about to declare us guilty. I cared about the environment more than most people I knew, I just didn’t think it was the end of the world to add a couple more apartments to it. And if I didn’t do it, someone else would, and I’d be out of work.
I pushed the thought from my mind as I closed the bathroom door behind me. I didn’t take work home or to the bathroom. No sooner had I sat down than a chat popped up from my boss. “Can’t get this PDF to download. Need your help.” I shut my eyes and shook my head, letting out a long exhale. I didn’t bother to wash my hands, just gave myself a cursory once over in the mirror, smoothing my healthy looking mustache and quickly flexing my delts.
I reached for the door, stepping out into the hall without a second thought. As I stepped through the doorway I reeled backwards, my eyes unable to make sense of what was before me. Instead of the dirty, grey carpet, my feet rested on a silver grate. I spun backwards, looking for the door I had just walked out of but saw only air. I stumbled as my knees gave out, falling forward onto a metal railing. I wheezed as it hit my chest, my phone flying out of my hand at the impact. I watched as it fell end over end until it became too small to see, exploding into a thousand pieces somewhere on the pavement below. I scrambled backwards, gasping, suddenly aware of how little separated me from the same fate.
My breath caught in my throat as my mind sputtered. Where the hell was I? I looked around, desperately trying to make sense of what I was seeing. A small platform underneath me, a lattice of metal stretching out into the expanse on either side, a man sized hole 3 feet to my left. It began to dawn on me. I was on top of an industrial crane. And not just any industrial crane. I was on top of the 40-story tower crane at 865 Union, the Summit Builders job on the north side of town.
I crossed the metal mesh to the opening in the platform and stared down into the void. A tube of webbed metal extended downwards like an optical illusion. My face began to crumple as I absorbed the one-two punch of what I was seeing. I’m not really here, I repeated to myself like an incantation. The vividness of this hallucination was a problem I’d have to deal with later. I squeezed my lids shut with determination. Right now I had to focus on willing myself back to reality. I was going to open my eyes and I would be standing in the hallway outside the bathroom. I took one deep breath, then another. My heart rate began to slow as my shoulders relaxed. A frigid wind tore through my hair drying the sweat beaded on my forehead and calming my nerves. Wait. No. I was supposed to be back inside the office, in a climate controlled hallway. I knew before I’d opened my eyes that what I would see would confirm my fears.
Okay…think. I could wait for the crew to come back from their lunch and hope someone noticed me up here. That was going to be a doozy to explain, but I couldn’t think about that now. No sooner had the idea occurred to me than that company wide memo that had paused the project earlier this month echoed in my mind. “From the Office of Watershed Conservation…due to environmental concerns…threat to the estuaries native bird populations…865 Union Project on indefinite pause.” Shit. Our guys wouldn’t be coming to save me. Even still, I had to try to get someone’s attention. It was almost noon on a Tuesday and I was 40 stories above one of the most desirable zip codes on the outskirts of the city—there had to be someone around paying attention.
I gingerly stepped towards the edge of the platform. The drop to the pavement below was dizzying. “Hello?” I called. The quiver of my voice revealed something I’d rather not admit: I was starting to panic. I cleared my throat and tried again, louder this time. The vast emptiness around me swallowed my plea whole. The metal groaned as a gust of freezing wind caused the entire structure to sway concerningly. My heart pounded harder. I waved my arms above my head desperately. My compromised collar bone protested with a bolt of pain but I ignored it. “Help! Please! I’m up here!” Nothing. My head spun. The cars on the street below inched along like colorful grains of rice. Pedestrians crawled along the sidewalks oblivious to my impossible, inescapable circumstance. I clenched and unclenched my clammy palms as the fear expanded, filling my chest and cutting off my breath like an inflating balloon.
Created by: Danny Ingrassia
Suddenly I was pulled from my reverie by the sharp caw of a crow. The sound echoed in my ears as though it had come from inside my head, drowning out my thoughts. I squinted upwards, eyes landing on a small shape overhead, a void against the blinding grey of the overcast sky. The crow spiraled down in three easy, slow circles then landed on the far side of the platform, its talons clicking gently against the metal. It adjusted its wings and cocked its head, its beady eyes never leaving my face. It took a few threatening steps forward. I started to feel uncomfortable as the silence bloomed between us. The sentience in those black eyes felt almost human. I recoiled as it continued to stare, assessing or…testing? “Shoo!” I swatted my hand towards it and it flapped away. I shivered, whether from unease or my lack of protection from the late winter winds I didn’t know.
No sooner had I turned away than I was startled by a click and a rustle from directly behind me. I whipped around. Perched on the railing was the same damn crow. Just standing and staring at me with that intelligent, hungry gaze. As it took in the bird in more detail I began to notice that something was wrong. Its inky feathers were dull and missing in chunks. Its beady eyes were unnaturally sunken into its small head. It had the same look in its eyes I saw on clients faces when a project was finishing up late and over budget—waiting, and not patiently, for something it felt it was owed. In this case, I didn’t want to know what. I had more important things to focus on and unlike this menacing creature I didn’t have the luxury of flight to solve my problem. I swatted my hand at it again but this time it didn’t move. “Get outta here!” It didn’t react, just stared. I shuddered. “Fine,” I mumbled to myself as I turned away, “have it your way.”
With my back to the bird, my eyes landed on the opening in the platform. I stared at the ladder that hung there, the paint glinting red in the sun like a freshly washed firetruck. No. I snorted a grim laugh and rolled my eyes. Ridiculous. I sat down and inhaled the chill air deep into my lungs. I would think of something. I waited but nothing came. No one could see me up here and no one would ever think to look. The project was on an indefinite pause—that could mean weeks if not months. How long could I last up here? I did the math in my head. From what I’d read, most people could only last a couple days without water, but that might be enough for someone to notice. A cold breeze rippled across my thin t-shirt. I shivered.
Oh. Oh no. My heart sank into my stomach like I’d swallowed an ice cube whole. It wasn’t hunger or thirst that I needed to worry about. In a few hours the temperature would start dropping, and it wouldn’t stop until it dipped well below freezing. All I was wearing was an old pair of cargo pants and a threadbare t-shirt. I was on a mesh metal platform, exposed to the elements with no protection. I put the pieces together slowly, my mind resisting the realization. A sudden gust of wind whistled up through the metal grate, punctuating my thoughts and making the entire structure sway like a rocking boat.
I didn’t have days—I had hours. I would barely have time to miss a meal before the cold would kill me. I let out a long breath as my hopes deflated. As I gazed over the edge of the platform a grim thought crossed my mind. I could just end it. Take one step and let the crows feast on what was left in the dirt. An impact from this high up, I wouldn’t even look like myself once I landed. How would they identify me? What was terminal velocity for a free falling body? I shook my head sharply, trying to drive away the macabre train of thought. Even still the afterimage remained, imprinted in my mind’s eye like a bad dream. My remains spread in the dirt like a childs forsaken ice cream cone, shiny black crows picking at my entrails like so many ants.
I struggled to make sense of my options. I couldn’t wait it out, that much I was sure of. I wasn’t going to jump, not yet at least. I didn’t give up that easily. But then…what? I could feel the ladder staring at me but refused to turn. I had one good arm and one that relied on a hopelessly compromised clavicle. Trying to climb down 40 stories with one arm, holding fast to metal that was the kind of cold that burned—I could hardly see a difference between that and suicide. I could think of nothing else, my thoughts clouded by the absurdity and the hopelessness of my situation. I suddenly felt very small, and very, very high up. Panic began to rise anew, filling my ears with a roaring like an oncoming train.
Then two things happened at once, quieting the mental cacophony with a disturbing authority. From behind me came a loud caw, and in the same instant a word sounded in my head like a gong, rising up to echo above the rest. “Climb,” a voice commanded. Looking back, I can’t explain what happened next. My legs began to move of their own accord, the small platform shaking with each step as I made my way towards the opening. As I slowly leaned over it, a column of wind rushed towards me, blowing my hair back and bringing tears to my eyes. I swayed dizzily. The distant ground seemed to recede and ebb like a tide, gently and insistently pulling me towards the void.
I lowered one leg through the cavity without pausing to think. My foot found the first rung. I had just begun to lower my body when my work boot slipped on the slick metal with a sharp squeal. Instinctively, I braced my shoulders against the sides of the hole, gasping with the effort. Immediately, my collar bone screamed with pain. The kind of pain that was not just an alert but a warning. My legs flailed wildly as I dangled over the abyss, suspended just by my shaking arms. The blinding pain in my damaged collarbone worsened as my muscles strained against it. I reached my foot forward, feeling desperately for a solid surface as my shoulders began to burn, warning of their nearing failure. With the last bit of effort I could wring from my throbbing muscles, I braced myself and swung my legs forward. At the same moment I felt something give in my collar. I yelped in pain as I dropped through the opening, shutting my eyes to brace for the free fall. Instead, my foot reconnected with the first rung, my weight landing heavily, sending a jolt through my body. I stood panting as my heart thundered in my chest. My clavicle sang with agony, my arm now a dead weight at my side.
As I breathed I glanced up instinctively, sensing eyes on me. The crow stood on the platform less than a yard away, watching. There was something wrong with this animal, I was sure now. And it wasn’t just that it looked like it was starving. No, there was something in its eyes that said more than that. It looked…I tried to find the word. There was hunger there, yes, but also…resentment. I winced as my collar bone shot through with pain and I was struck with a memory of my last day on the crew.
The first thing I remembered was the air being forced from my lungs as I hit the ground. There was a loud pop and a blinding white pain. And then I remembered laughing as the guys gently mocked me as they loaded me into my buddies pickup, miming my ungainly fall. I’d been able to keep it together all the way to the hospital, despite the bumpy ride as my driver seemed to hit every pothole along the way with his old pickup. It wasn’t until I’d laid down on the hospital bed and the adrenaline had started to wear away that the pain had become unbearable. I remembered the cold sweat and the nausea, and then the relief of the pain meds. I didn’t have pain meds up here. There wasn’t a hospital bed to recline on either. I had maybe an hour before I was going to be in an unbearable amount of pain. Before I could talk myself out of it, I was climbing.
The frigid metal of the ladder bit at my one good hand as I awkwardly made my way from rung to run. With each step I looked down to find sure footing, knowing that if I slipped now there would be nothing to catch me. With every glance my heart leapt into my throat as the ladder extended below me endlessly. My body began to tremble, with cold, pain, and shock. There was no reprieve from the terror of being at such a height. Every nerve screamed the danger of my situation, adrenaline crackling across my skin like electricity.
Then from behind me, a caw. I turned my head just as the crow sailed past circling the structure. The impulsive movement made my shoulder sing with excruciating pain. The bird’s easy flight taunted me, mocking my terror. I belong here, it seemed to say, and you do not. It circled me, waiting, like a vulture that had found carrion—I just wasn’t dead yet. Air whistled through the lattice as I climbed, chilling my fingers to numbness. It was when I could no longer feel my grip that I was forced to stop to warm my hand. The crow sliced past my head, darting through a gap in the latticework and landing gracefully on the opposite side of the structure. This time I wasn’t turning around. I dreaded the desperate, eager hunger I would see in those beady, black eyes. I stared forward, seeing nothing, and continued climbing.
I tried to focus on something, anything else, desperate to keep my mind off of the agony in my shoulder that was now radiating down through my fingertips. I had to dedicate all my attention to my other arm, pulsing with the twin pains of my exhausted muscles and the biting cold of the metal against my bare flesh. I paused for the briefest moment to flex my hand, hoping to drive some more warmth into it, and looked out towards the horizon. The wetlands stretched out to the east, hemmed in by the encroaching city like an outdated, mossy shag carpet. It was hard to imagine that this flat, muddy place was teeming with life. One lonely heron revealed itself, taking flight from the tall grass. I tried to imagine looking out at this view from inside one of the luxury apartments that, sooner or later, would materialize on this spot. I pictured the plush white couches and sterile walls. It was the kind of project I would have been proud to work on in my early days at Summit Builders. Estuary views on the outskirts of the city. The kind of project that required A+ work, as my boss would’ve called it. A gust of chill, fresh wind rippled the untamed reeds below. Nothing looked like much from this high up, really.
The structure swayed and groaned in the wind, and I felt less like I was standing on reinforced steel and more like I was clinging to the top of one of the rippling reeds in the grassland below. I shuddered, heart pounding, and continued climbing. Slowly but surely, I was making progress. Please, I silently pleaded, please just hold the pain off for a little bit longer. Please let my good arm carry me through this. Please. I shivered, the hairs on my arm standing on end in the brisk wind. The skin on my neck began to prickle. Not with cold…no…it was something else—something more. I began to sense a pair of eyes boring into the back of my skull. I knew what was behind me, but I wouldn’t be stopping to check. As I made my way unsteadily from rung to rung I heard the clicks and rustles behind me that told me I was being followed. I fixed my gaze on the horizon, determined not to give in. There was something off about this animal, something unnatural. There was a malevolence to the purpose in those blank eyes. I could feel their heat on my back like the threat of an approaching forest fire. I didn’t know what would happen if I turned around, but I knew I must not look.
Slowly, against my will and my judgement, my head began to turn of its own accord, as though an invisible hand had grabbed me by the chin. My eyes were frozen wide with terror. My neck screamed in agony as my head was wrenched around. The crow blinked at me, its gaze desperate and hungry. I stared, taking in the missing feathers and the sunken eyes. I was unable to look away, sinking further and further into those bottomless, inky eyes. I felt my body begin to sway as a great gust of wind rocked the thin structure to and fro. My grip on reality began to loosen along with my grip on the ladder. That blackness reached towards me, filling my vision until it had nearly swallowed me whole. My knees began to tremble. A caw filled my ears, reverberating through my skull until there was no shape to the sound, just an increasingly distant roar.
It was when I felt the wind tearing through my hair that I realized I was falling. I tried to scream but the air was ripped from my open mouth before I could make a sound. I writhed desperately, my instinctive scramble for survival superseding my conscious understanding that there was nothing I could do. My body rolled in the air and for an instant I was on my back with my arms and legs floating weightlessly above me. In the distant sky a small black apparition circled and wheeled, triumphant. How long could I fall? For a moment I wondered if I would be suspended in this purgatory forever, falling ceaselessly towards nothing. Then I hit the ground.
My body splintered in a flash of blinding pain. Suddenly I was on my hands and knees on a familiar grey carpet, gasping. Something was vibrating in my pocket. I reached in, my body’s conditioned response to the demand of that piece of inert metal taking over, and pulled out my phone. A message from my boss lit up the screen: “Need help with this PDF ASAP.” Mechanically, I stood up and started towards his office.
I’m back at my desk now. I’ve been sitting here staring at this spreadsheet for the past couple hours. I can’t process what happened to me. I’m beginning to question my sanity. I don’t know who to talk to. There’s not a person in my life who wouldn’t look at me differently if I tried to explain to them what I just experienced. So…here I am. Turning to the strangers of the internet for comfort or guidance or a referral for a good psychiatrist.
The harder I try to push it from my mind, the more insistently the experience comes back. I’ve been trying to go back to work and let myself be lulled by the normalcy but there’s this…noise coming from my office window. It’s grating at me, making me clench my jaw and tense my sore shoulders and twinging collar bone. It’s quiet, but impossible to ignore. I dug up an old pair of industrial ear plugs I used to wear on job sites from the bottom of my bag—they’re rated for 30 decibels but they’re not doing a damn thing to block it out. There’s no hurry to the sound, just a constant, insistent noise. I can hear it now, at the window right behind me. I know it’s there but every time I turn around there’s nothing, the telephone wire now free of its usual panel of birds. I’m staring at my computer, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, trying to focus. But this noise just won’t go away. It’s this rustling, this clicking. It’s almost…my heart sinks…it’s hungry. I can’t see the creature knocking at my window but I know if I could I would see beady black eyes in a shiny, sable head pecking, scratching, clawing to get in.