Edge

It's always fascinated me, since before I started getting trapped here, how there are hundreds of ways of seeing anything. There are different words you can use, different thoughts. There are ways to leave out important points and focus on little ones. No one sees life the same, nor death, and I think the strength in our species is that we're all so different and yet so similar.

On the one hand, I am sitting on top of a singular stair gazing at the sky. See, that sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Nothing particular is going on – the waves are crashing beneath me, the wind is howling as it goes by. All is still, and almost silent, and perhaps by a certain way of describing it we could believe it's peaceful.

But on the other hand, I am sitting on top of charcoal, ash, dust, and death. The sky is blood red and the sea smashing beneath me is reflecting the color. Every now and again a pale flash of limb appears, limbs that have been separated from the rest of their bodies and are so pale from blood loss that they don't even look like skin anymore. The wind holds whispers and screams and begging of voices, and they screech and claw and tear at my lone silhouette.

Two sides to everything. Sometimes more. Sometimes much more.

Perhaps you think the fact that I am sitting here, not moving, staring at this vast sky, strange. Many expect a more emotional response – screaming, crying, terrified shaking. I've been here so many times, though. I am not desensitized – no, that doesn't happen to me – but I have learned. No emotional reaction changes the facts. I can shout and sob and tremble all I want but the world around me will not change. It will continue.

So I sit in a silent restlessness, my body aching to move but being too afraid to.

Besides, what's the point in moving, really? 

I'm not going to get anywhere. Just another section of another step of an endless space. 

It can't hurt to wait it out, I guess. 

There's something small moving towards me. Through the thick veil of red mist, I can hardly make out the swaying figure until he's close to me. He's really tiny – a child – with jeans and no shirt on, with dark, sunkissed skin below messy brown hair and green eyes, I think. His eyes are too squinted and too hesitant for me to read directly.

The blur of distant lines turns into a figure stationed directly in front of me, eyes cold and almost distant as he takes in my own relaxed, reclined posture. 

A moment of silence, and the wind whistles and bites at us.

I smile at him. 

"You're young," I say.

He looks at me suspiciously. "You're old."

"Not really." My eyes turn up to the sky for a moment, and his gaze follows, jumping a bit. It's a bit hard to make out the sky from the fog, and I can't imagine that he spent the time walking up to my location staring upwards, but rather looking at his own two feet, as there's no railing on the staircase.

"Where am I?" he asks, his voice low to hide the emotion of fear that wishes to edge into him. I'm impressed by his reaction, how calm he's being, especially for his age.

"You're on a staircase."

"Duh." The attitude in his face and voice makes me grin slightly. Then he changes his expression into a mask of composure and tries again. "What staircase? Where?"

I shrug. "I don't know. I don't know much except the fact that I am here sometimes. And, sometimes, I'm not. Sometimes I'm in another world with streets and cars and people that grin and have brown hair." I'm rambling, yeah, but I don't really care. Anything that reminds me of the place I can't remember totally might bring me back. And there, I'm happy...

"I've never been here before," he muses, voice distant.

"What's your name?"

He looks at me, as if considering, and suddenly then there's this fear in his – are they blue? I think they're blue – eyes. "I... I don't know."

I smile, again. "It's okay. I don't know mine either."

I earn a blank stare from the new arrival for a few moments before, enjoying the rare company, I scoot a little bit to the side, careful not to get too close to the rail-less edge, and pat out a space for him. Tentatively, he sits next to me.

"Where does this staircase lead to?"

"No one knows." 

He's staring at me. His gaze is razor sharp, almost jagged, as if prodding me to continue, and undaunted by his glare – I mean, obviously. If I were to be frightened of anything in this world, it wouldn't be a little boy who looked at me funny – I continue. "Some think at the top it's a way back to our old lives permanently. Some say it's heaven. Some say there's nothing there."

"Some?" He looks at me, still guarded. That's okay, though. He'll warm up eventually or he'll fall or he'll climb. It's what happens. "There are others here?"

I nod.

"Where are they?"

So many questions. "Some didn't climb up with me. Some kept climbing passed me. Others fell."

The face of the boy next to me goes a bit rigid, and he asks a question that his voice says he doesn't want to know the answer to. "What happens to the ones that fall?"

I glance down at the water and, carefully, he follows suit. We can just make out a head rolling within one of the currents.

He starts shaking, and when he looks back at me, he's crying. I don't comfort him, I allow him to continue, staring around the world as if it suddenly got more interesting in the last ten seconds as he wipes his eyes bitterly.

It's minutes later before he returns to me, the edges of his eyes and face red and his expression a bit broken. "Sorry," he mutters, as if he'd done something wrong.

I shrug. "I don't care." After a few moments in silence, I finally nudge him gently, a bit afraid of accidentally pushing him off. "How old are you?"

"Eight. How old are you?"

"Eight." I pause for dramatic effect, long enough to earn me a glare caught between confusion and anger, before I end, "teen. Eighteen."

"Oh." He doesn't hesitate long enough to appreciate my comedic genius. "Why aren't you climbing?"

"I don't know what's up there. I don't feel like it. If I sit here, there's a good chance I won't fall. If I move, though..."

He seems to have not considered that, and the thought appears to have alarmed him.

A current of air pulls at us. This time it's the screech of an old woman, I think. The boy cries out and pulls towards me, tears filling up his – dammit. maybe it is green... – eyes again. I take him in, take in the fact that he's fighting so hard against emotions I allowed to fill me up when I had visited here originally.

"What is that noise? Why does the wind do that?" he questions between violent shakes. 

I grab hold of him. He could fall. "Some say it's the cries of those who fall from the staircase, trapped in the wind."

He goes strangely still, but I don't release him. The colorless eyes seem to be fixed on his fingers as he considers this. "Do you think there are other staircases around here? And we're hearing other falling people?"

I hesitate a bit. I'd never considered that. "Perhaps. Do you think they all lead to the same place?"

His gaze is harsh and his voice snappish. "I don't know. How am I supposed to know?"

I grin, a – probably bad – thought occurring to me. "I dunno, Screech."

"Screech?" he repeats, surprise seeping into the red on his face. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I don't know your name. You don't know your name. You have theories about the screeching in the air. Your name is Screech."

"That's horrid," his voice proclaims crossly as he narrows his eyes, which don't appear to have a color at all anymore. "Screech isn't a good name at all."

"It's better than 'hey you, kid', isn't it?"

He's thinking on something, real hard. His face is scrunched and his eyes are not looking at me. When they return, I can see the reflection of the red sky in his gaze.

"Okay, Freckles."

"Freckles?"

"Well, I don't know your name. You don't know your name. You have freckles all over your face. Your name is Freckles." His voice is so painfully obviously attempting to mimic my tone that it's almost funny.

Almost. He doesn't have my comedic genius, after all. 

"I do?" I've never seen my reflection. Sometimes, sitting in this world of black and red, I've pondered what my own face looks like. I'd decided ages ago that if it were actually that important, we would have been born with mirrors reflecting our faces attached to our heads on an outstretched pole. Still, I've always wondered. I touch my face, lightly, as if hoping my fingers could find what my gaze couldn't. "Okay. I'm Freckles, then. Nice to meet you, Screech."

A slight smile brushes the corners of his face, for the first time since I've met him, and he outstretches his hand. When I take it with my own right hand, he makes a noise akin to a laugh as he works to his feet again. 

Suddenly I'm worried about him standing. I've met other people that fell, but I never named them. "Woah there."

He shrugs, a habit I pretend he picked up from me. I like shrugging better than explaining. "We should walk."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

His argument is rock solid, obviously. I make my way to my feet, a bit unsteadily.

Screech glances back at me. "You first?"

I shake my head. "If I tripped then I'd take you down with me. You go first and I'll catch you."

He smiles, then nods. "Okay, Freck."

"Freck?" I laugh for the first time in what feels like years as I follow him, gaze on the stairs that seep out exhausted puffs of black soot when my bare feet step on them. "Are you nicknaming my nickname?"

"Yep."

I bite at my smile, gaze still down. "Okay, Scree."

"Now it just sounds like 'scream'."

"It means basically the same thing. Besides, my name sounds like 'frick'."

"That's a baby word," is the reply from his back, distastefully. 

I look up, joking surprise on my face. "You're eight!"

And that's how it's started. Screech and Freckles – or Scree and Freck, when we're being stupid. How we started walking.

We both knew we needed to walk. What was the point in just waiting it out, really? 

You're not going to get anywhere if you don't go after it. 

And so we started going after it. Whatever that it was, we don't know. 

Maybe we never will. 

But, after all... it can't hurt to try.