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There are no Greater Heights
by Melissa R. Mendelson

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“It’s too late to turn back now.”  Jason looked down.  Heights normally never bothered him, but they were too high.  He could see the tip of the tower.  He checked his belt, making sure that it was secure.  He did not want to fall.  “Are we crazy to be doing this,” he asked his friend.

“No, because none of this is real.  All we have to do is touch the sky.  That’s it.”  His friend clung to the tip of the tower.  His fingers reached upward.  “Almost there,” he said.

“Wait.”  His friend looked at him.  “What if we’re wrong about this?  What if nothing happens?”

“Well, if nothing happens, then we’ll ask for the red pill.”

“That red pill killed all our friends,” Jason said.  “Their insides imploded.  It was horrible watching them die.”

“Which is why this was our only other option.”  His friend sighed.  “The sooner we interrupt the system, the sooner we could get out into the real world, which isn’t here.”

“And how do we do that exactly?”

“We fall.”  His friend was serious.  “We cause the glitch.  The system’s interrupted, and we let go.”

Jason looked down again.  The world was so far away, and the idea of falling was worse than imploding.  What if his friend was wrong?  What if there was no waking up, and only the ground greeted him from below?

“Jason, it’s now or never,” his friend snapped at him.

“Do it,” Jason whispered.  “Do it,” he repeated louder.

Jason clung to the tip of his tower as his friend reached upward.  His friend’s fingers touched the sky.  Nothing happened.  No system error or glitch.  Nothing, and his friend reached into the sky again and again.

“I don’t get it,” his friend said.

A moment later, his friend disintegrated along with the tower.  The sky darkened, and the wind picked up.  Jason looked down, and all he saw was white.  No buildings.  No people.  Nothing, but his tower.

“Hello?”  Jason listened to his voice echo around him.  “Hello?”  The wind died down, and the sky returned to its blue color.  But everything else except for him and his tower was gone.  “Hello,” Jason screamed.

“Hello,” echoed back.

Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Melissa R. Mendelson:

Name’s Keeper

I got a one-way ticket out of hell. All I need to do is drive across country with a body in the trunk and run miscellaneous errands, but a lot of those errands come with a heavy price. And if I lose the body in the trunk, then I have to go back, and I’ll be damned if I return down there. I will fight to stay here, even if there is no rest for those wicked.

Available on Amazon!