Out of the corner of his eye, Craig saw the new office gopher Johnny come running in from a side door that came from the lobby. He was going full tilt so there must be something really, really important on his mind.
"Craig! Craig!" said Johnny. He came bounding up to the work bench where Craig was sorting through a number of courier packages that had come to the building. Puffing away like crazy, Johnny couldn't seem to catch his breath enough to continue talking.
Craig looked at the boy for a moment before turning back to his packages. Advertising, suite 705. Craig picked up the box and placed it in a bin off to one side. Glancing at the clock he realised Fred should be back in 10 minutes so he could get that package and any other he came up with for the seventh floor. Angie in advertising was expecting something important today so maybe this was it. "So, Johnny, what's up?" Craig idly looked at the next package.
"Somebody jumped." Johnny managed to get two words out but was still gasping for air not having quite wound down from his run.
Craig had picked up the next package and was staring at the label. He furrowed his brow. "What?" Hmmm, this package is going to the ninth floor, accounting. Let's see, isn't it Grace who takes care of their stuff? Craig shoved the box into a different bin.
"Somebody jumped!" Johnny was slowing down and getting his wind. "Some guy named Michael Franks jumped out of a window on the 48th floor. He fell onto the plaza behind the building."
Craig stopped what he was doing. He gazed in front of him as he tried to process what Johnny had just said. Michael Franks? Wait, don't I know him? Isn't he one of the managers in the investment firm at the top of the building? The company had four or five stories of offices with more than a hundred people dealing with pension funds management. Franks had recently been interviewed in one of the newspapers about his thoughts on the current financial situation in Europe and how it may impact investment opportunities in North America. Craig sort of knew him by sight but had never said hello to the man.
Craig turned and looked at Johnny. "What? Where is this?"
"Out back. In the plaza. Somebody has already phoned the cops but there is no point in phoning for an ambulance. This guy is dead. Like really dead. Hell, he is more splattered than dead." Johnny had a bit of a congratulatory smile thinking that what he said sounded a little funny. Ha, more splattered than dead.
Craig started walking across the open area in front of his workbench and headed to the hallway. "Let's go see this."
"You may want to think about going for a look. I glanced at it, at the guy from a distance and it does not look good."
Craig pulled open the door and started down the hallway which led through the building to the back stairwell. While the lobby had doors leading out to the back plaza, this service hallway led to the emergency doors located to the one side. Normally it was only used for fire drills but Craig and the others in the loading dock used it to exit into the Plaza for a break. Craig had been bugging the others for months now to stop leaving their goddamn cigarette butts all around the door. Okay, if he could quit, everybody could quit. But in quitting, he realised just how filthy the habit is and how much of a mess he himself had been leaving all over the place every time he just threw his butt down on the ground.
Johnny followed Craig but was somewhat agitated. "Christ, have you ever seen a jumper before?"
"No," said Craig. "Maybe on TV."
"Believe me, this isn't anything like TV. I've never seen anybody on the ground after such a high fall. Talk about gro-fucking-tesque." Craig was walking forcefully and taking big strides. Johnny followed but occasionally had to run a bit in order to keep up with his boss.
The two of them arrived at the end of the hall. Off to their right were the fire escape stairs coming down from the upper floors. Craig pushed the bar across one of the three doors and it opened into the sunshine. Craig walked outside with Johnny following on his heels. The light was blinding at first. The sun was at an angle and shining directly into Craig's face and he couldn't see anything. He held his hand to his forehead to provide some shade from the sunshine.
Slowly Craig's vision adjusted. He realised a crowd had gathered in the plaza standing in a semicircle in front of him about thirty or so feet away. There was a buzz in the air as he heard multiple voices all talking at the same time. What had happened? Craig slowly realised there was something on the ground in front of him about eight to ten feet away. He looked but what was he looking at? There was a red liquid creating a stain around it. There were bits of, well, stuff but what was that? Craig's eyes were getting better able to see in the sunlight.
"God, what a mess," said Johnny.
Craig had completely forgotten Johnny had been following him. A mess? What had Johnny said before? Franks had jumped? Slowly the realisation sank in for Craig. He was looking at a human body or what was left of a human body. What did Johnny say? Franks had jumped from what, the 48th floor? The 48th floor? Good lord! Craig stared. This thing in front of him was a human body or what's left of a human body after falling 48 stories right onto a concrete sidewalk.
Craig looked. It wasn't a body. It wasn't flesh. It looked like... what? Goo? Some bloody pulpy substance? All of a sudden this wave of revulsion overcame Craig. He turned, leaned over and threw up. His stomach emptied its contents out onto the sidewalk beside him. He coughed. The bile burned his throat and left a terrible taste in his mouth. Johnny had place his hand in the middle of Craig's back. "Are you all right?"
Still bent over, Craig spit. He coughed then spit again. "Oh my fuckin' God." Craig didn't look at the body again. He couldn't. It was too horrible. He stood upright then started to walk off to one side moving into the smattering of people by the lobby doors. Several sirens grew louder. That would be the police and the paramedics. Craig reached into his pocket and found a tissue. He wiped his mouth.
Craig kept his head bowed and focused on the sidewalk ahead of him. He tried not to think about what he had just seen. He shuddered. Yes, he visibly shuddered. The image kept coming back to him. It was burned into his skull. He had seen animals run over by cars. Once he had seen a raccoon run over by who knows how many cars and the entire body had been pulverised into some bloody pulp with fur which no longer resembled a raccoon in any way. That was odd and certainly not nice to look at. But this? This was a human being!
******************
Michael Franks looked out his 48th floor office window. It was a beautiful day. It was wonderful to look out over the city sitting, as it were, on top of the world. He looked out over the hustle and bustle of the little people as the lord and master of his domain. Lord and master, well, that seemed a little ironic. So much of what he did, his wheeling and dealing, his success in manipulating the markets, depended so much on what everybody else in the world did. We were all interconnected. His success came from other people. Maybe not directly, but in general, from the rest of the world, those little people.
The financial crisis of 2008 had killed him, well, his business. The ridin' high days were gone and he was merely holding on by the skin of his teeth. In the good ol' days, anybody, yes anybody, even a complete idiot could make money. Nowadays with the world rearranged by the downfall of Wall Street, the bail-out of the system by the federal government and then the downturn of Japan after its catastrophe and imminent failure of Europe, his success had turned into a nightmare of fingers-crossed negotiations that had left him at the mercy of a board and shareholders who were more than displeased with his performance. Could anybody have done any better? How many like him had long ago packed up their bags and left unable to cope with the stress of the new down turned world order.
On top of it all, his personal life was in the crapper. After 23 years of marriage, his wife had decided she had had enough of his bullshit and asked for a divorce. Okay, maybe he wasn't the most attentive husband in the world but he thought his wife had done well by her marriage to him. So what if he had occasionally taken advantage of a few extra-marital flings. A man's got to do what a man's got to do. Although getting sued for child support by that 23 year old secretary might have been the straw that broke the camel's back. His wife didn't particularly like that one too much. No, the five hundred dollar vase flung at his head which missed and smashed against the wall was probably an excellent indication that this time; his shenanigans had gone too far.
Michael was tired, just tired. It had not just been a long week; it had been a long couple of years. The pressure just kept racking up more and more and there didn't seem to be any way of arriving at a satisfactory point where the whole mess was going to right itself and get back on the right track. In fact, it looked more like this was just going to continue to get worse and worse. Robert Morgan, the vice-president of the west coast operations had let it slip than next month; the board of directors was going to bring in an outside accounting firm to do an audit of Michael's operation. Even though he had kept the company afloat in what were troubling financial times, the shareholders were screaming bloody murder over what they considered to be poor dividends. Christ, with the headlines going on and on about how Apple had turned into the richest company in the world, everybody was asking themselves why they had bought stock in anything other than Apple and why wasn't Michael Franks as good as Steve Jobs. God, when it comes to money, you can never satisfy the public. They're all a bunch a blood-thirsty piranhas.
Michael glanced at his calendar. He had a doctor's appointment later this afternoon at 5pm. At his last check-up a month ago, the doctor was very suspicious and had a bunch of tests run. He wasn't going to commit himself, but he was thinking Michael had prostate cancer. That one had hit Franks hard, very hard. For a long time he hadn't considered his own mortality and now, here was the strong likelihood he was going to get a countdown to his own demise. Yes, we were all going to go sooner or later but somehow not knowing when made sure your focus was turned to living not to dying. Now that he had this little tidbit of news, he had been feeling overwhelmingly tired. What exactly was the point?
He got up from his desk and walked over to the window. He cranked it opened and listened to the buzz of the city. There was a certain roar. You could no longer distinguish the individual car horns or voices or other noises; it just all blended together in this background roar of the city. Michael leaned out of the window and looked around then looked down. The plaza below looked empty, just a couple of specks. He stepped up onto the window sill. He had to duck as he was taller than the vertical opening. He stuck his head out and looked around. It was a beautiful day and it was a great view of the city. Michael Franks sighed then stepped out into space.
48 stories are equal to approximately 480 feet. An object falling from that height will take just under six seconds to reach the ground. At the moment of impact, the object will be travelling almost 95 mph or 138 feet per second.
During Michael Frank's last six seconds of life, he had a feeling of peace. He was flying. It was surreal. He remembered that the movies portrayed people as having their lives flash before their eyes but for some reason he was just sitting back and enjoying the ride. Yes, he was flying.
After exiting the window, Michael slowly tumbled several times. When he hit the ground, he was almost face down. While front part of his body hit the cement first and decelerated instantaneously, the rest of his body and his internal organs continued downward impacting one on top of the other then spreading outward from the central impact zone. One accident investigator commented that the human body is mostly made up of water and that such a fall could, in some ways, be compared to dropping a water balloon on the ground. You didn't count the broken bones; you counted the bones which were not broken. One bystander reported that officials had used a shovel to scoop up parts of the body to be put in plastic bags. The paramedics had arrived with a stretcher but it turned out to be completely useless.
Later that afternoon, the doctor wondered why Michael had missed his appointment. The tests had come back and yes, Michael did have prostate cancer. The doctor was not looking forward to telling him that in his opinion, this was in an advanced stage and was inoperable; any treatment like chemotherapy would be ineffective, merely delaying the inevitable.
2011-09-28
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