The Upside Down
Kyung-Soon started walking up the trail as fast her tired feet could take her. Sweat trickled down the nape of her slender neck and slid down her spine, giving her a little shiver of uneasiness. Every laboured breath she took came out as puffs of vapour that was lost in the fog around her. All she could see was the dark, muddy path a few feet ahead, before it disappeared into the waiting fog.
She gave the strap of her rucksack a nervous tug, as if it were the only solid, reassuring object around her. She kept glancing at her sides, hoping that something strange would come out of the darkening redwood trees and break the painful silence. All she saw were the morose, deep red trunks with those ancient scowling scars.
She quickened her pace. Tiny droplets of rain began to fall around her.
The loud roar of the turboprop engines drowned the anxious voice in Abhirami’s head.
‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’, was all she kept muttering as she held on to the thin nylon straps of her seat.
The instructor looked at her with a goofy grin on his sun-dried face.
‘Hey man, relax! You got this. Just a couple more minutes and we will be free as a bird, man!
He laughed like a maniac and she imagined his eyes behind his sun glasses, glazing over with the crazed adrenaline rush. She took a deep breath and prayed to her Mother’s Gods to giver her strength.
“2 minutes to free fall man! Follow my lead..”
He opened the huge side door of the aircraft and the wind whipped and crackled inside the cabin. Abhirami immediately felt at peace. The howling wind threatened to lift her off her seat, but that only anchored her thoughts and brought a sense of tranquility. She looked up at the laughing silhouette by the door.
‘Let’s do this’
The instructor paused mid-sentence, between an encouragement and an exasperation. He saw that the tall Indian girl was suddenly beside him.
“Hey, you ok man? Listen, when I give you the thumbs up…HEY!”
Abhirami leapt off the trembling Twin Otter and dove head-first into the vast ocean of grey clouds beneath her.
‘Why did it have to be today?’, wondered Kyung-Soon desperately.
“Why did have to rain? When has it every rained here? Of all the miserable days of this miserable year, WHY TODAY DAMMIT!?”
Kyung-Soon screamed at the wall of grey around her. The light drizzle that had bothered her on her way up, had steadily increased and kept hammering away at her, drenching every bit of her 4 foot 10 inch frame. She wanted to run into the trees by her sides but all she could see were enormous shrubs and bushes that walled her in and made her feel like a rat in a maze.
So she kept walking ahead, rainwater streaming down her head and tears down her cheek. She brought her rucksack in front of her and felt the outline of the urn inside it. She prayed that no water seeped into the bag and into the urn. She was afraid to even open the bag and find out, lest water enter and soak up the ashes of her mother.
She kept her head down and focused on the little bit of trail she could see. Come rain, come fog, whatever, she knew she had a promise to keep to her dead mother.
“Kyung-Soon, my love..I have watched you grow into a wonderful human and a daughter to be proud of. I couldn’t have asked more from you. But my only wish is that you spread my ashes at St. John’s peak. That place held so much memories for me and your father. I wish to join him there when my times come. Will you do that for me, my daughter?”
She had shed silent tears then, when her mother had spoken these words from her hospital bed. Now, remembering those words, burnt into her memory forever, steeled her resolve.
“Damn this fog and damn this rain. I will reach the top.”
She took another step forward and hesitated.
Through the amorphous fog, she saw a rapidly darkening shape.
Abhirami held her arms tightly by her side and rocketed through the enveloping clouds. She felt exhilarated and truly free after a long time. She didn’t want to float like so many did. She wanted to be a bullet and fly.
Through her safety googles she could see that the blue around her had rapidly turned into grey. That didn’t bother her at first and she concentrated on looking at her altimeter.
A few seconds turned to minutes and she began to wonder how high had she dived from, because the clouds didn’t seem to end. She had hoped to punch through that grey mass in a few seconds.
Her calm mind broke into a thousand pieces and panic made her flay her arms wide in the hope of slowing her descent.
“WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING!? HAVE I BECOME UNCONSCIOUS?!”
She pulled at her parachute straps but they remained resolutely in place. IN desperation she flapped her arm as if searching for a bar to hold in mid-air. The walls of grey began circling around her and she saw them spiralling in her vision. Suddenly she sensed the rapidly accelerating cloud around her begin to slow down.
She realised that she was no longer in free fall and confusion replaced panic. Even in her bewilderment and fear, she smelt moist earth.
“ WHY DO I SMELL EARTH!?? IS THE GROUND COMING UP??”
Kyung-Soon paused and peered into the grey mist.
The dark shape took form and as it began to grow into human proportions she was hypnotically pulled towards it. Forgetting her weariness, Kyung-Soon let her self be drawn to it.
Abhirami opened her eyes and saw that she was lying on damp soil with an awkward lump below her stomach. She scrambled to her feet and looked around like a wild animal caught in a trap.
She thought for a moment that the parachute must have deployed at the last moment and broken her fall. But then she looked upwards and saw the canopy of dark leaves and branches and couldn’t find any trace of the parachute.
She looked down at the object that she had fallen over and saw that it was an urn.
Kyung-Soon hair whipped at her face and her drenched clothes rapidly cooled and chilled her to her bone as she fell downward.
A moment ago she was walking towards the mist and now she was moving through it in free fall.
Kyun-Soon couldn’t believe what was happening to her. She thought the tiredness and despair must be throwing up these hallucinations. But boy, they sure felt damn real.
But this thought did not, in any way, subdue the panic that was at her throat and the howling wind beside her ear.
She flapped her hands wildly and found a chord flailing in front of her face. Without a moment of thought she grabbed at it and a huge blue parachute blossomed behind her and yanked her to a gentle descent.
The grey mist parted below her and she saw the majestic tree covered peak of St.James.
Now that she was no longer falling to her death, her next thought was — ‘WHAT IS GOING ON? WHERE IS THE BAG?!’
Originally published at http://thespartananalyst.wordpress.com on September 2, 2020.
