The Descent

It was one of those zoom-in, zoom-out features like one finds on TV, which found Mister G. Hampton Bley descending comfortably toward a midtown Manhattan street from a glorious autumn afternoon sky. Down, down, and down he floated, free as a feather, into the slots framed by the taller monuments to free enterprise, down into the canyons’ shadows, slowing now confidently like an elevator as the lower stories approached.

Nearing street level, however, Mister Bley noted the first minor concern of the trip forming below. He was descending directly into the street itself. The yellow roof of a cab was about to slip in directly beneath him, and a canvas-covered delivery truck lumbered and chugged along determinedly behind the cab. Oh dear, Bley thought. He hadn’t reckoned the traffic in his plan.
Still, this little lapse in his usually impeccable planning was a small inconvenience.

He simply closed his eyes and focused his energies, and with the body English of a skilled skydiver, veered his trajectory slightly to the right, with plenty of vertical space still remaining, so as to land squarely on a broad, uncrowded stretch of sidewalk along Fifth Avenue near the cathedral. Plenty of room there, he noted as the walk rose to meet his polished oxfords. A bent crone egressing from her confessions skittered down the cathedral steps and crossed herself hurriedly as she looked up in surprise.

“Ah, terra firma,” he mused. Checking himself over, he flecked away a small piece of lint from his cuff and straightened his tie and bowler.

But of the crowd which quickly gathered in a circle near him, however, he could make no sense at all. The faces of what he had at first thought might have been a welcoming committee were unknown to him, and they wore not the easy smiles of greeting but a most curious, intense concern. Moreover, instead of meeting his inquiring gaze, they all ignored him and stared downward at his shoes.

G. Hampton Bley would make no sense of this rude coven whatever, till he, too, glanced down and beheld in horror his own mangled remains, sprawled and askew as a ragdoll. His first impulse was to look away, but like the other onlookers he was drawn to the eggshell face, which, though badly bruised and flattened to one side by the trauma, nevertheless grinned amiably upward with its well-groomed moustache and delicate brow.

Oh dear! he shuddered, Humpty-Dumpty’s had a great fall, and sensed himself growing lightheaded. Then he became lightbodied as well, light as helium all over, and before he could think of any appropriate farewell or apology to excuse himself from his new friends, he involuntarily began to rise above the awkward scene, slowly at first then shooting straight and swift as a rocket up, up, and up through the canyons’ shadows into the grand, unrestricted freedom of a most glorious autumn afternoon sky, like one of those zoom-in, zoom-out features one finds on TV.