6 Reckless

Aaron Cyrus January 4th,20XX

He carefully followed their orders and laid flat on his stomach near the entrance. He put his knees apart and put his feet together, then tucked both his arms into his side, just like he had been taught. The employee casually checked over his equipment by tightening his goggles and adjusting a few of his straps.

“Okay! Have a good time!”

Before Raf could say anything, he was pushed out of the plane and his young voice tore through the monotonous sounds of the helicopter blades. It gradually faded in intensity as he fell further and further away, but never stopped.

“Okay, you’re up next.”

I quickly got into the same position that Raf had and let the employee adjust my equipment as well. As he did I was suddenly made aware of my own fear and my heart began to pump hard.

I’d come here to learn to control my flying, but what if something went wrong with the parachute? What if the abilities suddenly left as randomly as they’d come?

This was my first-time going sky diving, so it was reckless of me to have sought out a place that let me go alone. What was wrong with doing it more than once anyway? There wasn't any logical reason for me to have rushed diving on my own for the first time. Before the employee could push me off as he had with Raf, he was stopped by the second employee who had stayed quiet till now.

“Wait! There’s something wrong with the kid! Why haven’t they opened his chute?”

The speaker in the helicopter beeped to show it was active and a female voice crackled through. She sounded harried and screamed through the cheap speakers.

“Hey! Didn’t you guys check the equipment properly? Why is his receptor off? We can’t activate his parachute!”

“What do you mean you can’t activate his parachute! I checked everything myself!”

“Ya! Would I lie about something like this? One of you two better be prepared to take responsibility for this!”

Despite the cold words, she sounded horrified and her voice cracked with every word as she screamed at her irresponsible co-workers.

It finally sank in that Raf was in danger and before I could process what I was doing properly I grabbed the ledge of the door and pulled myself out of the helicopter.

“HEY!”

I vaguely heard one of them scream at me, but it was too late, I was already in the air.

The cold and sharp wind bit at the slivers of skin that were exposed between my goggles and mask and my heartbeat so fast I feared it would escape my chest.

I was a bigger guy than Raf so I fell faster, but my weight alone wasn’t enough to get me close enough to him to catch him.

I fought against gravity and angled myself face-first toward the ground. My arms and legs screamed as I forced them together, but I convinced myself that it was worth it to save the kid.

The new position made me descend a lot faster than before, but I could tell it wouldn’t be enough. There was also something I hadn’t considered.

Although I was getting close to him in terms of height, he was more than a few feet to my left. Even if I got to the same level as him, I might not be able to reach him.

I couldn’t even process how I would do it, but I knew that I needed to get to him and open the parachute before it was too late.

Memories of that morning divebombed into my consciousness as I tried to remember how I’d flown before, but as much as I tried, it didn’t work.

I managed to edge myself towards Raf, but the wind was too strong and controlling myself in the air made me fall slower. The gap between us widened and a look toward the ground told me that soon opening the parachute wouldn’t do much. There was also the worry that Raf would die of shock if he kept falling like that.

Raf’s screams, which intensified as he realized something was wrong, suddenly cut off and I worried he had fallen unconscious from the shock, or worse. An immense sense of relief filled me as he resumed screaming again and I realized his voice had only given out. I only had a few seconds left to break the fall, any more than that and the parachute would be useless.

“Heavier, heavier! I need to be heavier!”

I was yelling at this point, uncaring of whether anyone could hear me and willed myself toward the teenager.

Maybe the yelling had worked, or it was just my genuine will to get closer to him. Either way, something worked, and I managed to get close enough to him that I could grab him by the back of his faulty parachute.

I got a firm grip on him and managed to pull him up to where I could hold him by the waist. It seemed like the employees had been waiting for that since my parachute opened before I could close my right hand shut.

The parachute opened with a snap and jolted the two of us back with an insane amount of force. Because of how fast we’d been falling we had picked up enough speed for the parachute of opposing force to feel like getting hit by a wall.

I acted on instinct and flew in the direction of the parachute once I felt it tug against my chest. I tightened my grip on the teenager and protected us from the brunt of the impact, but I got the feeling that it would have hurt a lot if I could still feel pain.

Raf began to stir in my arms as he realized he wasn’t free falling anymore.

“Stay still!”

My tone was haggard from the yelling earlier and my words came out harsh, but I couldn’t afford him moving more aggressively. While he was smaller than I was, he was still too big for me to hold casually. One wrong move and he might have slipped out of my grip.

I couldn’t be sure if he had heard me or not but aside from tightening his grip on my jumpsuit, he stayed stock still.

We landed in the middle of a pasture, just as the others had but were quickly surrounded by a lot of fanfare. I tried my best to lighten the impact of the landing, thinking back to the fattened remains of the footstool, but I still felt my foot sink into the frozen ground much deeper than was normal.

The first to reach us was the employee that had noticed there was something wrong with Raf’s parachute. She had her goggles hanging off the top of her neck and rushed over to our side with four guys holding two-wheeled stretchers behind her.

“Don’t get up! Your body won’t be adjusted to the change in gravity for a while.”

My body felt fine, but I didn’t say anything and let myself be pulled onto the stretcher. I avoided their attempts to take off my mask and goggles and fielded their questions as to why. Thankfully, I was able to direct them toward Raf and struggled to peel the teenager’s hands off me. The kid hadn’t let go of my shirt since we’d landed, probably as a reflex to having his life depend on it, but I couldn’t make a graceful escape like that.

I finally managed to get his hands off my jumper but immediately felt bad once I did. He began to scream with a hoarse voice and convulsed on the mattress. His hands reached out and made grabbing motions until he finally managed to get his hands on his father’s jumper. His eyes were still closed and had been since we’d landed but that was probably for the best.

I took advantage of the commotion and slipped out of the way before it became too strange to keep my goggles and mask on. Eventually, the hurrah would fade away and people would realize how impossible the rescue was.

My phone beeped to show that my ride was here. While I was usually careful to avoid letting my actions get to my head, I had to praise my foresight in ordering a car before I’d gone up in the helicopter.

I ran into the changing room and changed out of the jumpsuit and goggles into what I’d been wearing before. Thankfully, there was a bucket for the clothes that I could put them into.

The driver looked at me strangely as I got into the car and confirmed my identity but other than sending me a nice smile and assuring me that he would drive as smoothly as possible he didn’t try to make conversation.

The mask fogged up the sunglasses and made it hard to see but that was the least of my problems. Memories of what I had just done flooded my mind and the fear and hesitation I’d acted too quickly to process before invaded my senses and paralyzed me.

The ride passed by very slowly as I tried to calm myself down and get a proper grip on my senses but every bump the car hit made the panic flood into my throat again.

A dark partition suddenly dropped from the ceiling and divided the backseat from the front.

“It looks like you need a breather, sir, don’t worry about me and take off your mask.”

“Thanks!”

My gratitude came out aggressively as I fought back the urge to scream my intense feelings away, but the driver paid it no mind and continued to drive.

“There is some water to your left and candy in the side pocket. Feel free to have some of those if you need them.”

I thanked him again and grabbed a bottle of water and chugged it down. Once I had calmed down a bit, I focused on holding myself together until I could get home.