The Ledge
Mar 26, 2020 22:20:41 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Mar 26, 2020 22:20:41 GMT -5
The Ledge: Genre: Flash Fiction: 1008 words
by Radrook:
by Radrook:
I desperately needed to impress Matilda. Really, I honestly did. I guess all of us hormone-driven, pimple-faced adolescent males at the Cliffs End Secondary School who were in homeroom-teacher Mr. Gallagher's, Social Studies classroom did as soon as we beheld her queenly, aloof, demeanor, her unassailable beauty, and her pristine untouchability that proudly shouted:
“I am special! So hands off!" when Mr. Gallagher had introduced her to us as a new student transferring over from an adjacent county from where her family had relocated to our rural community.
"This is Matilda! She is a new student here. So make her feel at home." he had said nonchalantly with the palm of his right hand resting gently and innocently on her right shoulder, as if he had not noticed her charms.
But of course, we knew better, since we had caught Mr. Gallagher maliciously eyeballing her on several occasions during which times he blushed when he realized that he had been caught. But no shame. Who could blame him? After all, he was a relatively young, approx. in his early or middle thirties, and healthy normal man, single and recently divorced, and she, although still teenager, displayed all the female charms of a full-grown woman, and an attractive one at that.
No, it wasn't that Matilda dressed differently from all the other girls at the school, mind you. Not at all! She obediently wore the same mandatory, short, black and green-plaited, school-dress topped by the starched tight-fitting white blouse that all the other girls wore. But on her, on her it was more than just a school-uniform, on her it was a proud banner announcing the triumph of womanhood over girlhood.
Yep! She had obviously matured physically far before and far beyond all the other girls of her age, and her full braless breasts bore powerful witness to it, as did her shapely buttocks and her smooth, hairless and curvaceous, white thighs, which had caught our undivided attention.
“The epitome of womanhood!” we all joked constantly and privately among ourselves with our typical adolescent, nervous, laughter, while knowing full-well, that we would be willing to offer our very lives for just a glimmer of hope, a touch of her hand, or just a furtive glance that would prove that Matilda was somehow aware that we were indeed alive.
So for a full week from her arrival at our school, on it went. She’d sinuously sway her generous hips as she approached and slowly walk by with her knowing smile on her luscious pink lips, and we’d swoon in the distance as she walked away, following every nuance of her movements as she went. She’d toss her thick, golden, wavy hair in the gentle breeze of the afternoon school-recess sunlight, and we’d eagerly sniff the autumn breezes hoping to intercept the precious, sweet aroma of her perfume.
Yes, I was definitely what is referred to as thoroughly smitten, completely awestruck, and urgently needed to impress Matilda, despite my morbid fear of heights, despite the terror that I had admitted that I felt at the sight of that narrow ledge that led to the cave entrance on the cliff's face, and despite the menacing jagged rocks far, far below, that promised certain death for the slightest false step, I just needed to impress her.
So on that chilly, Autumn day, during a class picnic, on a grassy knoll near Cliffs End Promontory, when all the other fellows had spoken about trying the ledge, but had chickened-out, Matilda glanced our way with what I understood as profound disappointment. It was as if she had been expecting far more from us than she had been expecting from others. Her blessed blue eyes gazed our way as if begging for an explanation. As if her lofty opinion of our bravery had been mercilessly shattered.
That's when I suddenly found myself loudly bragging that I could easily do it. That gradually making my way along that narrow treacherously-slippery, moss-covered ledge to the shallow cave on the cliff's face, would be a cinch. That I would prove who was the real man among us!
There were cheers of encouragement as the other kids milled around me. Then suddenly, as if transferred to some wakeful dream, I found myself cautiously tentatively making my way along that pathway as the others chanted.
“Go Joey! Go!”
“Go Joey! Go!”
“Go Joey! Go!”
And among them, the voice of our homeroom-teacher, Mr. Gallagher, yelling for me to stop. It was booming voice of authority that I would have heeded on any other occasion except on this one. On this one, I proudly ignored it and inched my way towards my goal as their shouting grew dimmer, and the ledge leading to the cave grew narrower, while the rhythmic pounding of surging ocean waters against the base of the granite cliff the two-hundred feet below grew louder. Yet, I pressed on until the narrow cave-entrance was just a few feet away, while keeping Matilda on my mind as I went!
I kept imagining how she would fawn over me with admiration, and maybe even give me a kiss after the ordeal was over. How she would proudly agree to be my girlfriend. I would be envied by them all, I kept telling myself, as I inched ever closer to my goal.
Then suddenly, as if on some pre-planned malicious cue, my right sneaker began to slip on the outcropping of a smooth, damp rock, my upper body tilted away from the cliff's granite face, and the confident chanting that had been urging me on, was suddenly replaced with hysterical screams and panicked shouts, as they saw me losing my balance, and start falling as if in slow motion, towards the jagged rocks below.
Yes, I would soon be in intensive care, but not before I had caught a clear view of Matilda's beet-red, horrified, grimacing face, and her gaping mouth which revealed her rotting, set of long and uneven, green-stained, bucktoothed teeth, which she had cunningly never chosen to display before.
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