From the top floor of the southeast building in the complex, Mason McBride - the lead accountant in Carbon Lift, Inc.'s controller division entered the hot air of the city night with a surprised look on his face and a tingling, nervous jump in his cheeks and hands. He was falling. His loose, ironed slacks were being forced to cling to his thighs and ride up his ankles; and, in being made to do so, exposed the moderately expensive black and glossy Italian leather shoes on his dangling and kicking feet. The wind was fast, but warm and thick and expensively terrible. His reasonably-priced cotton day shirt was quickly lapping up the sweat from his face and chest with rhythmic, concussive thwacks as his tie tried desperately to fly away and off of his neck into the moonlight.Weeks ago, he had been at the company barbecue in Maui. With the backdrop of the nearest volcano - a hump of rocky slides covered lush, green trees and brown, ancient ash, he and his friends had discussed topics ranging from work, to school days, to basic science and popular culture. He had a beer sweating in his hand in a plastic cup and a burger dripping mustard on his lap on a plate. He took in the day in the shade of the pool house as a plume of cigar smoke folded itself neatly into his nostrils.
Now, though, he was in the air and moving. He was as far from that day in Maui as he could ever be and there was a kind of calm in that fact. He wasn't in the world, but a man moving through it, through the air in the night towards the ground and the cars and the dumpsters. He was weightless.
He took off his watch and threw it into the night.
His life was over.
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