Leap of Faith

Will Rick follow Alice? Image by WBN.

This story was originally published on FarFromProfessional.com (2/9/2024).

The fourth installment of my Dying To Live flash fiction mini-series proves to Rick that a second chance at a better life will come at a steep price.

OCTOBER

When Alice didn’t smirk, smile, chuckle, shrug, or even blink, Rick knew that she wasn’t fucking around.

“You can’t be serious about that,” he looked past her, at the edge of the rock several feet behind her. Rick gave it a quick glance before he looked at her unblinking gaze. “There’s no way. Why — ?” his words stuck in his throat, refusing to speak to life what he was thinking.

She let go of his hand and took in a deep breath, closing her eyes as she exhaled. “Just walk with me to the edge, so I can show you.”

Rick scoffed at her suggestion. “Walk you closer to your doom? Seriously, Alice, why don’t we enjoy the view from here and then head back to the car? Get something to eat? Watch a movie?” he suggested and quickly thought, or do anything that didn’t involve jumping off Beacon Rock to certain death.

Alice wasn’t budging, though. “I want to show you something first.” She turned and took a couple of steps towards the edge. Down below some several hundred feet, was a sea of green incense cedar and douglas fir trees. Alice pointed at something. “Down there. Can you see it?”

There was nothing to see. Rick stood in silence and searched for an answer to this madness floating in the air off the edge of this massive basalt monolith. The “navel of the world” is what the Chinook call it, so he once heard. It was barely safe enough to hike on the trail, so being off the path certainly put Rick and Alice at huge risk.

Alice looked back at him but didn’t move from where she stood. “Rick? What’s wrong?”

A million things. “All of this,” Rick said, stretching his arms out for emphasis. “Take a look around, Alice. You’re close to the edge and making me nervous.” He waved her over to him and wondered why he let things get this far.

Alice stepped away from the edge and moved in close to Rick. She looked up at him, and he melted away in time back to the first day they met six months ago. She had the same look in her eyes. That’s when Rick fell in deep, not like back when he dated Valerie. This time it was real. “I don’t mean to scare you, Rick,” she said to him, holding his hands, rubbing them between her fingers. She motioned with her head back towards the edge of the rock. “But that’s real.”

“What is it?”

She returned her gaze to him and said, “It’s our chance to start over.” She took a slow step backward and pulled Rick with her. He let her guide him for a few steps before he realized what he was doing. He quickly pulled her back to him, but she shook her hands free. “Don’t!” she yelled and pointed at Rick. He checked around, figuring someone heard Alice, and they would come to see what was going on. He listened, but there was nothign and he saw no one. Other than the ambient sound of nature being interrupted by their voices, it was quiet on Beacon Rock.

“If you’re not coming with me, then don’t touch me again, Rick. I swear to god I will scream loud enough to wake the dead.”

Rick held up his hands and took two steps away from Alice. “Okay. I’ll be cool if you will,” he promised. “Will you?”

Alice agreed.

“Can you tell me why you brought me here and what you plan on doing?”

Alice nodded and walked towards Rick. This time she stopped a couple of feet in front of him to keep a safe distance in case he tried to grab her again. She looked back at the edge one more time, motioning to it with her head. “Just over that edge is an inter-dimensional portal that takes people back to the beginning of their lives. That’s how Jacob described it.”

Rick didn’t know where to start, so he said the first thing that came to his mind. “Who the hell is Jacob?”

There wasn’t much Alice hadn’t told Rick about her life. She told him about Grace and all the shit she got into back in L.A. She told him about her mom and how she ended up in the Pacific Northwest. She lied a little about why she came up here, and she definitely lied about why she had left town for the past month. She would keep those lies to herself, so Rick would have no choice but to take her for her word now.

“I guess Jacob is a type of guru, scientist, and he discovered the portal fifty years ago in our time. He came up here to kill himself after his wife, Janine, died from cancer. Except when he jumped from the rock, he didn’t die. He was reborn.”

Rick stared at Alice. He stared at the edge, and then moved his gaze across the Columbia River, I-84, into the Oregon woods, and further into the recesses of his mind. It was all unravelling. “Alice, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“I know it sounds crazy as fuck, Rick, but it is exactly as I said it was. There’s a portal down there, and I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I didn’t se Jacob jump into it five different times. The last time I saw him, right here, was a month ago. He was with Janine. He had finally found her again. She was old, like Jacob. They had been married for thirty years before that day. And after all that, I watched four people from our group of six jump into the portal, including Mei.”

“Mei?” Rick was stunned. Why the hell would she do that?

“Yeah. Mei jumped in that day, and it was just me and this other lady named Tessa.” Alice remembered Tessa’s face when she made the same decision. “We woke up the next morning and walked out here to both jump together, but I chickened out.” Alice took a deep breath and turned for the edge. “I’ve made up my mind now.”

“Wait!” Rick screamed. “Please! Just wait.” He pleaded, and Alice stopped. She turned to look at him over her shoulder, and Rick knew it was all going to go to shit.

“I’ve been waiting, Rick. I’ve thought long about it, and I want to see Grace again. I want to save her — I know I can save her, so just let me go.”

“What about us?” his voice strained. “I love you, Alice.”

This time, she turned around completely to look Rick in the eyes. “I love you, too, Rick. And I’m going to find you again. I promise.” And then Alice leapt off Beacon Rock.

Rick ran to the edge, screaming, expecting to see her body floating in the river, or worse, broken across the boulders along the shore. But she wasn’t there. He waited, thinking that her body might have been pulled under the water, stuck. Maybe it would float to the surface. His mind plunged into madness with grief, and his only thought was to call for help. He fumbled with his phone, and he pulled it out of his back pocket, and the device went tumbling out of his hand and over the edge. It fell for around ten feet before Rick watched it disappear without a sound or a trace. Gone. Just like Alice.