Horror - Flash

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Freedom Fall Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

FREEDOM FALL

Up still, on and on the mossy stone steps went, cool in the shade, deep buried calve muscles burning, and she said it was only an hour-long hike. Nine slabbed and stacked limestone stairs ahead of him, Jessica peeked back with a grin.

“Want to take a break?” she asked.

I want to be at home, on the couch! “I’m fine. I was just watching a bird.”

Jessica nodded and flipped her blonde ponytail back over her shoulder and carried onward.

After climbing the mucky hill that rose nearly ninety-feet in just one-kilometer, they’d reached the base of the long, winding, carved and patched stone staircase. The lookout on the mountainside was two hundred fifty-nine-feet above sea level. Jessica and Dolan lived in a recently purchased bungalow just three miles from the parking lot at the base of the hill. Too close to drive according to Jessica. Their home was approximately six-meters above sea level.

Looking up the staircase, Dolan attempted the math. In school, he learned the metric system. In the real world, people hardly used it. Sure, all the traffic signs read in kilometers and he got that much, there were gages to remind him. In the grocery, a liter was the big one and two liters was the even bigger one. The really big one marked 3.78L was a US gallon, easy. But everywhere else there were the unofficial signs, those along the trails and those marking sea level that followed the old rules.

At least time is time, he thought checking his watch, seeing the second hour of the trek roll into play. One hour my ass!

Sweat dripped and dropped. It was cool in the shade and it made his sweaty skin ache with chilled annoyance.

It was a mistake, the more days that passed, the more obvious it became. They’d married young, not even kids to blame. They were in love and love feels everlasting when it’s fresh and new. It really began at the wedding invitations, Dolan offered an inch and Jessica took a meter. There was a budget and the first names trimmed for the sake of the pocketbook were names from Dolan’s list of guests.

Five years into the marriage, Dolan had lost most of his friends, dropped twenty-five, painful pounds, ceased drinking on weeknights, likewise with watching sports. His beard? Gone, never to return. His glasses, his clothes, his hobbies, all gone or going or changed, by and by.

“You used to smile all the time and now you’re so bitchy,” he said in a physically exasperated whisper, mimicking Jessica. “You just need to get used to the new exercise.”

“Do you want me to stop and wait?” a voice echoed down, now much further than nine steps higher up the mountain.

“No, I’m coming!” Dolan shouted back wondering how such drastic and difficult changes took place in him.

Wrong! Difficult is demanding, easy was letting go. Easy was letting this needling woman stitch an outline on your back and cut away everything unnecessary to the pattern she followed. Easy was not fighting.

He inhaled a deep breath and charged up thirty steps to round a corner and see thirty more. A crow squawked at his burst, startled.

It was never ending, this hour long hike.

“Just think, you might live to ninety and she might live to ninety-five. A sixty-fifth anniversary to share. By then she will chew my food. By then she will tie my shoes and wipe my ass. Not because I can’t, but because I will not stop her.”

Only if you let her!

Freedom was an anchor nearly as heavy as marriage. There were debts together, the house, the objects purchased to fill the house, the car, the cat, the behavior of easiness.

Beginning anew is difficult. Wipe everything back and start from scratch. Look for a mate. Withhold gases. Withhold opinions. Withhold… everything that makes forfeiture of self so easy?

“Shut up, you,” Dolan said to himself and climbed the steep path.

There was light at the top of the staircase, a promise of completion. And, at very least, on the way down gravity was a friend. Then again, downward, Jessica would only go so fast, keeping Dolan’s pace no matter what pace he chose.

With every piece of slack he found in his hands, there was something stolen from his reserve. A few years of exciting, passionate dating so quickly becomes four and five years of marriage. Five, the six, then oblivion.

Dolan’s arm ran across his forehead. His long-sleeved hiking shirt was bright purple, Jessica’s suggestion (command) despite the extra cost for an item from Nike’s current line of products. So damned stylish out in the middle of nowhere.

“I hope you’re impressed,” Dolan said to a fat crow in a tree no more than three strides from the staircase.

The bird squawked.

“What’s that, I should turn around now?” he asked the bird.

The bird squawked again, this time it sounded almost like words.

“What?” he asked, hushed, feeling a bit ridiculous.

“Freedom push! Freedom push!”

Jessica peered down again, “Oh good, I thought you’d fallen. Come on, it’s beautiful!”

“The master beckons,” he nodded to the bird.

“Freedom, push Jessica! Push Jessica!” the bird squawked.

Wrought, exhausted, delirious at the altitude alongside everything else, maybe. He stepped slowly. The crows squawked all around, the message similar, pressuring even.

“Pussy! Coward! Whipped! Whipped!”

They’re right, you know that? One push, she falls, you take the life insurance, you take the stuff, you take the house, you take back the man you used to be.

A crow swooped and landed on Dolan’s shoulder, “Freedom push. Freedom push, Dolan.”

“Freedom push?” Dolan whispered as his eye level found the top of the mountain. “Freedom push?” Each step took him higher and the wonderful view began donning on him. “Freedom push?” His gaze scanned for Jessica.

She sat on stone near the edge of the mountainside that dropped away into a rocky gully below. The kind of drop that almost guaranteed death on the first bounce. If not on the first bounce, there were dozens more ready to kill her on the way down.

Jessica brought her eyes up to meet Dolan’s, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

A squirrel scurried out from between her hiking shoes. Those beautiful eyes and that funny little critter made Dolan smile. He’d gone crazy for a moment, freedom push, my ass!

“What’s so funny?” Jessica asked.

“Nothing, hey let’s take a picture. Right by the edge,” he said.

“Ok!” Jessica hopped up and joined her husband at the edge of a mossy rock cliff, overlooking the gully, some forest and eventually the Pacific. She pulled her cellphone from her pocket and said, “Smile.”

No need to instruct. Once up, Dolan felt much better about the hike. And the view… Wow!

“Here, I’ll take one of just you, then you do me,” said Jessica stepping away.

She pointed the lens and clicked.

“Here, use my phone too. Then I can’t text it to my mom,” said Dolan.

His mother was demanding, always wanted news and photos of her son. Mom had a pattern of her own for the man.

He tossed and Jessica fumbled the catch and the phone landed in a mossy stone crack.

“Oh damn,” said Dolan.

“It’s ok,” Jessica said and bent. “What?” she whispered. There, bent a strangely long time, “I know.”

“Honey?” Dolan asked.

Jessica straightened. The squirrel was back between her feet. The crows in the trees around them squawked, “Dolan! Dolan! Dolan!”

In her left hand was Dolan’s cellphone, in her right was a stone the size of a baseball. She wound back and fired the stone. It struck Dolan in the forehead and he stumbled sideways.

“Help!” Dolan managed just before his right heel teetered over the edge. His left foot slid and skidded, forward he bounced with a muddy thump.

The crows silenced as he scrambled. Grabbing at moss, his eyes hopeless and scared, blood running down his face as he slipped in slow motion over the side of the cliff. His voice screeched on the air and tree branches snapped. Jessica stepped forward and peeked over the edge.

She then fully comprehended the freedom the squirrels promised her. The freedom she was about to hold.

Around her, the squirrels laughed and the crows hung their heads in failure.

“What have I done?” Jessica sat down.

There was a chance yet.

A crow bounced close by, “Guilty woman! Freedom jump!”

The squirrels ceased their chatter in anticipation

“Guilty?”

“Freedom jump! No more guilty!” the crows squawked, over and over.

The squirrels began to chatter, “Accident! Not guilty! Freedom now! Freedom now!”

Jessica stepped again to the edge of the cliff. A reddish smear carried down the pale stone wall. Bits of Dolan seemed to announce something important. Yep it’s me! I’m dead!

The moss was slick, she stood a careful totem of uncertainty.

“Freedom jump!”

Forward, she leaned. Her heel slipped an inch.

“Freedom now! Freedom already!”

Arms swinging for hold on nothing, she dropped back onto her butt and opened her mouth to scream, “No!” She rolled from the edge, leapt up and raced back toward the staircase, “Help! My husband fell!”

The squirrels smiled fuzzy mouths and cheeks as the sullen crows began gathering nuts.

That was the bet and a bet’s a bet.

XX