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by Hamish MacDonald

A man in a suit and an overcoat stood on a river, looking around, puzzled. A bridge loomed overhead; looking up, the man could just make out the figure of another man gazing down in his direction. The other man didn't see him, though. The air was foggy, but that didn't seem to be why.
I know him, thought the man on the river. He's thinking about me. He's why I'm here.
Back here.
The memories were difficult for him to piece together. Like a recovering amnesiac, though, he found that as he searched for them, they were there. But he had to know where to look first.
I was up there before. I jumped. I died. Thoughts came to him of turning in the water, of darkness, of the counter-instinctive drawing-in of watery breaths. The note. Oh, I left a note. How cliché, thought the river-man. As if two sheets of paper could possibly have let his friend into his feelings, his confusion, his choice. Of course they couldn't, no more than he could feel anything about all his friends' and family's gestures, words, and attempts to help. He wished the man above, who held a primacy in his heart — he was the most special of them all — had the note with him and would drop it. Then he could grab it, tear it up, and keep it from continuing to do harm, like some radioactive tooth under his friend's pillow that no fairy would come to exchange. He wished he could break into the house — their house — and steal it. But he was held here, just barely, by his friend's thoughts.
The violent, blind emotion of his death had shattered him; this was possibly his first moment of coherence since.
Was it worth it? Who'd asked that? Was it him or his friend? Either way, he had no ready answer, and no way of getting it across if he had..
Was it worth it? Well, it worked. The unshakable feeling he'd had for the last several months, which started off like a conversation in the bedroom next door then grew to feel like his head was stuck inside a terrible machine, it was gone. But waves undulated away from where he stood. They would wash into his friend's life, into his family's lives, for years to come, splashing into the living room in the middle of a polite conversation, cascading over the furniture and around the dining table and chairs during holiday dinners.
He pulled his coat tighter, scrunching himself up to keep out the damp air. It would take time to work off the effects of what he'd done. Was it his work or the work of those he'd left behind? Both, he figured. He was frightened, because he had no idea how to begin. There were others here somewhere in this cityscape, watching him, but he knew he wouldn't see them until he'd done the work, until he was ready.
He looked up at his friend. What I did was noble, he thought. What I did was stupid. He tried to wave, but his friend would never see him again. Never? he wondered. It was a lot to hope for, but... maybe.
He turned and walked away, sinking into the water, diffusing into the air.

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