Just Words: The Vulcan Man of Iron

We forewent the elevator and took the stairs like men because we didn't know we'd be climbing over one hundred feet. We emerged from the insulated stairway of cement and cinderblock to find it was as the lady who had come down before us had said: windy.


But oftentimes words betray true feelings. We were one hundred and twenty-four feet in winter's air, where it felt at least twenty-four degrees colder than on the ground. I have never felt a more malevolent force in my life—perhaps the god of the forge and fire directly above us was angered by our audacious curiosity. The wind whipped my back as if I was a recaptured convict and it ricocheted off the cagey railing with the fury of forty prisoners with chattering teeth, rattling their bars in an Arctic penitentiary.


David had gone ahead of me on the octagonal outlook and shouted a couple of things back to me that I couldn't hear, but I deciphered the most important statement: it was less windy around the bend. As we looked directly onto Birmingham's evening skyline, my freezing fingers fumbled with my camera, only to take a few noisy pictures at ISO 2000 and higher. There are still plenty of instances where the human eye is the master of clarity, just as the human mind is the master of deception and doubt.


As I stood momentarily hypnotized by the string of lights across the city, I imagined what would happen if the wind pushed me over the railing and hurled me to my death. Perhaps I would land on my feet like a cat and have my kneecaps explode from their sockets like two kernels bursting from a bag of Pop Secret. Perhaps I would fall flat on my back and have my bones disjointed like a dropped tray of uncooked french fries. Or perhaps I'd fall head-first and explode like a negro's watermelon, creating a picnic of juicy blood and black and translucent seeds of unfulfilled desires and potential for which scavenging crows and frigid ants could feast.


David would have the common sense to take the elevator down to see if I had survived before he notified the authorities. I'd probably do the same, or I might have sent a Facebook message out to those he loves and cares about and then jumped from the god's pedestal in fitting pagan fashion.