The Edge of the World
by Rycke Foreman
Somehow, I’ve always known I would end this life here. From the earliest days of my youth, lying lazily among these vast, rolling fields, feeling my tender flesh cook in the crisp Rocky Mountain sun--I knew it. I wished it.
Can you feel it? The power? The feeling of expectation & peace that makes even your fingertips tingle? The way your lungs seem to fill forever with the sharp, clean scent of the mountains? To be lost in the hypnotic laughter of the wind-tickled trees... It is almost as beautiful as the way my Love breaths as she sleeps beside me. So softly. Seductively...
Coming here has brought things into perspective, like it always does. This log I’m sitting on...it’s always been here, as everpresent as the expectant energy that saturates this clearing. But of course you couldn’t yet know why this place is so sacred--I don’t think anybody knows. Just my brother & I, & what I’ve shared of it with my Love...
& now you.
You see, you’re standing next to the edge of the world. Maybe the only way I can describe it is a Lovecraftian spot where the veneer of this reality simply fails to overlap itself. Do you see it? Only a few paces away--you can’t miss it--that 2 or 3 yard gap that runs due North & South as far as your eyes can see.
The only thing that is not clear in my mind--the only thing I don’t know--is the answer to the question that has driven me since I was a child: What is on the other side? What’s left when the world ends?
The rest of this lunatic’s acreage, I'm sure you've surmised, but indulge me for a few moments, if for no other reason than to feel the sun gently massage your skin, the wind playfully tussle your hair; the divine magic. The land on the other side of the gap is mine, but you can’t get to it from here. You couldn’t hit it with a rock & John Elway’s arm.
If you’re looking @ it right now, I know you think I’m crazy. The far edge of the gap looks like it’s only 15, maybe 20' away from where you found this note stuffed into my Dr. Pepper bottle next to the old log, but it’s really--
Truth be told, I have no idea. I don’t know how far the gap is between the 2 edges. I've seen birds fly for upwards of a minute before their shadows fall on the other side of that insignificant fracture. I’ve stood right up on the brink & chucked baseball-sized rocks with all my might, watching them twist & curl unconcernedly through the air as they ate a good 50 - 60' of distance...yet they never cleared the far rim. I've never seen them hit bottom, either, though it looks like it's floor is only 8 or 10' down. Just be careful when you look--& I know you will--it's sort of...dizzying? The only other time I've ever felt the same sort of vertigo was looking into the Grand Canyon.
The crevice ends about 1 1/2 miles to the North & almost a full 5 miles South, both ends slowly nearing, then dissolving into a churning quicksand of ghostl
No, that's not quite right. I don't know how to describe it. Like TV static, but it's still gritty & earthy and slightly sour, & it hisses too, very quietly. A maddening, deep-itch kind of noise, but just out of earshot, or 1/2 an octave below what you can actually hear. I don't know--I don't like that place, & haven't been there in years.
All I do know is that I’ve been drawn to this place throughout my entire life. & now for what may be the end of it.
But, somehow, I don’t think this is really the end. No--I really don’t.
I think it’s just the beginning. A new & wonderful beginning.
I’ve dreamed of it for years, what I would find when I was, finally, seduced by the void. O'Brien's lost world of dinosaurs? The mind of M.C. Escher? The Garden of Eden? I suppose it could even be the gates of Hell, but I don’t believe that. No, not @ all.
& even if it is, I will have my Love beside me.
We only met 2 months ago. It was @ 1 of my brother’s parties. I don't usually go to those things--they can get pretty wild, & of course, it's a lot younger crowd. Alcohol in the bathtub, reefer in the back yard, coke in the den--a different flavor in each room, you know. But I needed to get out of my house &... Well, I was lonely. I had been for a while. So I went.
When I 1st met my Love, she told me she was 18. Maybe it was the couple of shots I had rushing through my old veins, or maybe it was the light behind her sapphire eyes, but I believed her. We talked for the longest while, & about such marvelous things!--probing, revealing, unfolding to each other in a gentle verbal dance--before we wandered off together. Alone.
We came here, but she didn’t know it. That is to say, I didn’t tell her where she was, about this place, but I didn’t have to. She felt it. I feel so good right now, she whispered. I want to make love.
We did.
With the moon caressing my back, illuminating her porcelain face in its seductive, cool-silver warmth...I have never felt so right, so completely in harmony. Her. Here. Afterward, the sighing song of the wind in the trees lulled us to sleep.
She moved in just a week later. The month & a 1/2 that followed was almost as serene as our 1st night. Like the countless days I’ve spent here over the course of my lifetime, it’s such a right feeling; warm & secure; you know that your little corner of the world has found its perfect balance.
6 weeks of honeymoon-like bliss. Life was sublime--or nearly so. Occasionally, she seemed tense or apprehensive, especially during this last week. I just thought it was...well, you know, that time of the month.
& it did have something to do with that.
Slowly, over this week, I coaxed her into telling me what was wrong. 2 secrets. The 1st was that she is pregnant. The 2nd had to do with the little white lie she told me on our 1st night together.
She had told me she still lived @ home, but the world had looked so lovely through those rose-colored glasses... She looks 18, acts 30. (& besides, after everything she’d told me about that son of a bitch, I knew I was doing her a favor, just getting her out of that house.) But of course she had only just turned 16.
I went in thinking we could work things out without the cops, thinking I could show her father this wonderful thing his daughter & I have together, that a few decades was just a blink in the eye of Love, that she & I are meant to be together. I went in thinking I could talk rationally to the man...
A stoned goldfish has livelier eyes than her father, a worthless, drunk old bastard who claimed a bad back so he could collect workman’s comp. He sure as hell got up fast enough when we came in, though. He grabbed for her.
She cried out.
I hit him.
Those 3 words look so naked there, so accusing; so in need of an explanation. All I can say is I've never hit another man before in violence. But she'd told me about the things he’d done to her, the way he touched her when they were alone. I saw that sick spark in his lost, sunken eyes as his arms opened to her--
It was like that old phrase, I saw red. I really, truly did. It was like a blanket of rage dropping over me, all that red, so bright and angry, saturating everything. All I could think was swing. Swing! SWING!
So I did. Hard.
He toppled like an imploded building, from the bottom up, knees unlocking. He fell sideways & backwards, away from me & his daughter as if in slow motion, every thin moment of his eyes rolling back into his head, jaw slackening, etched into the folds of my brain in full Technicolor. His head hit the corner of the coffee table, neck crooking @ such an acute angle--it sounded like ripping into a head of lettuce. A spew of pink, foamy blood erupted from his nostrils & mouth as his body crumpled limply to the carpet. I've seen a few dead bodies @ funerals and such, but I'd never seen anyone die before, let alone been responsible for it. I couldn't tear my eyes away--
My Love started screaming, but I was only vaguely aware of it. My mouth worked up & down uselessly--like a stoned goldfish, I guess--while my eyes were enrapt by his motionless body so perfectly still, so still, as if even the microbes on his skin, buried deep within his bowels had ceased to feed and multiply. So completely & utterly unmoving--a was now--inert, as if he'd managed to somehow transcend the very definition of stillness in death. It was so final, irrevocable. So fast. I kept thinking it had to be a joke, or that he'd suddenly start to twitch or gasp & everything would be OK, that things could go back to how they'd been just 30 seconds before, when I wasn't a murderer--
Then she grabbed my hand. My eyes tore themselves away then--ripped themselves from his bleaching flesh, the blood, the dark stain spreading over his crotch--up and up into her frantic eyes. How could I stand here & face her, my Love? Oh she was screaming--screaming hysterically--screaming because I’d killed her father--screaming at the violence from my own hands--
But yet, her eyes. That sparkle...
She wasn’t screaming--
No. It was laughter. High, shrieking lungsful of unrefined, uninhibited, uncontrollable laughter. It was the 1st time I’d seen the smile in her eyes for days--that intense, deep-baby-blue sparkle that reminds me of the sapphire ring Mom wore on her finger. “We’re free, now, Baby, free,” she kept saying, pulling me close & hugging me celebratoriously. Covering me with kisses.
She is amazing, my Love. She calms me, soothes me, eases every pain. Within minutes we were making love.
She is my drug now. Her touch subdues me in a way I can only compare to the feelings I get from this place. My place. Our place.
If she hadn’t been with me then, holding me, I think I would have lost my mind in the weeping & shrieking & in the begging for that horrible moment to be obliterated from my reeling thoughts. My forehead was hot & clammy, my gut heavy, churning, as if I’d somehow swallowed his soul, kicking & screaming all the way down...
“Oh God.” My head was spinning. “Oh God--what did I do? What did I do?”
“Take me there, Baby.” She was so calm. “To the place where we made love for the 1st time. Your Special Place.”
Our place.
I told her th
It's time to go.
The sheriff's deputies just left. I could see them in the driveway, scanning the bushes and pumphouses suspiciously, asking their questions to my brother, but he won't tell them anything. He doesn't know we're here. They didn’t look around too much this time--a beanpole deputy poked around behind the old farmhouse & barn for about 15 seconds--but they’ll be back, I’m sure. & the next time, they’ll probably stick around a bit longer, search the whole property a little more thoroughly...
They are certainly going to want to talk to me about a few things: her father, & why his house and ours burned down this morning. I suppose they're calling our love something filthy like rape, our precious time together a kidnapping, but how could they know what we have?
Maybe they’ll actually find this note. Maybe you’re reading it right now, eh Copper? How's this for a signed confession, huh? Rat-a-tat-tat--
She is still sleeping. My Love.
I don’t want to wake her, but I will if I have to. Just a few more minutes...
She is so beautiful. Her hair shifts restlessly in the gentle breeze, sunlight glinting off her silky, golden hair. She is smiling a little, as if a strand or 2 is tickling her. Or perhaps my Love dreams of me, or our child. Whatever, she is positively radiant under the glow of her own smile & the magic of this place.
I suppose I wrote this as a confession of sorts, though it is not necessarily for the police. Perhaps luck will be on our side, & someone else--you--will find this note poking out of the Dr. Pepper bottle.
If you do--& if you have nothing to lose--consider this an invitation. Come tell our family how you found land’s end, & how it worked its magic on you...
I wish I knew what's on the other side. I’ve hoped for different things over the years: Neverland, Land of the Lost, the planet of fast women, faster cars & light speed drugs...
What do I hope for now? Just our own, personal Eden. That’s all.
I just pray that we don’t take a step & never stop falling.
But as my eyes drink of her again, I know that that cannot be. Love conquers all. We will find the paradise lost.
She is stirring now. My heart aches to look her, she is so beautiful. I want this moment to last forever.
She has opened her eyes. Those big, baby-blue eyes...
I asked if she was ready, & this time I was the object of her smile.
I guess it’s time to go, now. But how to wrap this up? It doesn’t quite seem finished, & I tell her that.
She laughs. “’Cos it’s only just beginning,” she says, & st
While "The Edge of the World" was not inspired by the song of the same name by Faith No More, it did have a certain influence in the creation of the story: The Narrator's decision to refer to the girl only as My Love, an over-exaggerated difference in age, perhaps even the decision to title it as such--though its name is kind of a no-brainer. (Of course, I've always thought this dark song would be best appreciated in a dimly-lit, cigarette-hazed bar, while I hope you, Dear Readers, have been transported to the scent of clean pine air and polysemous dreams...)
"The Edge of the World" can be found on Faith No More's brilliant 1988 album, The Real Thing. If you've never heard this record (which includes their breakthrough, "Epic," and a cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs"), I'd suggest you give it a spin; it's one of those discs I'd drag along to that fabled deserted island.
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