My Night With Lucifer

I - The Meeting

Have you ever had that feeling of not wanting to live anymore? I had that feeling last Friday night on the way back from my high school reunion. I'm not completely sure what triggered it. Maybe it was my lack of making something of myself like most of the others did. I wasn't a doctor, a famous writer or even a business man. I don't have the wife and the 2.5 child average, living behind a white picket fence in the suburbs. No, at 35 years old I was still the same journalist of a small paper with a circulation of ten thousand papers per week, reporting about stuff that nobody particularly cared about. I was still single, living in the same apartment with the roof starting to cave in Even the water pipes was not working very well.

Maybe realizing this was the trigger that made me pull over on the side of the bridge, get out of my car and climb onto the top of the railing that separated me from being alive and ending my boring existence. As I stood there in that windless night, it did go through my mind that nobody would even miss me. I don't think that even my mother would realize I was dead until she couldn't get hold of me on my birthday, which was still about ten months away. It's not like I heard from her at all over the years. Mainly just when she wanted to wish me a happy birthday and remind me about the pain she had to go through with my delivery. Every three years or so I drag myself over the country to see her in her crap little house, where the remembrance of what a failure I was clung to the walls in the forms of stupid photographs and mediocre school certificates.

It was in the realization that I would be dead for months before even the paper I work at would truly know I was missing that I decided to jump to my own death and freedom. I had not accomplished in getting any answers to the secrets of life, but I was sure going to find some secrets in death. And as I made myself ready to plumage to my own end a voice right next to me suddenly spoke.

"Nothing to live for anymore?"

I didn't see him boom out of nowhere, but there he was standing right next to me on the ledge that would lead me to my own doom. I forgot that I wanted to jump as I looked at his long blonde hair that rustled as if a wind was blowing, even though there was no source that would have been able to blow anything in any direction. His face looked like a sculpture in the perfect ivory, but it was his eyes that drew me the most. Almost clear, so light was the blue that sucked in my soul and radiated a feeling of love in my body of the likes of which I had never experienced in my life.

"So, are you planning to jump or are you waiting for a sign from the heavens? Because let me tell you one thing, if you are waiting for a sign from above, you will still be standing on this edge by the time the sun finally burns out."

The stranger's lips enthralled me. Every word like a musical note vibrating through my veins in a sense of remembrance of something wonderful that I must have known at some time in the past. And still I could not answer him. I did not know what to say. What do you say to a person when they urge you to jump towards your own death? Maybe you should just jump and get it over with?

"If you wanted to die you would've jumped already," the stranger said as he slowly lowered himself and sat down on the ledge, exposing his knees that peered through his torn white jeans.

"I don't have a reason for living," I barely got the words from my mouth, still standing, frozen on the same spot.

"I've felt like that many times in my life. Sometimes I feel like that a few times a day. Sometimes I even get days and weeks where I can think about nothing but killing myself in lack of just not having anything else to hold on too. Sometimes that feeling fuels me to hold on. Sometimes it breaks me down even worse. But I always get up and hope for the best. It doesn't really matter what you do, life is never simple. Nobody is ever truly happy. But it wasn't meant to be that way. Nothing is like it was supposed to be back in the beginning. But wait, I'm rambling and you still want to jump don't you?" the beautiful stranger said as I still watched his strong jaw move up and down, almost for a second wishing I could kiss his lips and taste ultimate consumption. I couldn't believe he was actually still urging me to jump. For a moment I thought of it just being some sort of manipulation to get me of the ledge, but the more I looked at him, the more I saw the nonchalant look in his eyes, and discovered that he truly didn't care if I lived or died.

"I don't want to die. It's just that I don't want to particularly live either." I was surprised by the sound escaping my lips. It was like he drew the very words from my heart.

"I know that feeling well. Why don't you get down from that ledge now? You just said you don't want to die, so why are you still standing there?"

"Because I still have nothing to live for."

"And if I said I could offer you something that will change your entire existence? That I can grant you purpose beyond anything that any human on earth can bring you?" The stranger caught my eyes, staring deeper and deeper into my soul, as if he was scanning my spirit and my answer before I could even give it to him.

"Then I would say that you would have to be God," I replied, slowly turning around and starting to climb down from the ledge.

"You're a journalist right?" the stranger asked.

"How did you..." I started but he didn't wait for my full reply.

"One of the reasons that you were just standing on that ledge was because you just came from your high school reunion, and let's face it. Since then you have accomplished nothing more than you did the day you walked out of that school. You have not met anybody who you felt close to. You are a failure in love, life and success. You failed in everything that was humanly possible. And by fail I do mean that you never tried, because trying and trying again and sometimes falling is not failing. Failure is when you give up or never even bother to try in fear of failing. The moment you get to that point you have failed worse than anybody has ever failed before."

He was standing in front of me. Each hand on either side of my head, looking me directly in the eyes and pushing me into the ledge which I was at that moment wishing would give way beneath me and let me fall to my death. Everything the stranger was saying was the truth. It scared me. It made me feel that I was somehow a cheat for still being alive and breathing.

"So now little man I give you one choice. Take me back to your place and I will give your life meaning, or climb back on that ledge and die the death of a coward who never even bothered to live, just stealing the oxygen out of the air, while another better man could've taken your place. Decide and decide quickly, but if you decide to go with me I will place the burden that I need to carry on your shoulders. Yes, I shall give you true purpose in life, but you will never be the same and you will never be able to stand on the ledge of a bridge ever again, because the knowledge that I possess will change you. It will make you a better or worse man. It will give you power, or it will strip you of all the humanity that you hold so dear to your heart."

I didn't even notice that he was holding me up until the moment he stepped away and I sank unto the ground. Not sure what to make of my thoughts. Not even sure if I was even still alive. I never asked for a sign as to leave this word or not, but I guess in some manner a sign did find me, but it was still giving me the opportunity to choose.

"How can you give my life purpose in one single night?" I asked as I looked up to the young Adonis, obviously so much younger than me.

"By telling you a story you have never heard and will never hear again," he said and shook his head as he turned around and walked over to my car, as if waiting for me to follow him.

"I haven't decided yet!" I shouted after him.

"If you decided differently you would've jumped twenty minutes ago!" he shouted back as he climbed into my car and leaned over to open the door of the driver side from inside.

"What the heck. If he kills me, he would just be ending what I already started," I mumbled as I got up, dusted my pants and walked over to the car to invite a stranger whose name I don't even know into my life, my car and my apartment.