Cherry Pie

Fortune Tellers

[Rayne]

A part of me wondered why I wasn't scared to be all but hanging off the side of a scaling water tower, as I normally would have been. But a bigger part of me thirsted for the adrenaline that was currently coursing through my every nerve fiber.

Standing on top of that tower — the wind so strong that it was making my clothes cling to my body like cellophane wrap — the buzz of exhilaration was unmatched. Neither recklessly driving Dean's car nor chopping my own hair off had satisfied my sudden and all consuming crave for it.

Dean was shouting something at me but his words weren't registering. I just wanted to jump. Needed to jump. The rush of blood in my ears and the excited pounding of my heart made everything seem brighter and more real. "I feel alive," I whispered once more, but the high wind speeds ripped the words from my mouth before he could hear me. That didn't matter, however. In that moment, nothing mattered. Only the amount of steps that it would take to reach the end of the ledge. Just one more. I was so close. I could feel the end.

And it tasted like the beginning.

"Rayne, stop! Don't you get that this thing is 130  feet tall?!"

I wished it were taller. My body leaned forward, gravity took over, and I began to fall.

Something snagged on the back of my shirt and I was jerked backwards. My eyes flew open. I gasped at the sudden change of direction. I was supposed to be falling forwards, not backwards. My breath momentarily left me as I was slammed back against something hard. Dean's face loomed before me — angry and shocked. "What the hell are you thinking? Snap out of it, Rayne! Now!"

"I have to do this, Dean," I cried, trying to be heard over the wind. I clawed at his arms that were pinning me against the side of the water tower. We were still on the walkway, a mere arm's reach away from the edge, but to me, it felt like miles of distance stood between me and my goal.

"No," he growled, grunting as he tried to keep me in place, "you don't!"

However, the adrenaline must have given me an extra burst of strength because, by some miracle, I was gaining the upper hand on our tug of war. As I pushed on Dean's chest, I could see his feet starting to slide backwards towards the ledge. That image stirred something within me, but only for a brief second. I didn't want Dean to fall...somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that he wouldn't survive the drop, but everything in me was pulling my body in the direction of the threshold. 

Survival wasn't an issue for me — I was invincible. How could he not see that? I managed to shove Dean another inch away from me, but then, and with a loud snarl, he seemed to have found a new surge of energy because he grabbed a handful of my shirt and slammed me back against the steel wall behind me with head-splitting force.

I didn't feel the impact; I just all of a sudden felt an intense pain pulsating all throughout my skull. There was a loud ringing in my ears as my vision blurred and my knees buckled. Dean probably hadn't meant to push me so hard because he swore colorfully and rushed to hold me up as I sagged against the wall. Although my skyline was tilting back and forth like I was on a ship in the middle of a storm, my gaze connected with the ledge, and once again, I was propelled towards it.

Crawling now, I began to drag myself forward. Just as my fingers skimmed the metal railing, I was grabbed around the waist and flipped over onto my back. I huffed as Dean dropped on top of me. His hands pinned my arms above my head with an iron grip. "Stop it!" he shouted, his face inches away from mine. "You have to stop!"

The pleading in his voice burst something within me and I was flooded with a brief moment of clarity. "I can't," I moaned, tears springing to my eyes.