Vindication.
Jark walked past the tall Finance building on the Ninth Street as he did every morning, right before the sun rose and the rest of the city stirred, restlessly, its coffee.
“I’m going to jump!”
Jark squinted upward at the voice.
“I’m going to jump,” the man said, with a hint of uncertainty about his voice.
“I dare you! I dare you to jump!” Jark screamed at the man.
The man squinted down. “I’m serious,” he said in a voice loud and weak.
“I dare you, you coward! I bet you can’t! I bet you can’t!” Jark screamed until blood pigmented his cheeks and his eyes ran crazy and he ran in circles on the sidewalk, gesturing and gesturing.
“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” And he jumped.
“You don’t have the guts to land!” Jark screamed at the man passing by the fifth floor.
“I will! I will!” the man passing by the second floor said.
Jark timed it. He had been timing it for years. He hadn’t walked this route to work, this route that took twice as long as the subway. He was ready. He counted under his breath. He tapped his toes. He did everything right.
As the man neared the ground, Jark leaped at an angle, pushing himself under the man while pushing them both onto the soft mud nearby. (Curiously, it hadn’t rained in weeks, and everywhere else the ground was baked rugose. Indeed, the grass here had acclimated itself to a man wearing sunglasses and a trench coat who came every day to pour a liter of water. It was way too much water, but natural selection has a way of sorting itself over the decades.)
The men lay there breathing and bleeding for a few minutes while the hysterical crowd around them generally panicked. Jark, deformed spine and all, stood up.
“Ha! Ha! I fucking cock-blocked you! I fucking cock-blocked you!”
He danced in front of the groaning man, alternating broken ankle to broken ankle.
He took out a checklist no bigger than a grocery list from his jacket pocket and tore off the piece that had the man’s name, throwing it on the ground in victory.
“This is How the Universe Behaves,” he intoned. He put on his sunglasses because he looked good in them.
He waited patiently until the spaceship arrived, boarded, and left. The ambulance people came a little while later, only to find a bunch of people spouting gibberish. And, in the center of it all, was a broken man, severely cock-blocked.