In a loud voice I shout One, Two, Three, and Four trying to control my fear. I take a step to the edge. Then I leap off.

Work is boring. Life is dull. I watch Doris filing her nails, having a gossip with Jane from human resources talking about everything and nothing of importance to the rest of us. I go to the water cooler avoiding eye contact with them. Looking out the window trying to find something to give me hope, and then I see something, I cannot shake the image of. A man falling past the window dressed as an angel. We make eye contact and smiles. Then he goes. I find myself rushing to the window calling out to people. In that moment my world changes, what do I do now? What does it mean?

The air is so clean and so cold. It is rushing through my hair like fingers of a barber as he finishes the styling. I look through in to the offices as I descend. I see a young man having a drink and two girls talking. It is just so normal, but what is normal now. I pass by another office I look in to the eyes of love. She has beautiful hazel eyes and flowing dark brown hair falling on her shoulders like a waterfall.

The eyes are the windows of the soul. My father told me once. Now I see the soul of someone at peace. The moment is timeless, in the moment before he entered my life I was trying to decide to keep my unplanned baby. Now I know what I must do. Thank you I say to him as he goes out of my sight.

The transition from fear to fearless is a moment of joy and freedom knowing that nothing can harm me, not one thing in this world can touch me. The office politics, the games we all play to get one over each other now means nothing. I now understand. I now understand it all as I look around the details are so clear, so sharp, sharper than the best HDTV, sharper than a knifes point pushing into the skin.

‘The car was late picking me up.’ I shouted in a loud voice so that the chauffer could hear. ‘I want a new driver.’ and slammed the phone down. I am a god. I am a god here and every person who works for me should understand that from day one. Nothing can get in my way today. The door opened. I gave the driver a look of degust, he avoid eye contact. I stood there in front of the Pendell Building, my building, my staff looking at me knowing that as soon as I walked through that door that either a caring god or a devil enraged. I could make or break any of them today. I look up at each floor seeing who is looking out of the window and not doing their job. Then I see my world breaking apart, as a god, I am now helpless.

It feels like time has stopped and I am floating in the air like a puppet. I spin around and look out at the view. The sunlight hits the clock face and shows me the time of the last moments of this life. I have read that when people are close to death that they see their life history passing in front of them. I see none of this, all I see is the local street cleaner pushing his broom. He looks up, I wave to him.

Here I am cleaning another street another pile of waste to dump into the bin. Watching the young and the rich going to work makes me proud, because my son is a high flyer making more money in a day than I could in ten years, but he doesn’t know I exists, my ex-wife didn’t want to tell him that his real Father sweeps the street, no she wanted him to make money to live a life of nice cars, big houses and people who are smiling in your face while stabbing you in the back, all looking for the next big deal. I stop for a moment while a Roll Royce pulls up outside the Pendell Building, as it is known. Then the Lord and Master step out and looks up as I do. I cannot believe what I am seeing, an Angel falling from heaven. I swear for a moment it waves at me I find myself waving back.

I find my suit is a bit tatty as I pull a long thread from my sleeve, trying to make my coffee last a bit longer while I wait for the clock to move its hands till it’s time to go home and trying to find a way to tell my wife that I have been sacked from my job and that no one else will hire me. Not after what he said, who is now looking up at his world. The bastard, he who thinks that every step he takes makes the earth tremble with fear. He can make you fly with confidence and then crush you like a fly under little finger. He has a fly farm in his office which he uses to demonstrate his philosophy. He told me once that people are like flies always living on the dead meat of others, and we need to make sure we got there first to get the best meat before anyone else. Then he fired me in front of the whole office and promotes my junior with the same breath. Now I watch as a piece of meat hits him. Nothing but good can come of this.

Now I can see the moment of truth coming. It rushes to me with a fury of the devil and the grace of god. I can look directly into the eyes and the choice of heaven or hell is given to me. But can I choose? Is the devil for my soul, or do I go to heaven and be an Angel? The moment before I choose I watch my past choices in my life. Everything I have said and done the pain and joy of moments past. The smile on a face of a child opening presents and my face as a child as I give my Mother a hug and a kiss for the present she gave me and the emptiness of missing a Father. Now I stand in the darkness. I await my judgment.

A moment I never expected. My eyes fixed to his as he fell towards me the look on his face. He seemed at peace, for myself my mind rushes with images of everything I have done. Every dodgy deal, every women I treated like a whore, every time I felt like a god, now I know I am nothing, nothing but a man, a man facing another with no options, no deal I can do with the devil, if the devil would let me live, but no I know my days are over as the ground opens up and takes me to where I belong. I pray for forgiveness.

I watch the news channel with disbelief. My world has now fallen apart.

‘. . . And in the news today a man attempted suicide from the Pandell building.’ They showed a photo of the man on the stretcher. It was my son. ‘He jumped from the roof dressed as an Angel but at the same time a John Hooker the CEO of the Pandell company had just got out of his car and was hit by Mr Acre and broke his fall. At the moment a Mr Acre is in a coma in Brompton Hospital. The burial of Mr Hooker will take place next week. A spokesman said this is a great loss had to the company.’

Why did he do it? I now sit by his bed trying to find the words. He has tubes and machines keeping him alive. I want to know why. I thought he was happy. I sit by his bed reading his diary. The only thing he had with him. It says nothing of the reason why, just a piece of paper between the pages, a flyer about a club called “The Right Path”. I go there in the middle of a heavy rain storm, feels like the tears I want to cry, but I never do. Crying is for babies as I told my son, teaching him never to be weak. Not like is Father. I enter the building; I can see a group of people through a side door in a private yard in some sort of pray with their hands in the air chanting something while washing themselves with the rain.

‘Can I help you?’ a young woman asked me as she sat at a table stamping something many piles of paper. ‘I like to see the person who is in charge here?’ She led me to a door and knocked. We waited, and waited and waited. We just stood there. ‘well you going to knock again?’, ‘I am only allowed to knock once then we must wait.’ I pushed my way past her and opened the door. The room was painted gold and at one end of it a man in a white robe was laying on a bed. He looked asleep so I was just about to wake him when his eyes flashed opened and looked at me.

‘You want answers.’ He said. ‘What did you do to my son?’ he looked right through me. ‘I! I have done nothing, but to help you son see the truth.’.’ he tried to kill himself and in trying he killed an innocent person.’ ‘Who said he was innocent, that man who died did more damage to the world.’ ‘What are you talking about!’, ‘your son has a gift, a gift of the truth, and he saw what that man had done and what he was going to do. He scarified himself to save the world. You should be proud.’ ‘PROUD!’ I could not believe what I was hearing. I grabbed him. ‘You brainwashed my son. You are nothing but evil. How can you judge who is good and who is bad.’

Then I woke up. I fell asleep. It was just a mad dream, that’s all it was. I look at him, still in a coma; he looked so peaceful, like in a dream. I started to tell him about the dream I had and his eyes started to flicker and he griped my hand, I called out for a Nurse a Doctor, anyone. His eyes opened and he looked at me.’ Mum. I could do with a tea.’

It’s been a year now since I jumped. I don’t remember much about before taking a step off the roof. The Police took they time in deciding not to charge me with anything. I now find myself in a different world. I went back to the place. I found people happy a young woman was showing her new baby to some work colleges. A man came up to me and gave me a coffee and shakes my hand and thanked me. I was about to leave when a chaffer pulled up beside me and told me about the day and the man who died. He offered to give me a lift. I thanked him but I needed to walk. Too think about all that has happened. A street cleaner sat beside me and gave me a double take.

‘You’re the Angel who fell.’ He said. ‘I’m just a man.’ I replied. ‘You changed my life, you changed the world.’ His words felt familiar to me. ‘Have we met before?’ ‘Your mother said I was not allowed to talk to you.’ I was in shock, this man; this small quite road sweeper was my father! ‘I was told my father had died when I was two.’ That’s what we agreed to tell you, well that’s what she told me to agree to or she threatened to put on the child abusers register.’ My world was now complete. ‘This is the only time I can see you.’, ‘you can’t go now, not like this.’ He got up to leave when Mother showed up. The look of being found out. ‘So it’s true.’ ‘Yes.’ She said ‘I’m sorry it just I wanted you to succeed when your father didn’t.’ ‘All I wanted was to be Me.’, ‘I shouted at her.’ Now it all came back to me the reason why I wanted to jump. I wanted freedom from other people dreams and to have some of my own. I decide to leave her there and walk with my father to get to know each other again. A new life has started for me now the past has died. The reason I dressed as an Angel? Even I don’t know why?

I now know I have done wrong. To push my son into something that wasn’t him, I shouldn’t have told his father to go away. I know it will take time to regain his love but that all that’s important to me now nothing else does.

The End.