The First Draft

The city didn't sleep; it just passed out.

It was 2:00 AM, and the rain was falling with a monotonous, gray persistence that turned the streets below into rivers of oil and neon reflection. Elias Thorne sat on the edge of the rusted iron fire escape, his legs dangling over the alleyway. The metal was cold enough to bite through his denim jeans, seeping into his skin like a slow-acting poison.

In his hands, he clutched a leather-bound notebook. It was cheap, bought at a drugstore, but he treated it like a holy relic. It contained his soul—or at least, the jagged, melodramatic fragments of it that he managed to wrestle onto paper in between bouts of crushing numbness.

He looked down. Four stories. It was enough, probably.

But his hands were shaking. Not from the cold, but from the pathetic, biological urge to keep breathing. He hated it. He hated the fear. Sylvia Plath hadn’t been afraid. Cobain hadn’t hesitated. To be great, to be remembered, you had to bleed.

"You're not going to do it."

The voice cut through the sound of the rain like a razor blade through silk.

Elias jerked his head up.

On the neighboring fire escape, separated by a five-foot gap of empty air, a boy was watching him. He looked older—maybe nineteen. He was leaning against the brick wall, smoking a cigarette with a casual elegance that made the grime of the city look like a stage set.

He was beautiful in the way a storm front is beautiful. Sharp cheekbones, dark hair plastered to his forehead by the damp, and bruised knuckles wrapped around the cigarette filter.

"I am," Elias lied, his voice cracking. "Go away."

The boy took a drag, the cherry of the cigarette glowing bright orange. He exhaled a plume of smoke that drifted across the gap and mingled with the rain.

"No, you're not," the stranger said. He sounded bored. "Your posture is all wrong. You're leaning backward, toward safety. If you wanted to jump, your center of gravity would be committed."

Elias flushed, a flash of heat in the freezing night. "I'm a writer. I'm thinking."

"Ah. A writer." The boy flicked ash into the void. "That explains the notebook. Let me guess. You want to leave a stain. You want them to find the body and the book and realize they lost a genius."

Elias gripped the notebook tighter. It was exactly what he wanted. He wanted the world to feel the ache he carried in his chest every day.

"Who are you?" Elias asked.

"Julian," the boy said. He pushed himself off the wall and walked to the railing. He looked down at the alley, then back at Elias. His eyes were dark, unreadable pools. "And you're stuck on the ending."

"I'm not stuck."

"You are. You're waiting for permission," Julian said. "You think death is a tragedy. But for people like us? It’s an edit. It’s the final period on the sentence."

Julian climbed over the railing of his balcony. With a terrifying, feline grace, he leaped across the gap, landing silently on Elias's grate.

Elias scrambled back, pressing his spine against the cold window of his apartment. "What are you doing?"

Julian didn't answer. He reached out, his hand open. The skin on his knuckles was split and raw, but his fingers were long and steady.

"Let me read it," Julian commanded softly. "Let me see if it's worth the fall."

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