I watched as Blondie moved the big Dodge slowly across the parking lot until he had the push bar of his truck right up against the front bumper of my Boxster. As soon as the two vehicles touched, the two in the back of the truck jumped out with their weapons and the guy in the passenger seat got out with a shotgun. They all started walking toward the car.

I wasn’t about to try to fight these dudes while sitting in a car. I started to open the door, but the one with the chain swung it hard against the door and forced it closed again. Then the one with the shotgun it pointed it directly at my head. Sweet merciful crap, I’d heard of homophobes before, but these guys were serious.

“Ah! Ah! Ah! Oh no you don’t!”, said Blondie over the PA system. “You’re gonna stay right there in that pretty little car where you can’t hurt anyone else with your fancy fairy moves.” 

With that, he put the truck in gear and started pushing the Boxster. I heard the sickening sound of the plastic bumper and hood buckling, and the Boxster started to move. In desperation I pushed on the brake as hard as I could, but it was no use. The big Dodge didn’t even struggle as it started pushing the little sports car across the parking lot. 

The three guys that had jumped out of the truck walked along side the Boxster, and the shotgun was still pointed at my head. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw nothing but the guardrail, the temporary repair to the hole in it, and blue sky behind it. My throat tightened and my heart started to pound as I realized what Blondie was doing: He was going to push the Boxster over the cliff with me inside it! 

Once again almost as if he had read my mind, Blondie came over the PA speaker again. 

“You know, Fruit Boy, if you would have just let us beat you up a little bit this day would have gone a lot better for you. We might have just cut your dick off and let you live like a woman. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But no, you had to go and be a hero and hurt my buddies, then you had to make me chase you all over this God-damned mountain. Now you’re going to die.” 

The diesel engine started howling, smoke started pouring out of the smokestacks, and the I felt the Boxster picking up speed as it headed for the barrier. Soon enough, I heard a crunching sound as the back end of the car hit a concrete berm just before the barrier. The car stopped moving backward as the barrier resisted it, and the rear tires of the truck started spinning. For a moment I was relieved – perhaps these goons just wanted to put a scare into me before giving me a beating. I could handle that. I’ve taken plenty of beatings in my life.

“Oops, silly me, I forgot to put it in four wheel drive”, Blondie said over the loudspeaker. The engine died down to idle, the wheels stopped spinning, and I could hear some clunking coming from under the truck as the transfer case was engaged. Sure enough the diesel revved up and the truck started pushing again. This time the push was relentless, and I could hear things popping and breaking under the Boxster as the berm resisted it. Suddenly the car’s axle hopped the berm and the truck effortlessly pushed it toward the cliff edge, through the temporary repair in the guard rail... and then stopped. It started slowly backing up. 

The big Dodge stopped about 50 metres from the Boxster, which was right on the edge of the cliff. I was still holding out hope that maybe they had had a change of heart or were maybe just trying to scare me, but Blondie came over the PA one more time. 

“Goodbye, Fruit Boy! See you in hell!” 

With that the big diesel started screaming and belching thick black smoke. As it started barrelling towards me, I had just enough time for one last desperate act. I might be about to die, but I was not going down without a fight.

“If I’m going to hell, then you’re coming with me, you son of a bitch!” I yelled, as I put the shifter into reverse, cut the steering wheel hard to the right, and revved the engine. The big Dodge was roaring toward me now, and just before it made contact, I dumped the clutch and sent the Boxster flying backward and over the cliff. Because I had the wheels cut the car swerved out of the way of the Dodge, which never made contact, and as I felt my car going over the edge I saw a look of sheer terror in Blondie’s face as he realized that he was coming too. 

Blondie had anticipated hitting the car and forcing it over the cliff, but my last act took away the only barrier between the Dodge and the abyss. With nothing to resist it and the momentum of 5,000 kilograms worth of chrome, rubber, and testosterone, Blondie and the Dodge followed me over the edge.

As the two vehicles soared into the blue sky I felt a brief wave of satisfaction as I saw Blondie’s dawning comprehension of what had just happened, and also what was about to happen. That satisfaction was short lived, however, as I started experiencing weightlessness and the reality of my own situation set in:

I, too, was about to die. 

Almost immediately after the vehicles started falling I could feel myself slipping out of the Porsche. I didn’t know why, but for some reason I felt that I’d be better off outside of it – certainly it was not going to protect me when impact with the ground below finally came. I gave a shove with my legs and I was out of the car, free falling. At first I stayed beside the vehicles, but as wind resistance started slowing me down the much heavier vehicles plunged further on ahead of me. 

I struggled to orient myself as I was falling. With nothing to hold onto or push from this proved to be very difficult, but I soon managed to arrange myself so that I was face down and looking at the rapidly approaching valley floor. As the air rushed around my body the aerodynamics forced me further from the vehicles and the cliff face. A loud crunching sound below indicated that one of the vehicles had struck the side of the cliff, and I felt sick to my stomach as I saw the Dodge bounce off the rocks, cab flattened, and it started tumbling violently in the air, flinging bits of broken metal everywhere as it flipped over and over. By the looks of how that cab was smashed in, Blondie’s journey into eternity was already over. 

With my heart racing toward its doom I closed my eyes. I knew the end was coming, but I did not want to watch it approach so I kept my eyes closed tightly as I fell. I was trying to force myself to relive fond memories of my past, but as I was doing so, I realized that I didn’t really have many fond memories. The bullies made my childhood miserable, but even as I got older I lived an empty, pointless life. Full of money, sex, travel, and partying, yes, but pointless. Would anybody even miss me? Who would get my riches? Take over my condo? Hell, who would even collect my splattered remains from the morgue and bury me?

I did not waste much time thinking about any of that. I was damned if I was going to spend my last few seconds among the living being depressed. Instead I started to think about flying. For as long as I could remember I would dream about flying. I’d watch the birds and wish that I could sprout a pair of wings and join them, and in my dreams I would do just that, soaring effortlessly through the air. 

It had always seemed so real, so much so that I would be disappointed when I woke back to reality and realized I had been dreaming the whole thing. These dreams were returning to me now, ironically at the very time when I really had a reason for wishing that I could fly. With my eyes closed it almost felt as though I WAS flying, but of course I really was just falling, and sooner or later (probably sooner – how long have I been falling now, anyway?) meat would meet ground, and I would be little more than a stain on the valley floor.

My predicament was suddenly brought back into focus as I felt a blinding pain in my back accompanied by a tearing sound. My first thought was that the goober with the shotgun had shot me as I was falling, but I suddenly felt my fall being arrested, almost as though some unknown force had hooked me by the shoulders and was holding me back. I opened my eyes just in time to watch the Porsche and Dodge hit the valley floor and disintegrate into a million pieces, but as for myself, I was no longer falling.

Confused, I looked to my left and saw what looked like an enormous white wing stretched straight out. A glance to the right revealed another wing. Both wings had streaks of red on them. It looked remarkably like blood, but the wind passing over them seemed to be blowing the red off and leaving clean white feathers behind. 

I simply could not understand what had happened. Perhaps some giant bird had caught me by the back? I looked up but there was no bird above me. I reached around to try to touch the wings and discovered that they were definitely attached to me, sprouting out of my back just above the shoulders. But how was this possible? I had always dreamed of this, and those dreams always seemed real, but this was just crazy.

I was beginning to think that there was only one explanation: Maybe I had already hit the valley floor and died, and I was now an angel. I didn't remember the splat, but maybe this was what death was like. It was the only explanation that made sense, though if I were really an angel it said a lot about the standards for getting into heaven. 

Looking around I discovered that although I was no longer falling, I was definitely gliding, and in the short span of time that had just passed I had already glided far from the cliff’s edge and was now out over the large lake that filled the valley. I looked down onto the lake and could see the shadows of what looked like two enormous birds soaring side by side. As soon as I realized that this was my own shadow it clicked in my mind that there were two. 

I whipped my head to the left again and was startled to see a huge golden eagle soaring beside me. Huge? No, that is an understatement. This bird was enormous, its body nearly as long as my own, with a wingspan of four metres or more. I then looked above again, thinking that maybe I had somehow missed seeing the other bird that was obviously carrying me. There was still nothing there, so I looked back at the eagle. 

This eagle was acting strange. It was looking at me as though it was expecting something from me. The huge bird and I soared side by side in silence for a long moment, neither one of us moving a muscle: The eagle expertly using the air to stay aloft, myself not having any idea what I was doing and so not daring to move a muscle. The eagle just kept on soaring, looking at me impatiently, and then spoke.

 “If you’ve quite finished showing off, would you please complete your shift before people see you! Or at least have the sense to cloak yourself!”

Well, I am not ashamed to say that having a giant eagle talk to me scared the shit out of me, so badly that I lost all composure. I screamed "Oh, fuck!" and started flailing my arms and legs, trying to push myself away. Suddenly the huge white wings on my back went limp, folded backward, and I started dropping again, screaming as I was falling. 

Just as I started to go down I am sure that I heard that eagle mutter “My God, what an idiot”, and then it folded its own wings to follow me down. Probably to gloat, the fucker. 

Anyway, as I was falling I was annoyed to see that the eagle was falling too. No, that’s not right. It wasnt so much ‘falling’, truthfully, but diving. I was flailing my arms and legs wildly, falling out of control in a wide spiral and leaving a loud trail of expletives behind with the white wings trailing uselessly behind me, but the eagle looked to be 100% in control of its descent. The water was getting closer and closer. 

The eagle called out “You’re going to want to either complete your shift and start flying or fold those wings before you hit that water, otherwise it’s really going to hurt!” 

I was was no longer surprised to hear the animal speak (though I was a bit surprised that I could hear it over my own swearing), and the rapidly approaching lake was more prominent in my mind, but I had no idea what that eagle was talking about. 

“Shift? Fold my wings?”, I shouted at the eagle.  “What are you talking about?!? What the hell are you?”

“I am what you are, and you are what I am. And I’m just saying, you’d better do one or the other! You certainly can’t swim like that!” 

“But I don’t know how!  I can’t...” 

Suddenly the giant bird spread its wings back out and seemed to almost stop in mid air. I, who still had no idea what I was doing, glanced upward at the now seemingly stationary eagle and continued falling until SPLAT! 

OUCH! I had hit that water so hard that it felt solid. I had the wind knocked out of myself and could scarcely move. Thankfully those wings had prevented me from sinking too far at impact, and within moments I was back on the surface. Stunned, breathless, and in a lot of pain, but intact. The eagle was lingering overhead, soaring in a tight circle around him only a few feet off the water. 

“I told you so”, it said. It almost sounded amused. 

I was still gasping for air and wondering how the hell I was still alive, but this pissed me off. I managed to spit out “Oh, fuck off! What the hell are you, anyway? What’s happening here?”