Grummel awoke inside the back of the ’79 White Caprice Classic, exhausted, blistered, radiating from the persistent burn that encompassed his upper pink torso and ankles, wanting nothing more than to not be in this beautiful hellish paradise.
At the peak of the cliffside rested an old Lighthouse, newly renovated, painted over the solemn antiquity of a lost and forgotten time.
I always wondered who would live in such a time. A time before smartphones and wristwatch computers. Where all people had was each other and their wits.
“You think the sentries got sick of guarding this post and jumped off this cliff?”, Grummel asked.
“Why would you say something like that? or even think it.”, Mire replied.
“I just think these guys would get bored after a while, wouldn’t you”, a coy side grin fell upon his face as if to say “who wouldn’t?”
“I could never get bored out here, look at all this beauty that is surrounding us.”, Mire seemed enchanted by the crashing waves, the fat nuclear sized Iguanas and all the boundless blue that encompassed their surroundings.
Within a instant a seagull perched atop the Lighthouse steeple. Grummel softly replied,
”Let’s cliff-dive.”
“You’re insane”, Mire noted, as she began backing away from the cliffs edge. “ This is not that kind of night.”
Grummel always had a penchant for pushing the boundaries of what was safe, and what was clearly a bad idea.
“You think I would make it if I jumped?”, he peered at the drop, gauging specifically what area would be the softest. A clear 100+ foot drop that no person should even fathom attempting.
“Stop being dumb, you’d die instantly if you hit that water. The rocks, waves, and fall would all do you in.”, Mire cautiously spouted
“I think I’ll take my chances.” And with that he flung himself, head first off of the highest cliff-point, and into the unknown depths of what lay below.
Mire shrieked, a death cry befitting the situation, as the dusk lay claim to another idiot who tested their mortality.
She looked down. Into nothingness and with a calmness reflected on what had just occurred, and what possible outcomes might this night bring.
She gazed into the horizon, as the sun found its way under the break, all that remained was the pink sky above and orange rocks at her feet.
She awoke the next morning in the front seat of the car, hoping he’d make his way back to her eventually. He didn’t.
She started the car, and began the long trek back into the mainland, to gather herself and find a police station.
It was then when she realized, how technology failed them and how nature, in its purist form, is Queen.
