Jim stands alone; his head arched high, watching the skies.

He hasn’t eaten in six days, is dangerously dehydrated putting him to the point of complete exhaustion, smells like warmed-over death and can’t remember the last time he’s slept for more than a few minutes.

Jim made his lone frantic pilgrimage to this sheer precipice high in the Colorado Rockies almost a week ago.  He hiked for days to get here and recognizes at this point he could never find his way back home even if he wanted to; which he doesn’t.  His continual pacing has created a seemingly permanent groove deep into a 10 foot span of low grass.

Jim is a man possessed, incessantly muttering things to himself that only he understands.

He watches the skies because he knows.

Over the past month since the incident Jim’s lost his family, career and more than a nibble of his mind.

He’s lost in his own mental turmoil, with his filth covered face turned to the sky while mindlessly picking at some grime in his broken fingernail; when he hears it.

Without turning he freezes in place, mouth agape, his heart pounding.

A twig had crunched under foot behind him only a few feet past the tree line.

What felt like an eternity of stillness and silence was finally broken by an oddly guttural voice.

“It is time… to go.”

“Oh thank God,” Jim says while turning quickly toward the voice when suddenly with ferocious speed he is forcibly pushed toward the chasm.

He completes a turn mid-air as he begins his fatal fall.  Jim fleetingly glimpses a tall lanky greenish-grey figure standing at the edge of the cliff above him.

Before smashing on the rocks below, Jim smiles as he now knows, with relief, without question, he’s not crazy.