"If It Will Help You To Be Happy/Fall(en/ing)" (Flash Fiction piece, 434 words....a tablet freestyle)

I called her at some dark hour, darkness in my heart. Her reply?

"Stop crying, and go to sleep." The next morning she called, and explained that my maniacal sobs had scared her, but not quite enough to keep her awake and talking me off the ledge, I suppose.

This ledge. City pigeons and their rude, bullying ways, shitting on my Salvatore Ferragamo slippers, the ones she bought me because she spent so many years feeling guilty about all of the things that were merely reciprocities. I always take the blame. I guess that's just how I see things. Always feeling the pain of others, even if I'm the one slow dripping morphine into their veins.

"How did we end up here?"

"You know how; you were there."

"But..."

"Look, I won't talk about this, not right now. Okay?"

I looked down, much like now, staring into an abyss of what was once recognizable by early morning love-making, laughing in bed, holding her, watching old Degrassi High episodes. "Roll up another one", I say. Not the ones we grew up on. Some guy named Aubrey Graham stars in these. A Canadian kid bound to a wheelchair due to an action that couldn't be taken back. The bang too loud, the flash too bright. The pain that became paralyzation. 218