6 - Ravine

The valley stretched out and below them, a swath of green that dropped down many hundreds of feet, slowly leveling out as it approached the sea. At the foot of the forest, a small stretch of sandy beach divided green from blue, and beyond that, the ocean continued onwards and outwards into infinitely, flat and immense. The sky was utterly cloudless, utterly blue. A deep, sensuous blue directly above, fading to a paler blue near the horizon.

"Wow, it's beautiful." Cammie caught herself saying.

"Yeah." said Anthony flatly. He didn't deny that it was there, but that didn't meant he could see the beauty himself.

"I think I can see the curve of the earth from here." she again spoke her thought aloud in the same moment that it came to her. And it was true; the horizon did seem to bend downwards slightly at the extremities of her vision.

Anthony turned his head from the horizon to look at her. "I'm pretty sure that's an optical illusion."

She turned her head also. "Yes, light is striking the curvature of the earth and bouncing into my eyes, causing the optical illusion" she made bunny-ears out of her fingers as she said the latter word, "that the earth is, in fact, curved. Amazing!"

He gently rolled his eyes at her. "Very nice. Shall we get on with it?"

They stood on the blacktop at the curve of a long coastal road that they had driven about three hours out of the city to get to. Cammie had not known where they were going when they departed, and she was not sure Anthony had either; he had simply pulled over when they reached the correct spot. It was labeled as an observation point, but it was really just a small expansion of dirt that came out of the road. There were no tables or bathrooms. It was just a curved piece of dusty gravel. It was currently occupied by two cars, Anthony's blue Honda Acura, and a red, convertible Holden Astra that currently had its top down. Only one car would make the return journey. As planned, Anthony had picked up Cammie in the Acura and they'd driven together to a hire car outfit. She waited in the car a few blocks away while he had gone in and hired the Astra. He wouldn?t be returning it, but he had paid for full insurance nonetheless. He liked to be insured, Cammie thought wryly to herself as she reviewed her day thus far.

She had followed him in the Acura as he drove the Astra south out of the city down the Great South Road, and here to this spot. Since moving to the city Cammie had not had a lot of opportunities to drive, and in spite of herself she had enjoyed being behind the wheel of a nice car, driving through the countryside. She had turned up triple-J, cranked down the windows, and sung out loud to herself for most of the trip. By the time Anthony pulled them over, she had forgotten where they were going, and why. Less than a minute ago, she thought to herself, I was singing along to Nirvana, and now I'm about to be an accessory to, what, murder? Suicide? Heavy-metal-murder-suicide? She didn't know. She sighed heavily.

"So this is the place then huh?"

"I thought it appropriate." He said, gesturing away from the valley to the other side of the observation point. She walked across the stony ground and looked down. Way down. The road curved at this point because the land dropped away sharply, falling at an alarming rate, now composed of a rocky cliff at an intense angle. Odd rocks jutted out from the claylike surface, along with the occasional straggly tree that twisted outward, clinging on to the surface of the cliff in a remarkable tribute to the tenacity of plant-life. At the foot of the cliff, some hundred-and-twenty feet below her, the cliff ended in a mass of jagged rocks, that sat uncomfortably amongst the crashing waves that were smashing themselves between the rocks, mighty fists of water that separated into stabbing fingers as they reached the rocks, coursing between any nook or cranny that presented itself. Even from as far up as she was, the spray from the force of the ocean washed across Cammie's face, and a shock of cold vertigo sent her stumbling backwards a few faltering steps.

"Whoa," she said, turning and regaining her footing quickly. "long way down."

"That's the idea." said Anthony.

"Oh, right." She coughed and looked away from his face, uncomfortable. "So ah, what's the plan again?"

He gestured for her to follow him to the convertible. He sat in the driver's seat and slammed the door behind him, while Cammie eschewed the door entirely and simply stepped over it and plopped herself into the passenger seat. Since the time that they had pulled off the road, no other car had passed. This was purely a scenic route and, while popular among tourists, was unlikely to be heavily trafficked outside of weekends. Even so, what they were planning should not take long, and to anyone passing by they would appear utterly normal, until the last moment, that is.

"Okay." Anthony said, staring forward over the wheel. Without warning he suddenly breathed in and out, sharply, over and over, like he was about to take a deep plunge and was hyperventilating to oxygenate his blood. Just as suddenly, he stopped breathing sharply and shook his head about, like a dog that had been given a fright. This only took a moment, and then he had returned to his normal, impassive expression. Before Cammie had a chance to comment or query on any of this, he resumed speaking without pause: "Okay, so: I go in the chair. Seatbelt goes on." As he spoke, he reached up to his shoulder mechanically, still looking straight ahead over the wheel as he did so, taking the seatbelt with one hand, without looking, and then pulling it slowly across his body, sliding it into place at his hip with a click. "Then I put on the blindfold." He leaned over her and popped open the glove compartment. In it was a sleeping mask, the sort they sometimes give you on long-haul flights. Indeed, looking closer, Cammie could see the red Qantas logo embossed over one eye. Anthony took it out and held it between thumb and finger. He didn't put it on, just placed it in the space under the handbrake for later use. "Then on goes the engine, I stick it in neutral, and then, well, then I need you to stick a brick on the accelerator, get out of the car, lean over, shove the transmission into drive, then get yourself out of the car before it takes off."

Anthony stared grimly ahead as he said all this. Cammie followed his line of sight to the cliff edge. There was a low metal barrier between land and the big empty space in front of it, covered in reflective plastic strips. "Won't that little fence thing stop you?" Presumably that was why it was there.

"Probably not." he replied. "A big heavy car like this, going at a decent speed, should go through it easily enough. But even if it doesn't, the car will still have enough momentum to skip the rail. After that, it's adios, muchachos."

Cammie felt another wave of vertigo, like she was rushing towards the cliff wall herself. She gripped the handbrake with one hand and a slot in her door with the other. "Look, I know I've said this a million times by now, but are you sure about this?"

"Well, it's certainly believable. Road accidents are the number one cause of death in my age group."

"Yeah, no, I meant, are you sure you want to do this, I mean, at all, even? Like, altogether?"

He looked at her calmly for a moment. He didn't seem sad, or happy. Just neutral. Blank.

"You know I do." He said slowly, carefully.

"Yeah I know all that stuff, but like, are you sure this is the best way, I mean, what if you survive the fall? People survive shit like this all the time."

"Then I'll drown. I'm sure I'll lose consciousness on impact, if not before. Still be just as dead. Maybe the car will explode, too."

"Bonus!" She said, giving him a sarcastic thumbs up. Even in the grimmest of situations, she could always rely on her gallows humour to come through.

He hummed softly. "Maybe I shouldn't wear the seatbelt." He unclipped it. "Yeah. Then I'll go flying through the front window when the car hits bottom." He thought for a second, then refastened it. "Actually, better leave it in place- it might not look too good if my seatbelt was unbuckled. Willful negligence and all that."

"Right." she said, not quite sure what else to say. He did have a point. What could she say? Look at the flowers, look at the bunnies? Look at this beautiful day? Even if all you ever did was look at this beautiful day, wouldn't that be worth sticking around for? That was what she wanted to say. But he'd heard it all and more besides. If the breathtaking vista before him didn't bring him back from the brink, pointing at it and yelling 'Look!' wouldn't do much good either. Unable to think of anything better, she did it anyway:

"Look!" she yelled at him, gesticulating wildly at the horizon, her arms flailing like a Muppet?s.

His face remained impassive, like he had been expecting this from her. She returned her hands to their gripping positions on the handbrake and door, kicking forward once in frustration. Anthony stayed calm.

"We've been over this. It's my choice." He put his hand on the handbrake, over hers. "Thank you for helping me."

"Christ." she cursed, kicking the passenger footrest of the car again. "It's your funeral. Where's the damned brick, then?"

"The bri- ah, fuck!" Anthony said, his signature calmness abandoned as he slapped the steering wheel with both hands. "Oh of all the bloody ... shit. Sorry." He sighed heavily, took a few deep breaths before turning to her plaintively. "You couldn't, uhm, look around for a rock or something, could you?"

Without a word, but with a particularly cutting glance, she hauled herself back out of the car, over the door, and started to hunt around the gravelly surface of the rest stop for a suitable object. It didn't take her long- near treeline of the forest she found a hefty stone half-sphere, certainly not as heavy as a brick, but she was sure it would do the trick. She walked back to the car, holding the stone aloft with one hand, smooth-side down into her palm.

"This should do it."

"Great!" he said cheerily, his prior anger at himself dissipated. "Just hang on a sec." He started the car, and reversed away from the cliff-edge, putting as much distance as possible between it and the car before reaching the point where the gravel met the blacktop. There was now a substantial run-up in which the car could gather enough speed to tackle the barrier. Cammie followed the Astra on foot to where it had backed up.

"Okay." Anthony said, donning the blindfold before she could issue another protest. "Let's do this." The engine was still running and he slipped the transmission into neutral. He opened the driver's side door and moved his feet to one side to let Cammie crouch down and insert the stone over the accelerator. It was an odd mixture of smells, the leather of Anthony's shoes, the rubber of the car mat, the new-car spray that car-hire companies deodorized their cars with between each customer. Trying not to think, she hefted the stone and placed the flat edge over the accelerator. The engine roared in response, over-revving terribly, gears turning but connected to nothing, driving nothing forward.

"Do it now!" Anthony yelled over the howl of the engine, his eyes unseeing. Alarmed by the noise, her ears under painful assault, she quickly withdrew from the footwell and slammed the driver's side door closed, then leaned over it, over Anthony's blindfolded face, and shoved the gearstick into drive. The roaring of the engine dropped away to a growl as the automatic transmission engaged, but the rear wheels started to spin on the gravel with immediate effect, throwing up a huge cloud of dusty smoke behind the car. Cammie had less than a second to shove herself away from the car door she was leaning on before the wheels gained traction and the car surged forward, the engine now again revving upwards to a loud scream. The Astra shot away from where Cammie was standing, still throwing up an enormous plume of dirt and gravel in its wake, a cloud which enveloped Cammie whole. But still through the miasma Cammie could see the silhouette of the car speeding away from her, towards the cliff edge.

It took the Astra less than ten seconds to cover the distance to the barrier, but that was more than enough time for it to accelerate to 100 kilometres per hour. Anthony was right, at this speed it did not carry enough force to smash through the barrier itself, and the front of the machine crunched sickeningly against the low metal before, with alarming speed, the entire chassis flipped to one side and, with a wrenching groan, rolled right over the low metal wall, before disappearing over the edge with a mighty bang.

Cammie ran through the smoky air, coughing on the dust as she did so, running along between the twin tracks in the dirt the wheels had made as they passed. Each footstep forward seemed to take an age, she had never felt so slow, yet she reached the barrier before she was ready to. It was badly dented by the impact of the car, a bumper-shaper impression in the metal supplemented by the actual bumper itself, which had torn away in the collision, sitting right below the mark it had made. Glass lay everywhere. Cammie stood by the barrier and looked over the edge. The falling had ploughed a mighty gash down the side of the clay cliff-face, like a giant talon had torn its way down from top to bottom, and where the line of destruction ended, the body of the car lay smashed on the rocks. Nothing could have survived such a fall. The Astra looked as though it had been crushed by a trash compactor. It was crumpled like an aluminum can.

Cammie stood over the wreckage, mouth agape, eyes full of tears. It had all happened so quickly. Less than ten minutes ago she had been singing her lungs out, following that very car. Now it was a mutilated strip of scrap metal at the foot of the cliff. And Anthony ... Oh God, she thought, what have I done?

She heard a series of raspy coughs from behind her, followed by a barked curse:

"Fuck!"

She turned and saw, through the clearing dust-cloud, the online of a figure on the ground, coughing and swearing. It was Anthony. She ran to his side in an uncoordinated rush, tears spilling down her cheeks.

"My God, you're alive? How? You're alive!" She grabbed onto him and squeezed him.

"Ow!" Anthony screamed, "Gerroff!"

She withdrew. He was a mess. His face was cut, blood running down his forehead. His clothes were torn, he was completely covered in grey-brown dust, and he held one arm painfully with the other. The blindfold lay a few feet from him.

"What happened?" Cammie said breathlessly, amazed at what she was seeing.

"I threw myself from the car, didn't I?" he said angrily. "Without even asking, my hand unclipped the seatbelt, my other hand opened the door, and then my body," he said this last word with forceful venom, furious at himself. "rolled itself out of the car before it hit the barrier. Fuck. Fuuuuck!" He screamed and punched the ground.

"Why can't I do it? Why can't I die?!?"