If I jump, my story ends here. However, if I get down and learn to fly instead, I may have enough time to tell you everything. As I glance down at my feet, all I can focus on is the distinct red line I see. It’s bright cherry path leads from the ledge where I stand, onto the rooftop, to the door to this building. I do not doubt that the green line ends with the contents of my body splattered on the ground below. But, which line to follow? I’m shaking so intensely that it may no longer be my choice. Rain sprinkles lightly, leaving tiny specks of life on my exposed arms. The slippery ledge beneath my feet urges me to fall. Wisps of wind cut at my face. I do not feel cold; I scarcely feel anything anymore but this deep, hollow ache that I can’t seem to purge. I peer down over the edge. Not one silhouette graces the streets. No voices pierce the air, not one footstep dares break the stillness. It’s a peaceful night in a rough neighborhood. The only movement to be made is the gentle descent of the rain. I wonder if anyone would’ve come running, had my body been plastered to the road hours ago.
No, I can’t take this anymore. I want control of my life back. I’m desperate for the sense of authority that I haven’t truly had for over ten years. These damn green lines were never any less harmful than the red ones.
I scream at the top of my lungs, tears cascading out the whole time. “F***! F***, f***, f***!” The word slips off my tongue so instinctively in my rage.

I squeeze my eyes shut and allow myself to unhinge. The remorseless wind sways my body, and I cannot tell anymore if it’s towards safety of the bitter concrete that very well may be my death bed. I reopen my eyes with the intent of taking the leap. When I look around for the last time, something stops me from jumping. There are no red or green lines beneath me. They’ve simply vanished. ‘Am I losing it? How did this happen? What does it mean?’ I ponder. My curiosity overtakes me and, still shivering, I get down from the ledge, my mind aflood with eager thoughts.

For a minute, I’m unsure of what to do next. I sit on the rooftop and allow the rain to crash into my skin like tiny bullets. For the first time tonight, I’m aware of how cold I am out on this rooftop. My joints are warning me that if I don’t move now, I may be trapped out here for quite some time. Patches of white will soon begin to blossom on my vulnerable face and, for once, I care.

I scan my surroundings for the red and green, certain that their disappearance is all in my head, but still I make out no lines. ‘Am I dreaming? Did I fall? Am I dead?’ I scramble to come up with a logical explanation. ‘No, if I weren’t alive right now, there’s no way I would feel this pain as cuttingly as I do,’  determine. After deciding that this is real life, I start slowly towards the door.

My frozen hands take a minute to unlock the door and wrench it open. I walk delicately down two flights of stairs, my head still frantically attempting to process what just happened. With all my shaking, I struggle to unlock my motel room door, as well. When I finally push my way in, I collapse onto the bed. It smells musky and the springs cry out when I fall onto them. The room is dimly lit, with the occasional flicker, by a single light fixture hanging from the center of the ceiling. It looks as though a little more weight on it could send it crashing down. Faint green numbers flash the time- 2:37 AM- on a dying alarm clock. I wrap the quilt around me, despite my concern for the last time it was washed, and just thankful for some warmth.

At this point you must think I’m clinically insane. I’ve thought that of myself plenty, but the wonders of modern medicine have disproved my theory, time and time again. Any idiot with a PHD could deem me mentally unstable, yet every ‘expert’ I’ve seen has told me there’s no problem with my mind. By now, I know they’re wrong. Perhaps, if they spent more time in the real world and less time telling me that everything will be okay, I’d be somewhere much more pleasant right now. Or maybe they’d just tell me to pop a couple Prozacs, drink water and get sufficient sleep. But, maybes don’t matter, it’s too late for that.

Anyways, I suppose I should explain the lines. These are not figurative lines. I see literal red and green lines everywhere I go. This does not mean that the lines are actually there. As it turns out, I’m the only person who can see them. Allow me to elaborate.

The first month that I started seeing the lines I discovered a few things:
1. The green line always leads me to good decisions.
2. The red line does the opposite, leading me to bad decisions.
3. I have no choice but to choose a line to follow, my body physically will not let me go elsewhere.
4. Delusion is not to blame, I’ve been examined many times and, according to science, I am completely healthy, both mentally and physically.

5. It’s best if I follow the green line for the rest of my life.

Confusing, I know, but it makes more sense in time. Strangely enough, the more reasonable it seems, the more crazy I feel. Now that I’ve explained that, I can tell my tale, starting from the beginning.

My name is Oliver Coyne. I have dull brown hair that flows from my scalp in short, smooth waves. I was cursed with the type of blue eyes that, for whatever reason, people obsess over. You know the ones- most commonly compared to oceans or the sky because no one’s original enough to come up with a less boring analogy. I am currently twenty-three years old, and it’s been eleven years since I started seeing the lines.

My childhood had been completely conventional up until then. The day of my twelfth birthday was when I first saw the lines. A red line and a green line, leading from me towards two different places. The red line led me to my kitchen, and the green to my living room. In my kitchen stood my uncle, with a  drink in his hand and a dazed expression on his face, as if he was trying to figure out where he was. On the other hand, my grade six crush, Anna, was watching a movie, alone in my living room. Her brown eyes were focused on the television, and her blonde hair was in a high ponytail. The rest of my friends had lost interest in the movie when snacks were set out, and abandoned it to head for the goodies about ten minutes ago. I followed the green line, naively thinking that this was a party game of sorts. I took a seat beside my crush, Anna, and asked her what was up with the lines. She seemed confused, so as not to embarrass myself I said never mind and dismissed the thought. We finished the movie and ended up chatting for hours. Later that night, she kissed my cheek. I can still recall her soft lips, coated in bubblegum-scented lip gloss. This was the first time a girl had shown any interest in me romantically and, naturally, it excited me very much. Anna and I became close friends but never ‘dated’. We lost touch eventually, when one day the only line I could follow to get to her was red.

Anyways, after experiencing the horrors of the red line (I won’t bore you with the details) and the happiness the green line led me to, I decided I should stay on the path of the green. So, for the next ten years of my life, that’s what I did. It led me to some incredible times, and now here I am at age twenty-three, soaking wet, insecure, and alone in a cheap motel bed. All that’s left of my story is to describe the deterioration of my will to live.

On my twenty-second birthday, I was extremely satisfied with my life. I had my dream job, a journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, where I made a ton of money and loved what I did. I was also engaged to the love of my life. Evelyn Joans, she was the perfect woman. I met her my senior year of high school. I had never understood cheesy quotes about love until I’d dated Evelyn. After that, all I wanted to do was be around her, and read them to her. I needed her to know how much I cared about her. She was the most stunning person. Her smile was so radiant, she could make anyone cheery. She was undeniably an optimist- always able to see the good in everything, even in me- and that rubbed off on me. Now she’s gone, and I feel the pessimism has seeped back into my veins. I miss her mood ring eyes that shifted from a passionate hazelnut to a brilliant green when she felt down. I knew her better than I knew myself, or at least I thought. I told her everything, and she did the same for me. She even believed me when I told her about the lines. The absence of her gorgeous blonde curls now makes me anxious. I know I’ll never get to see them again.

Evelyn and I moved into a large apartment at age nineteen. For the past four years that had been our home. It was a beautiful flat, located in one of the friendliest parts of San Francisco, California. It was close enough to my parents’ house to visit them often, and only a ten minute drive away from my office. The gorgeous city was alive with the buzz of busy workers, sunglasses constantly plastered to their tanned faces. Palm trees hung over every street, relieving the pavement below of the blistering rays from the sun. Our apartment itself had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a laundry room. Tall awning windows showered every room in warmth on most days. The maple hardwood flooring perfectly accented the shades of purple and blue that danced on the walls. It was our home, in every sense of the word. Now thinking about it leaves me feeling lost, as if I no longer recognize it for anything more than some stranger’s house.

The best year of my life went by, but it grew tiresome near the end. To spice things up, on my twenty-third birthday I decided to test just how much the green line would protect me from. Being careful only to follow the green line, I consumed thousands of dollars worth of the finest alcohol and had the night of my life.
When I awoke in the morning, not hung over in the slightest, I had the most off-putting feeling. Most people would have died from alcohol poisoning in my situation, but I didn’t even have a little headache. You’d think I’d have been grateful for that, but it felt kind of s***ty. I felt like someone’s puppet, all my choices good, never a lesson to learn. My moment of eudemonia had passed.

That day, I decided too see what would happen if I started following the red line. It is the worst choice I have ever made. I got so far in that the green line disappeared. All I could do was follow the unforgiving red line. As a result, my life fell apart. Each day caused me more and more misery.

Two weeks after I started following the red line, my father fell terminally ill. He was in a severe amount of pain and it was easy to tell, despite how he struggled to hide it. I still remember his last words to me, “Oliver, I am so proud of the life you’ve made for yourself. I love you.”

I told him I loved him too and gave him a hug before leaving him alone with my mother, to say goodbye.
This tragic occurrence had left me feeling unmotivated to do anything. I stopped caring about my work and it got to the point where I was let go from my job. For the first time in my life, I had financial problems.
Evelyn and I soon had to move in with my grieving mother, as we’d been evicted for unpaid rent. I depended on Evelyn for support more than ever, for the next month. It made me realize I couldn’t make it through life without her. Unfortunately, I think this put a lot of pressure on her until one day she snapped.

Perhaps the most heart-wrenching event happened next. As my luck would have it, while I was falling deep in love with Evelyn, she was falling out of it with me. It was plain to see. Though she insisted everything was fine, she got more and more distant, adding little cracks to my heart until one day it shattered. We slept in separate beds. She never wanted to spend time with me, and would make last minute excuses to cancel our plans. Every question I asked her got me one word answers, and an aching loss. I cried buckets of tears for her, dreading her departure, and feeling, at the same time, that she was already gone. There was nothing I could do to fix it and the green line wasn’t there to help.

Possibly the most vivid memory I have is of the day she left; the last day I saw her, or will ever see her. She came home just as the sun was rising. I couldn’t be certain where she had been that night. Her voice wasn’t the steady tone I was used to, but rather shaky and feeble. It was as if she was suffocating, words barely able to slip out. I’ve never heard anyone stutter so much in my life.

“We need to talk,” she choked, “Is your mother home?”

“She’s at my Aunt Martha’s, my uncle’s been arrested for domestic abuse again, so my mother went to comfort Aunt Martha ” I replied, recalling my uncle, drunk off his ass, the day of my twelfth birthday. I had been so innocent, I had no idea what would’ve happened if I had followed that damn red line into the kitchen. Looking back now, I realize the gruesome reality of the situation.

“That’s awful, I’m so sorry. Do send my consolations,” Evelyn answered.

“We both know you’re not here to catch up, so spit it out, Ev,” I coldly muttered.

“We should sit down,” Evelyn went to pour me a glass of water and we sat across from each other at the kitchen table.

The green in her eyes screamed at me, warning me that she was in a lot of pain. “How are you doing?” she asked, almost as though nothing had changed.

“Not the best, and you?” I forced out.

“Not too good,” came her weary response.

“Evelyn, what’s this about?” I insisted, reaching for her cold hand across the table.

She hesitantly gripped mine. “We both know that we’ve been in better places,” she started cautiously. “I used to see you as my whole world, but lately all I can imagine is this ending badly. Being together just isn’t what’s best for us anymore.”

I raised my voice, “So leave, Evelyn. Stop torturing me and leave. You don’t think I’ve seen this coming? I guess I thought that after so long, I wouldn’t have to worry about you spontaneously changing your mind about me. I trusted you more than anyone in the world. For the past two weeks, these nights without you have been the most excruciating of my life. I didn’t know where you were. I couldn’t sleep. Before you tear open this wound more, leave.”

Tears poured from her eyes and as much as I tried to hate her for what she’d done to me, I still felt pity for her. “I-I’m s-s-so sorry,” she whispered.

That afternoon, she had packed her things and was moved in with her parents by nightfall. It only dug farther into the hole my father’s passing had left in me. I felt worse and worse, and as not to burden my poor mother, I packed my bags the next day. My Aunt Martha stayed with my mother to keep her company after I left. With low funds and nowhere to go, the red line led me to the cheapest motel in the area. Crime rates were high here and I felt intense fear while walking the streets.

When I got up to my room, I saw something hopeful that I hadn’t seen in what felt like forever. The green line was there. It led me up two flights of stairs, to the five-story high roof, and onto the ledge.

The rest you already know, and now here I am in this stuffy motel room. I get up and look around. The lines really are gone. ‘Isn’t this what I wanted? Why does it feel so terrible,’ I speculate.

The absence of the lines surfaces paranoia in me. ‘How am I to know which decisions are good or bad? What if something awful happens to Mom or Aunt Martha, all because of me? I already caused Dad’s death by recklessly following the red line. Oh God, I can’t handle anymore tragedy. I can’t wait around until I hurt those around me even more. I can’t risk it,’ I think.

I grab the lamp on the bedside table, it’s cool metal soothing my sweaty palms. I smash the base against my third-floor motel window as hard as I can. A tiny fracture comes at first, like that of breaking ice. Then the base bursts through, making a small hole. As I continue striking the glass, shards fall all around me. My, now cut up, hands drip blood, turning elegant diamond slivers into vibrant rubies. After a while, there are cuts all over my arms, but the window is smashed. The cool breeze starts drying the blood on my scrapes and relieves the stinging of the tear stains under my eyes.

I get up on the window sill. No backing out this time, for once in my life I have to go through with something that’ll do some good. I close my eyes and allow myself to fall.

The drop feels much longer than it really is. Time slows down and on loop in my mind are Evelyn’s words from the day she left. ‘Why the Hell didn’t I try harder to make her stay? I’m so pathetic; spineless. I should’ve tried harder,’ is all I can think.

And then, my body hits the ground with a thud. The tormenting soreness lasts only for a second. “At least now the lines are gone,” I whimper to myself. My last words sneak out as everything fades to black, “I love you, Ev.”