Twenty-Four and a Bottle of Rye

Call me Maxwell. I pull bodies up from the bay after they fall off the Golden Gate Bridge. You’d think it’s disturbing, but it’s not. I understand why they do it, the jumpers. They belong to all walks of life. They all come to leap off into that blue abyss and feel true flight for the very first time, the liberation that always outran them in the labyrinth. Twenty-four a year...

(First published in Sanitarium Magazine #20)