Dancing, perfect, completely in line with every tune that came from the stereo. The dancer has to move her body with the music perfectly or else the dance would only look false, unalive. Danielle felt that way about her dancing yet everyone pushed her to keep going, her parents would pay for her… tell her it was character building. She loved it. She danced from the age of six until her twenty-first birthday. She somehow found it strange and erotic in so many ways. Watching as athletically built men and women paraded around the stage in different routines. However, for some reason it seemed so far away now.

Danielle sat motionless on the wall, 20 stories from the ground the wind felt soothing on her face. She stretched her hands above her head wanting to fly. A notebook lay next to her, pictures and articles about people she had never met but idolized because she could never dance as they could. They were all beautiful, most had probably had cosmetic surgery in some point in their life but all had found an end to dance. For one died in a car wreck, two broke bones in their feet and could not perform without the risk of breaking the bones again but most had just found it to tiring, had children instead.

The secret that she had kept from everyone was the pouch in the back of her notebook that she told everyone was empty, contained stories of past suicides. They were all in different years and all in different ways but at times, she thought they were so courageous. It sounded sick to most but to just stop fearing death and bring it to you seemed ethereal.

Danielle had decided long ago how she wanted to kill herself. She wanted to pick something the others she idolized had not done. None of them had felt the wind whip their hair out of their faces and feel the rays of the sun kiss their cheeks as they fell. That was her dream. Danielle had never thought of where or when or what she wanted to wear. To her, what she wore would tell people who she was and how she felt.

She looked at her striped stockings and her ballet shoes tied just right on her feet, her dress was short but elegant. She was a bit sad it would be messed up in the end but it was not as if anyone would be wearing it after her. She did not really have any friends to give her belongings, just random acquaintances she had met over her seemingly boring life.

Nevertheless, she had time before she jumped; imagining the dead’s lives would not take that long, reread the articles about their deaths in the newspapers. That was always the interesting part. Collecting deaths. Many of the ones she collected seemed so typical, they repeated themselves. There was always some one who would shoot themselves, hopefully not in their house where someone would have difficulty cleaning the carpets.

Danielle stood from her sitting position on the wall. She put her arms out to the side balancing. The wind was strong, but not strong enough to knock her off the building. She had worked much to hard on her physical strength to be pushed off by such a simple breeze. Stepping to the side, she changed the position her body faced so that she was sideways on the wall.

It was actually a bit terrifying to see the people walking 20 stories below her. They looked like ants and the cars that passed seemed a lot like blurs. Seeing this wasn’t something she had planned. Death was supposed to be beautiful but seeing the concrete she would hit scared her quite a bit. She couldn’t help imagining her body splattered grotesquely on the ground, traumatizing passersby. Danielle stepped back onto the roof and sat down with her back to the wall that prevented fallings. She curled her knees up to her chest and began to breathe heavily into her hands. She reached behind her and pulled down her notebook.

For now it seemed a bit comforting.

*****

AUTHOR'S NOTE: THIS IS NOWHERE NEAR FINISHED. I JUST WANT SOME COMMENTS ON IT TO SEE WHAT I'M DOING WRONG AND/OR RIGHT. ANYTHING WOULD HELP! LOVE YOU GUYS!

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