prompt: leap, title: leap day in misc. flash fiction

“Look before you leap,” she cooed seductively, “and you’ll never leap at all.”

“Just do it,” she would howl if you didn’t jump immediately, hovering in mid-air twenty feet off the ledge over the rocks at the river’s edge below, “you don’t know what you’re missing.” Lovers Leap Laurie, everyone called her. Decades ago, the man she loved left her for a woman who wasn’t nearly as beautiful but was very rich. She threw herself off that cliff in the mental breakdown that ensued. She died, but as sometimes happens with dramatic circumstance, that death did not quite stick, not entirely. Her spirit lingered behind, looking to exact some measure of future revenge.

She became a Class Five full-body spectral floater. It’s so convenient, once they proved ghosts were real, science quickly went to the work of classifying the hell out of them. At first, the city liked having her as a tourist attraction but once they put two-and-two together that she caused on-average four suicides a year via leaping would-be suitors, they started taking the road signs down. Then the paranormal researchers came around and failed to capture her. Then crackpot exorcists, then the Catholics sent a demonologist all the way from Rome. Poor fellow, Laurie ended up getting deep into his head and he jumped to his death for her lustful promise as well.

I was tempted, too, of course I was. She was a total smoke-show, even if she was transparent in her intentions. (Transparent. A little ghost joke, there.) Piercing dark eyes, five-foot-eleven and six feet of legs. Hard to not be tempted, I am only human. The difference between myself and those other poor doomed humans, though, is that I have never been a linear thinker.

It took two whole summers working at Custard’s Last Stand, doling out ice creams to schmucks come to gawk at Lovers Leap Laurie above, to afford the private hot air balloon rental, everyone said I was mad to waste money like that but I wasn’t the one jumping off cliffs. I ascended to her level with a steady controlled flame, until her feet hovered one inch above the basket in which I stood. I looked into those swirling burning churning black-holes and said “Look before you leap, Laurie, and you’ll never leap at all.” She just smiled.

And that was how I had sex with the world’s hottest ghost. Got in the Guinness Book of Records and everything. They sent me a medal! I wear it out for special occasions. It’s pretty rad. It’s not always about looking before you leap. It’s about knowing when to leap or not to leap isn’t even the question. Jump as far as your legs can carry, believe your fool heart out if it makes you feel good, neither will help you do anything more than go split-splat. The question’s more, when the going gets weird, are you prepared to get even weirder? I was. And let me say, it was pretty rad.

Last updated February 27, 2021