It’s our first time. We go to the airport early, before they open. We have to take a class first. It’s a larger group than usual, they tell us.

The club shows a video tape of a lawyer who tells us about the contract we are about to sign. He tells how it will be impossible for our survivors to sue if we get killed. We elbow each other and snicker. We sit up straighter. We stand in line to sign the contract and pay our $125.00.

`We watch a movie. We learn how to fall. They hang us from wooden frames and teach us how to untangle our lines. The first time I try it I pull the wrong cord. The instructor tells me not to worry I still have a backup chute. I just won’t be able to steer it.

We stand in line to sign up for our turn. Everybody keeps watching the kid with acne packing chutes. He can’t be as young as he looks.

It will be a couple of hours before our jump. We go outside to wait. A girl stands apart from the class, eyes turned upward, giving instructions to the walkie talkie in her hand. Every few minutes a tiny G.I. Joe is dropped from the sky. One by one the little action figures land and come to life.

There is a commotion and everybody is looking up, pointing at one of the tiny toys. This one isn’t wearing a square chute, like the others. It has come to life too soon and made the same mistake I did in class. Two guys from the club jump in a pickup and head across the corn fields after it.

They call our names. We all go to the bathroom. We come out and choose action figure suits. They tightly strap all kinds of things to us. We wear helmets with radios in the ears. We follow a life sized action figure named ‘Stu’ to the plane.

As we go through the door we are shrunk to action figure size by a hidden ray gun. It’s the only way we can all fit into the tiny, metal box. We are packed in so tight I am worried the shrink ray will wear off and when the door opens we will all swell out like overflowing popcorn.

There are no chairs except for the one the pilot is sitting in. We sit with our knees doubled up in front of us. I am furthest from the door.

It gets very noisy and the little room begins to tremble. The agitation increases with the sound and we are all shaking and bumping against each other. I am watching the riveted seams of the wall in case they begin to split from the stress.

The turmoil lessens slightly. Stu chats with himself.

They need to adjust the shrink ray because it has shrunk the skin on Jeff’s face too much. It’s as tight as a snare drum and pulling away from his eyes so more of the white shows. It’s stretched so taut I’m afraid the corners of his mouth will rip if he moves.

I think of a cat that had fallen into our half filled swimming pool once, when I was a kid. I don’t know how long it had been there but the water was too deep for it to touch bottom and too far from the top of the pool for it to be able to climb out. All it could do was swim around in little circles with it’s face poking above the water. The expression on that cat’s face was the same as Bruce’s is now.

Stu slides the door open but we are not sucked out. There is nothing outside for as far as I can see. Stu hooks a line to a metal ring on Bruce’s chest. Bruce does all the things he learned in class. Silently, he is swallowed by the nothing. Stu pulls in the line that was hooked to him. The ring is all that’s left.

Stu hooks the line to Jeff. The skin on Jeff’s face has started to split in places like a snake’s. Jeff is also swallowed by the nothing, but he doesn’t go as silently as Bruce did. He leaves a coarse, but recognizable expletive hanging in the air beside the line.

Stu beckons to me. He hooks the line to my chest.

The shrink ray has had side effects. My body has detached itself from my mind. I tell it to sit back down. I tell it that this thing that it is doing is terribly, terribly wrong. It’s not responding!

I look down and I can see something pulsing near my kidneys. It’s pumping so hard that I can see its expansions and contractions all the way through my jumpsuit. It’s my adrenal gland.

The ray is wearing off too soon! I can feel my heart enlarging in my chest and forcing its way up through my throat! Now I must get out of the little box before my whole body expands and I am crushed!

I try to remember the class. I work my way to the correct position and remove my feet from the step. Now I am hanging from the wing. I should be flapping like a sheet in the wind but I am fortified by the same incredible strength that allows mothers to lift cars from babies. My fingers are fit snugly into the crumpled, finger shaped, indentations left in the metal by Bruce and Jeff .

I look back to Stu. He gives a thumbs up.

I look up at the red dot that is painted on the bottom of the wing. We have been told to look for it. I have been taught very specific instructions for the next few moments. I let go and forget them all.

I try to leave an expletive similar to Jeff’s; one that can be recognized by another English speaking person, but the most I can muster is that sound that ‘Goofy’ makes whenever he falls from a cliff or is shot from a cannon. A passing group of bats mistakes my gaping mouth for a cave and flies down my throat and into my stomach..

My legs, once again on strike, are furiously trying to pedal an invisible bicycle. The plane is gone, leaving only the red dot, slowly fading, like the grin of a Cheshire cat.

Suddenly, a god reaches out his hand and catches me.

All sense of motion has stopped. The only sound is of material ruffling in the breeze . I am sitting in the middle of an endless blue sky. Slowly, my mind regains control of the helm. I am able to move my head from side to side.

I am alone. I am further removed from everything and everyone than I have ever been. I am in an alien environment. I yearn for a companion. Then, with a crackle of static, I have one.

An angel, named Sarah, speaks into my ear. She reminds me of the things I’ve learned and praises me when I correctly accomplish them. I pull to the right, and spiral right. I pull to the left, and spiral left. With a crackle, Sarah is gone.

I feel the sun on my face. I breath the smells of a hundred miles churned together by the winds of far away places and delivered here, to me alone.

The shrink ray has worn off, but something is wrong. Wonderfully wrong. I am still expanding. I am absorbing the air. I am soaking up the clouds. I share secrets with gulls. I am intimate with eagles.

I yell out loud, frightening the bats away. I scream as loud as I can, knowing no one alive can hear me. I taste the sky, savoring the solitude.

I ride the gasses of the atmosphere. I sail atop the euphoric ether. I mount a wild zephyr and break it to my will.

An eternal instant later, Sarah returns. I try to fly away but she has hooked me with a fishing line. She forces me to look down at the land which, to me, has become an abstract medium, unimportant to sky dwellers. She forces me to focus on the trees and the rocks, and the people. I can feel all of them pulling on the line. They are reeling me in, like a bass, back to their linear, restricted world. Surrendering, I allow myself to be towed in.

Someone has reversed the shrink ray onto the ground. It is growing larger and larger. It is rising to meet me. It’s growing too fast! We’re going to collide! It is almost upon me! Sarah says, a magic word. I pull down hard with both hands and the ground suddenly stops, directly beneath my feet.

We are in the car heading home. Bruce and Jeff are still alive. The side effects from the shrink ray have not completely worn off. We are all larger than we were this morning. Our heads brush the ceiling of the car. The side effects are still wearing off, but we know that they will never wear off completely.