My cheek burns as the cold fall air blows through me. From this height the wind is wild and wreaks havoc on the tall buildings. With my eyes barely open I catch a glimpse of the first morning ray. The sun is the only memory I have retained from my past life. It wraps the buildings with warmth as it grows endlessly. The angles of rays expand through the city; the oppression of the night is lifted. The darkness falls back into the shadows; it reveals the steel buildings unable to move. I sit up and breathe in the air of new beginnings. Stretching my body I stand up in my black suit and watch the morning sun ignite the city. As the rooftop is lightened, I see the man still starring at the door, leading into the unknown inner organs of the building. I walk over to a puddle, caused by the rooftop’s many years of neglect, and wash my hair and face. As I dry my face with my black tie, I wander over to the edge of the building and watch as people rush to their destinations like ants, unable to enjoy the beauty of life.


This morning is no different from the rest of the ones that I have become accustomed to. I walk over to my roof mate and check to see if he is still breathing. And like all of the other days, he sits leaning up against the ledge of the building, watching the door that connects our world to theirs. His eyes are stained with blood by the countless hours of wakefulness. His hair is painted with tints of gray and his face is a blurred shadow of a man. His wrinkles have become permanently implanted on his face, age spots are sprinkled over his skin, revealing his age and his chalky white complexion makes him look as if he is dead. He has always looked this way to me, since the first day I met him. But, his absence of speech has just recently become a custom. The first day I arrived he had the stubbornness of a bull, but this drive has faded, just like his voice. That day I woke up to a world of loneliness and denial.




Three months prior, I gasp for air as I feel the pressure of hands around my neck choking me. I am now awake and can hear the screaming of a man on top of me. As I come back into consciousness I see him towering over me. His beard is so long it almost touches my chest. His face is deformed from his wrinkles of anger; his face flames red with boiling frustration. I put the words together and mumble, “Stop, please stop.”


He stares deeply into my fearful eyes, and then suddenly releases me from his grasp. I try to get up, but I am brought to my knees by my body’s inability to catch my breath. As I lay coughing on the ground, the man wanders over to the ledge and sits down. When I’m finally able to catch my breath, I approach him trying to regain my manhood. “Who are you? Why am I on top of this roof?”


The man stares at me as if I have insulted his dignity. “Why do you think I attacked you? I don’t why you’re up here. I don’t even know why I’m up here. ”


I watched his face as a second of regret flashed over it. “Then let me rephrase my question. Why did you choke me? Who are you?”


“I’m going to have to answer your last question first. I just woke up one day on top of this roof and I haven’t been unable to get off of it since. I choked you because I thought you were one of them.”


“One of whom?”


“I don’t know, but I have a theory.” He stops his speech as his eye catches something behind me, but as I turn my head I see nothing.
“Do you see it?” I flinch as I feel his warm breath in my ear. I jump back and watch the man stare at an invisible object floating in the sky.
With caution I ask, “See what?”


He waits a second and says, “The crow right there, sitting on the edge of the building.”


“I don’t know what…”


“They’re watching us I tell you! I keep telling you this why don’t you remember? The crow, he torments me.” The man moves his eyes as the imaginary bird melts into the sun.


Confused, I ask him, “How could a crow taunt you?”


“He leaves.”


“What do you mean he leaves?”


The man steps back a few steps and starts running straight at me. The moment seems to slow down and the man looks determined to attack me. He pushes me to the ground with his arms, as him runs towards the edge of the building. I use my shoulder to absorb the fall as I hit the concrete in pain. I watch him as he jumps right over the edge of the building. I gasp in shock, while I hold my shoulder to get up. Standing up, I stumbling over to the edge of the building. . As I peer over the edge, I watch his body fall to the ground like a rag doll. He hits the ground with the power of a boulder. His body is so implanted into the concrete that I am unable to distinguish where his body ends and the cement begins. I tear my eyes away from the view of his mangled body and try to stabilize my footing. My mind is lost in confusion as I try to regain my composure.


“You’re pathetic.”


As the voice wraps around my head I turn around and see the man standing behind me.


Grinning, the man asks, “You haven’t caught on yet, have you?”


I watch him as his body seems perfectly intact. I grab my head in confusion as I try to consume the information. A shriek slips from my mouth as I scream, “I don’t know what you’re saying!”


“It started about a year ago, when I first saw the bird. It all made sense; I must be in some sort of experiment to test my endurance. I must have been chosen . . . why else?”


Anger pours out of me, “Wait, wait, wait! Are you saying someone took us from our homes and is playing with our minds for an experiment?”


“Isn’t that exciting? Look at me. I have no food, no water, and I’m still alive.” He grins with excitement as he points to the sky screaming, “That bird hasn’t fooled me yet. I know exactly what’s going on.”


While ignoring his rambling, I pace back and forth trying to collect my thoughts. Finally I say, “There is no possible way that you have not died yet. This must be a dream or something.”


“This is reality, and I’m telling you that if this was a dream, I would have woken up by now from all the times I have tried to kill myself.”


“You’ve tried to kill yourself? You must be crazy!”


“This experiment must be about how people react when there is no way out.”


As the possibility of this being a large scale experiment settles into my mind, I find myself dizzy. I leave the man and walk over to the opposite side of the roof. As I sit staring into the night sky, I suddenly feel the weight of something in my back pocket. I reach my hand into my pocket and pull out a cherry leather wallet. I open it franticly trying to search for some sort of memory of my life. I find a license with a man named Finn Thompson on it; I realize this must be me. The license states that I am 29 years old and that I live in New York. From these small facts, I gain a sense of sanity. As I look deeper through my wallet, I find one of my businesses card. It shows that I work for a stock broker company. I sit still and close my eyes to try to image what my life was like. A rush of blurred images passes through my mind. I feel the stress of chaos push me further and further into depression. I see people running and yelling. I can see myself sitting at my cubicle staring into a pile of papers. I become overwhelmed from the fear of failure, which consumes my thoughts. I open my eyes desperately to escape the horrors of my past. For the rest of that first night, I sit trying to convince myself that I had a better life.


As dawn approached the next morning, I looked over at the man. He is staring over at the large steel skyscraper adjacent to ours. His watery brown eyes moved slowly back and forth, across the building. His arm was extended with his old, fragile finger pointing at each one of the windows, trying to keep count. His chapped pale pink lips counting out the numbers, “26, 27, 28 . . .”
I finally am able to pull myself away from the man’s entrancing voice and approach him. “Let’s just say that this is an experiment, so why are you never hungry?”


“I’m trying to count! Can’t you see that?”
“Okay, well can you just stop for a second and talk to me like a normal person?”
Realizing his actions were abnormal the man withdrew himself from the reflective windows and moved his focus towards me. He began by saying, “I think that the people running this large scale experiment inject us with some sort of liquid to sustain our bodies’ needs.”


As I listened to his ridiculous theory, I couldn’t help but think that maybe he was right. I approached with ease as I asked, “Have you ever seen them before?”


“No, not exactly, but I know they are there watching us.”


“How do you know?”


His expression morphed into anger, “I just know! Don’t question me! You haven’t been up here as long as I have; you don’t know what I have. . .”


By the end of his rant he was standing up, his face had turned red with anger. I could see his veins bursting out of his head. As the words ceased from his mouth, he returned back to his spot on the ledge and regained control over his emotions. He stared back at me, “I’m sorry, I’m just used to having the roof to myself. I have never liked company. They judge too quickly.”


As I dissected his personality I found that I couldn’t trust him. Not only was he psychotic, but I also realized he must be suffering from some sort of anger disordered. I decided to accept his apology before he went into another one of his rants.


In trying to keep things positive, I asked him to explain the experiment to me.


Intrigued by my new sense of enthusiasm, he explained the experiment’s purpose. “See, they put us up on top of this roof to see what we would do if there was no way to escape or kill our way out of this jail. It is an experiment to see if we would be smart enough to figure our way out of this maze. It was when I first saw the bird that I decided to sit and wait for them to reveal themselves. If all I did was wait, then I figured that they would grow bored of me and let me go.”


“Wait, you said something earlier about being here for a year?”


He raised his voice as he yelled, “No I have been here for five years, stuck on top of this roof.”

As my frustration built towards the man, I wandered over to the edge of the building and looked over. As I stare down at the streets below, dark figures start to form through the fog. As the fog clears away, I see multiple people rushing from place to place.

With my excitement growing, I yell down to the people below, “Hello can anyone hear me? Help I’m stuck on top of this roof! Please help me!”

The people continue their mindless march to their destinations unable to hear my helpless cries. I raise my voice as loud as I can, “Help me! Can someone please help me?”

And again they were unable to hear my pitiful howls. I sit down exactly where I am and grab my head in anger. I whisper to myself, “Why can’t they hear me? What have I done to deserve this?”

I stand up and look over towards the man, who stares back at me with a grin on his face. “You knew they couldn’t hear me. Why didn’t you stop me?”

“It was too humorous to stop you.”

“Why can’t they hear me, but I can hear them?”

“Why should I know?”


I regained my bearings as I take a step back by saying, “If this is just an experiment then why are there people walking around the city down there?”


“I don’t really pay attention to them they’re just replays of the same people walking around each day.”


“You’ve seen them before?”
“Just once. They bored me with their repetitiveness.”
As the man explained more and more about his theory, I began to question his sanity. He would say things like the government is out to get him and that he was probably some sort of high ranking official, but he couldn’t remember. Sometimes he would go off topic and talk about the weather. After hours of listening to him talk I decided to go back over to my spot and regain my rationality. I leaned over the ledge and watched the people as they rushed from place to place. Am I as crazy as the other man? Am I going to become the man? How long am I going to be here? I can’t allow myself to become an animal; I won’t. For the rest of that day I sat staring at the people, the only real sense of reality that was available to me.


As the days passed by, I sat in that same spot watching the people go by. I noticed through my days of observation that the people who were walking around were the same, but the clothes they wore and the interactions they made were different. There was this one woman who every day wore some sort of black suit with a brown leather-back briefcase. She would always walk on the same side of the street with the same solemn face that oozed depression. And each day there would be a man that would sit on the street corner of the building across from me and beg day in and day out for money for food. And every day I would watch him go into the drug-store located around the corner and buy another bottle of Jack. As I watched these people waste their lives, I grew sorry for them. I saw a reflection of my situation in the eyes of the people walking around free from the barriers that block me.


With each month that passed, I saw more and more people wandering the streets locked in the cages that they made for themselves. I could see the anger inside the innocent, the depression surrounding jobs, the tiredness involved in life, and the desire to end the possibilities. And through these countless observations I had come to the realization that they were just as trapped as we were.


Each day became a little easier; the man on the roof had become so lost in his theories that he had in turn lost what made him human. And as I fell asleep each night I trusted that tomorrow would bring the same disappointment as today.



Three months later, I am woken by the sound of the door shrieking open. As I open my eyes I see an unfamiliar man coming out of the door. I see my roof mate’s eyes expand with wonder, as he runs to grab the door, unaware of the new man. I watch as he stops in the doorway and stares inside. As I approach cautiously towards the door, I notice from the corner of my eye that the new man is standing on the ledge of the building. He is dressed in a business suit similar to mine. As I approach him I can see he is holding a gold cross in his hands. Walking up beside him, I realize that he is thinking about jumping. Trying to reason with him I say, “I don’t know what you think you are doing, you’re just going to wake up back on top of this roof.”


As I try to warn him, it seems as if he can’t hear me, like the people walking on the streets. His eyes become filled with water as he starts to sob and say, “I’m so sorry… I hope you can understand one day why I am doing this.”


With anger I say, “Why are you being so ignorant? You can’t kill yourself!” I try to grab the man’s hand, but like a ghost I am unable to hold on to it. I stare at him with amazement. As I watch the man stare into the crowd below, I start to hear the beginning of the word, “jump.” He kisses his cross and jumps off of the building.


The street lights below illuminate the deformed body splattered on the pavement. The body is scarred from the sins of its past. The blood drains the memories away from its soul. I watch as the people below circle his body in shock.

I turn around and see the man walking away from the door and back to his spot in the corner of the roof. He goes back to his corner and sits there in silence, staring at the ground. I run over to the man, “Did you see that guy jump off the roof?”
He solemnly answers, “Yes.”
“Well, he is dead. He is actually dead.”
He begins to overflow with anger, “I don’t know what you want from me! Just leave me alone and let me sit here and rot peacefully!”
As I try to figure out his source of anger, I remembered the door. “What was inside?”
“Nothing!” He pauses for a second, “It’s just a stairwell leading to just another door. There is no way out of here.”
“What are you talking about?” Confused, I run towards the door and look inside. As I approach the doorway, I see not a stairwell but a white light coming from inside the door. I look inside and see a white room that travels endlessly in all directions. I step inside and am surrounded by the intensity of the lights coming from all directions.
I step out of the room, still looking inside when I hear someone behind me.


“Where am I?”


I turn around to find the man who just jumped, moments earlier behind me. And in this moment, I see a crow sitting on the edge of the building watching me. And now I know why he is here. I am dead and lost in the World of forgotten souls.