It all concluded in amazing slow motion, but that was yet to come:
    
For now, he was sitting at his desk, hunched over the computer, fingers dancing at the keys; he had to complete the Tuesday report before the weekly ten o’clock staff meeting.
        He was fifty-six and balding, taking prescription drugs for an enlarged prostate.  He’d been working for Statler & Sons for two full decades and knew everyone by their first names. As a youngster he’d earned straight A’s in Calculus and Physics.  He had been no good at sports—self-conscious about his gawky, overweight frame and bad eyes—but had always been a real demon with numbers, calculations and theorems.  The algebra of human interactions, however, had always been harder for him to grasp.
        He was a widower, and had been for just over five years.  His wife, Sally, had contracted breast cancer at fifty years of age, which eventually metastasized.  Though she had both breasts removed, it wasn’t enough to stop the disease.  She died a year after the operation.  Luckily his health insurance had covered all costs.  They had no children.  In retrospect, he estimated that that was a blessing, though sometimes he wondered.  While he was not a religious man in any conventional sense, he did believe in God—he just wasn’t sure Who (or What) God was (or wasn’t).  For that matter, he wasn’t exactly sure where Heaven was (or wasn’t) located.
       
He was a zealous worker, very loyal to the firm.  No one had kept the books of Statler & Sons the way he kept them; everything was neat, every penny duly noted and accounted for.  In all this time, he’d never made an error.  In his dedication, he’d neglected his own enrichment: he’d never been much of anywhere, having grown up in the City.  After Sally’s death, he had leased a small one-bedroom apartment and usually walked to work.  He’d never been to Europe, nor had he seen any of the other States. They had planned to, of course, but plans sometimes are derailed; out of the clear blue, some other forces can totally change your own destiny, it seems.
        Someday, he promised himself, I’ll take that long vacation and “see the world,” just like we always planned.  That was the phrase he used around his co-workers:  “see the world.”  Secretly, he couldn’t imagine how he would be able to pay for such a vacation.  There was no chance of familial assistance: his in-laws had never liked him, blaming him for Sally’s decision not to pursue her legal career, and his parents—blue-collar factory folk—had never had any money to spare.
    
Actually, the idea of travel frightened him: strange places, foods, smells, a different language to comprehend.  He had long ago established his own restricted comfort zone, and was loathe to step beyond its boundaries.  Foreign travel was merely a self-indulged fantasy.  He believed in following a familiar routine; there was security in known ritual. No risks.  He had never been a risk taker.
    
Recently, during his coffee breaks (although he never drank coffee), he found himself chatting more and more often with the newly hired secretary.  She’d been with Statler & sons for just three months, a cute, pale-cheeked, mousey girl with a flat chest and watery gray eyes.  When she smiled her eyes turned into slits, which he had to admit he found rather fascinating; she was mysterious.
        “How do you like working for the firm?” he asked.
        “Oh, I like it just fine.  Mr. Statler is such a nice man!”
        “He’s very fair to his employees,” he replied, nodding his head.  “A nice man.”
        “Yes, he is,” she agreed.  “He’s very nice.”
        Their conversation drifted into silence.  She shifted in her chair, toying with her necklace. She smiled that smile.  He blushed.
        “Well, time for work,” he said.
        Back at his desk, he adjusted his bifocals and leaned forward, fingers poised over the computer keys as he tried to suppress his thoughts.  He glanced at the clock on his desk.  Damn.  I have to remember to vote today on my lunch hour…  
    
That was when he felt the concussion.  The building shuddered and very soon streamers of dark smoke began to seep into the office.
        “What was that?” the girl asked, rushing into his cubicle.
        “Some sort of explosion, sounded like.  They were supposed to do some HVAC work on the other side of the building, maybe something happened…”
        “Oh dear, I hope no one’s hurt…,” she said, brow knitted in concern.
        “No way of telling,” he said, “but I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. This is a very safe building.  I doubt if anyone’s been injured.”
        “But the smoke…it’s getting thicker!”
        Other workers in the room outside his office were muttering amongst themselves.
        Betty glanced toward the exit door.  “Maybe we should leave…”
        “No, no…,” he said, shaking his head.  “Whatever the problem is, Maintenance will deal with it.”
        “But the smoke…it just keeps coming.” 
        Her concern was justified.  The smoke was now billowing up from below in oily clouds, like a dark wash of ocean fog.  She began to cough.
        “Here, I’ll get you some water.  Just have a seat and calm down, everything will be fine,” he said, heading for the office cooler.
    
Upon his return, he noticed that it was getting hot inside the room. She gulped down the water as he removed his coat and loosened his tie.  “Becoming quite warm in here,” he observed.
        “It’s a fire!” she exclaimed, eyes panicked.  “Things are burning!  I can smell it!”
        “Nothing serious,” he assured her again.  “They’ll have it out in no time.  You’ll see.”
        The heat was increasing by the minute.  Smoke was rapidly filling the office.
        A kerchief to her mouth, the young woman was coughing violently.  Her face was flushed, her eyes watering.
        “Lie down,” he advised, helping her.  “Smoke rises.  You’ll be able to breathe better.”
        “Why doesn’t it stop?”  She gasped.  “Why aren’t they stopping it?
    
He had no answer as he joined her on the floor.  The acrid smoke fumes had turned his throat raw.  It was difficult to swallow.  The other employees were equally distressed.  People were crying and screaming.  A group of men huddled together in the middle of the office outside his door, gesticulating as they deliberated over what to do next.
        He pulled the phone down from the desk behind him.  Holding the phone to his ear, he detected no dial tone; the line was dead.  Instinctively, he drew the girl’s shivering frame next to his: she was crying now.
        “I’m going for the elevator!”  She screamed, jumped up and ran for the exit before he could reason with her.  A few remaining employees quickly followed her.  He never saw them again.         He recalled the red-lettered warning posted above the elevator: USE STAIRS IN CASE OF FIRE.  DO NOT USE ELEVATORS.
        Surely they would heed this warning and take the stairs down?  Perhaps I’d better join them… A shame, though, to leave the office deserted… Important papers here.  Yet, given the

 circumstances, Mr. Statler would understand… Mr. Statler was a very nice man.
    
His hesitation proved to be a grave mistake: the only exit suddenly bloomed into a wall of roaring flame.
        Dear God, the fire’s right here!
        The cooler was behind him, so he used the water to soak his coat, which he then wrapped around his head.  It didn’t help much.
        Christ, I’m going to be burned alive!
        He was forced to retreat to his office window as the furnace-hot flames rapidly advanced, eating their way across the office floor, devouring wood, plastic and paper. The flames had nearly reached him, the heat searing his skin.  In desperation, he grabbed an office chair to smash out the glass pane, but it just bounced off the reinforced glass laminate.  He tried again, and again, and a third time, to no avail.  Summoning one last burst of adrenaline, he hammered the window a final time and the glass relented in a cyclone of air that swooshed from the shattered portal.
    
He leaned out the jagged window opening, squinting through the sooty fumes and waving his coat.
        Someone will see me… Someone will come to save me…
        But no one came for him.  He was alone.
        The fire was licking at his shoes now; his feet were blistering inside the leather.
        He looked down for the first time, cringing at the sudden vertigo he experienced.
        The flames were all around him. Black smoke choked his lungs. Tongues of fire began to devour his clothing. The left sleeve of his shirt was ablaze.  The heat was unbearable, and he screamed in agony.
    
Then he was aloft… How can I survive a fall from this height?  This was a question that he refused to consider further.
        He’d seen films of skydivers on television, how they seemed to float, effortlessly gliding on currents of air.  That was how it seemed now, to him—that he was floating, feather-light, that it would take forever to reach the street so far below.
    
He had all the time in the world to think about his life, about all the magic places he’d never visited, never seen: Rome, with its great Coliseum; London and Big Ben; Paris and the Eiffel Tower…the many states he’d read about—the Big Sky country of Montana; the flat wheat fields of Kansas; the Loop in Chicago; the high hills of San Francisco…
        He was a virgin when he’d married Sally… God he missed her!  He was ashamed of some things: she would gently chide him about his lack of sexual experience… Sex with his wife had been something less than successful… The Church had ruined him.  He was tentative and afraid to let himself go, to lose himself in the sexual act.  He had been a poor lover, but a good husband.
        He wondered now, falling past floor after floor, what sex would have been like with other women.  Perhaps he could have functioned better with other women.  Perhaps.
    
Down and down… the windows of the other floors were blurred together, the screams of others barely audible over the incredible wind generated by his own clumsy flight… the street scene below was becoming clearer: he could see the crowds clustered like a colony of ants around the building.  Lots of activity.
        Fire trucks.  Ambulances.  Police cars. All for me…
        Down and down… He could taste the fire wind, with the sweltering scent of flames burning his nostrils.
        He discovered that he was suddenly not afraid to die.  Everyone dies.  I might have lived to be a stoop-backed old man with gout and rheumatism and failing eyesight.  Full of pain, unable to walk.  This is better.  Quick, decisive, painless.
        He thought about his father, who had suffered a stroke at seventy-nine: Whole left side of his body useless.  Blind in one eye.  Unable to speak.
        And his mother: Dead at sixty after suffering for ten years with rheumatoid arthritis.  Life was a daily torture.  She’d been forced to quit her factory job at fifty because of health problems.  But she never showed he pain; she was one tough lady…
        No brothers or sisters.  An only child. Spoiled and fussed over like a baby well into adulthood.
    
Down and down… Just like the poor stewardess in Dickey’s ‘Falling’…
    
Now the street below was coming up at him fast. That was how it seemed.  He was floating, free and easy, but the street was coming up fast to meet him as he approached terminal velocity.
        Fast…
        The street coming up…
        Me, waiting for it: suspended in Time and Space… Still, permanent, unchanging, unmoving, the only known exception to Newton’s Second Law of Motion… He smiled, tears evaporating instantly as he plummeted.
    
He was unexpectedly sorry to have failed Mr. Statler.  I’m in charge of keeping the books, of making sure that they are in perfect order…Then he smiled; there were no books.  Not now. The fire gobbled them up like a Polar Bear gulps down fish.
        No books.  All gone… He laughed, but the incredible wind stole the breath from his lungs.
        He thought about God:  Is God watching me fall?  If God wanted to, then (He or She) could reach down from Heaven and catch me, like catching a baseball… But maybe God was too busy to notice my descent.  Too busy with all the other billions of people that needed special care… Perhaps it slipped His notice, just this once… Does God sleep?  Maybe He’s napping now, or was, during the Great War, or the Holocaust… Perhaps an instant’s shuteye for God is an eon for us… Bound to miss things, especially if you’re tired… Maybe God was tired: of me; of the Creation; of everything.  Well, that was okay.  He was not angry at God.  Frustrated but not angry: he understood God’s position.
        Falling…like a giant leaf on this beautiful, late summer morning.
    
Faces came into sharper focus now.  Some old lady was screaming, pointing up at him. All the people around her were watching him fall, but she was the only one screaming.
        He didn’t have all the time in the world after all: He’d been mistaken about that.
        The comforting pavement met Roger Ames…and all was as it should be.  
 
    
                         About The Author
  
        William F. Nolan is a writer and artist, with a career that spans more than fifty years.  His publication credits exceed 1,000, and include more than 600 articles, 52 books, hundreds of short stories, several anthologies, and numerous screenplays for film and television. While he is best known for Logan’s Run, a science fiction trilogy, adapted to film in 1976, he has also written  mysteries (winning the Edgar “Scroll” award twice) as well as horror stories, and is the author of How to Write Horror  Fiction, a Writer’s Digest Book.
    
    
    
                                    Copyright © William F. Nolan