Fast Fiction: A Test Of Nerve
Richard Mallinson's gripping short story very definitely does not leave you in suspence. Then again, gripping is perhaps an inappropriate word for this situation...
At the pub we drank pints of lager and talked about tests of nerve.
Wallace had hung by his fingertips from a viaduct. Emerson had clung to a girder under a pier in a storm. Tandy had ridden a motorbike to the edge of a cliff and jumped clear.
I admitted that I hadn’t done anything like that.
‘I know what you can do,’ said Emerson, ‘you can swing by a rope from the top of Gratton Flats’ - a sixties-style monstrosity, still occupied.
On the roof, Wallace said, ‘We need a rope - take your belts and jackets off, empty the pockets.’
We did this and Wallace knotted the belts and jackets together. He pulled and tugged and twisted. It wasn’t a very long ‘rope.’
‘That should do it,’ he said smugly.
‘Come on,’ said Emerson, ‘grab this and get over.’
‘That won’t take my weight,’ I said, ‘are you trying to kill me?’
They moved towards me. ‘You’re all bloody mouth, aren’t you?’ said Tandy, ‘and shit-scared, really.’
They used Tandy’s braces to tie my right wrist to the end of the ‘rope’ and Tandy said, ‘Now go, over the edge, we’ll hold this end, all three of us, it’s no big deal.’
I eased myself over the small parapet.
‘Slowly, slowly,’ said Emerson, ‘don’t panic, we’ll let it out.’
I went over. My right arm was stretched up, my feet were dangling in space. Then I felt the braces slipping off my wrist and suddenly I was going down, shouting, ‘You bloody fools.’
The crash, the smash, the crunch on the pavement - I waited for it to happen, still shouting.
