Author: David Lunde

Cited by

• Elizabeth Anne Hull (1)
  • IN: Gateways (2010) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I'm sorry, Fred, I didn't mean to frighten you. It wasn't until I was on my way down, free-falling, and saw the look on your face that I realized this was the sort of thing could make a person's heart stop. It was just an impulse, Fred -- there I was on the balcony, thirty feet up, looked down, saw you, thought there's Fred and jumped. I was already feeling guilty before impacting, ungainly meteorite, four inches in front of your twisted features. God, I'm sorry, man. You said something then but gladly I don't remember what. Your words were lost in the screams as I turned to look up as you had before and saw the little girl's leap into space just beyond the clutch of her mother's fingers. My fault, my fault, my fault, I thought in time with her giddy plunge. I'll never forget the sound of her femurs shattering. But it's okay, Fred, it was just a dream, a stupid dream of unpremediated acts, falling bodies, and pointless guilt. It has nothing to do with real life, nothing to do with us at all.
    FROM: A Dream of Frederik Pohl, (1995), Poem, US