Superman Sickness
The cement guardrail sparkles white in the sun and feels scratchy, like a nail file—or a diving board—under my palms. It’s just barely taller than my knees, and it is all that stands between me and dizzying open space. The first freeway below me is impossibly far away; three more freeways are between it and the ground. Everything is colder up here. My toes itch to be off the pavement; I rock restlessly on my heels.
It’s known colloquially as “Superman Sickness.” The official symptoms include “distorted depth perception, acromania, and loss of survival instinct.” In reality, its victims unshakably believe that they can fly. When it hit epidemic levels, they began closing off bridges and towers to try to stop sufferers from jumping off them. When they manage to stop someone from jumping, they isolate them in padded quarantine units, strapped down indefinitely until someone can find a cure—as if anyone would want to be “cured” of the ability to defy gravity.
The sudden urge to jump when in high places is surprisingly common and usually harmless. This particular strain, however, is not only carried by an airborne contagion (it has been described as a kind of “weaponized LSD”), it is also irresistible. I have already lost my sister and boyfriend to the Superman Sickness. I’ve read all the materials put out by the awareness campaigns. I know that I’m supposed to check myself in somewhere. But I haven’t told anyone, because I know they will try to stop me from taking flight.
Rationally, I know I can’t fly. But squatting here with my elbows hooked over the guardrail, a string of weightlessness seems to tug on my spine. Cars fly past behind me, wind and horns blasting me, blurring into the background. The open air in front of me, dotted with freeways below, is solid enough to walk on and touch—a floor of glass that is invisible to everyone but me. My arms want to spread, to catch the wind; my palms rise, taking in the sun and the blisteringly blue horizon. Every second that my bare feet remain on the ground, I feel like I'm standing on razors. My bones grow lighter as I breathe, inflating myself with oxygen, tilting, my knees scraping the concrete, my center of gravity shifting, the world slipping, and the sky inverting.
And just like that, there is nothing between me and the concrete but empty air.
