"Losing My Best Friend" - 12/12/2011

"Losing My Best Friend"
12/12/2011

There was a massive skydive training function / party going on, involving hundreds of people. My very first jump was to be a base jump off of a tall cliff or ledge. Not to prove myself timid, I did a back flip off of the ledge, but what once seemed to be a jump of a few hundred feet turned out to last a fraction of a second, and I couldn't even finish my rotation. It felt like I tried to do a back flip off of a coffee table. Not having nearly enough rotation to complete the flip, I ended up face-planting on the ground - no pain or anything, but it was embarrassing as hell.

After picking myself up, I went around the grounds of this festival and mingled for a bit. A lot of my old friends were there, including my best friend, T. Soon, my second jump had come up, and T and I were now jumping from a plane, simultaneously. In the middle of these festival grounds was a huge cave that went straight down into the Earth. It was just, basically, an enormous hole in the ground, that people were partying around, down below us. (Something like This, but maybe not as sheer on the sides.) T and I had no intentions of landing in - or around - this hole, but we ended up traveling off course and headed in that direction. Unable to avoid it, I crashed against one side of the cylindrical wall, just a few feet from the top, held by a ledge just barely big enough to hold me in a standing position as I hugged the rock wall. T dropped a little further down, and landed on a small protrusion of rock on the opposite side of the expansive cavern, on his stomach, with his head nearly hanging over the edge and facing down into the void.

I barely had three inches to spare, on the tiny ledge that was holding my feet above a deadly fall. The more I tried to climb out, the more the lightly packed wall of earth began to give way in my hands. Looking back across the gap at T, I could see that he was having trouble keeping his position, and his body was naturally beginning to slide down closer to the lip of the ledge he was on. His eyes screamed the extreme fear that his mouth would not, and the more he attempted to inch himself away from the ledge, the more the ledge began to give way. I could tell that it wouldn't be long before it completely failed him. I yelled his name, trying as desperately as I could to climb up from off of my ledge. It seemed impossible, though. Every time I tried to climb out, my hold would give way, and I would put myself in danger of falling to my death as well, but I could see that T was running out of time.

Finally, the last bit of solid ground he had gave way, and I watched him slide forward, his body diving, head first, off of the tiny ledge, and down into the hole - which might as well have been bottomless, from as far down as I was able to see. I lost sight of him withing just a few moments, but then I heard that horrible Crash from down below. It hit with such force that I knew, instantly, no one could have possibly survived. I think I called out for him one more time, and - not really giving a damn about my own safety anymore - I scrambled up and out of the cave, somehow pulling myself up onto the ledge and level ground, along with the scores of other people who had been watching the whole ordeal. 

I ran around the rim of the cavern to where he once was. On the way over, I came across some drunken idiot who was laughing at the situation (while everyone else was quite visibly stunned). For the shortest moment, I almost got into a fight with this jackass. He said that he thought it was funny because T was 'just some random dude' and was 'nothing special'. Right. This was not his best friend we were talking about. Fuming, but still overcome with concern, I continued running around to the other side of the hole, knowing in my heart that no one could have survived that fall. Almost to the railing, where everyone else was staring down into the hole, I began pushing my way through the crowd. Suddenly, I was blocked by T's mom (whom I love, dearly). She ran toward me, crying her eyes out, and threw her arms around me. She had seen the whole thing from an angle that I had not, and I could tell by her reaction that I had been right, and my best friend in the world was dead.

(This was the absolute worst dream I have had in a very long time. I woke up feeling absolutely horrible. T has been in Australia for the past year, and I called him a few times after hearing this dream, just to hear is voice. Wasn't able to get in touch with him until a few days after this dream, though. It was pretty rough. =/)