“L’Appel du Vide,” French for “the call of the void,” is a psychological phenomenon where a person standing at a precipice has a sudden notion of stepping out into the abyss. It’s not a suicidal urge. It’s a reflex of the imagination in the face of a thin line between possibilities. To be free is to be able to choose, even between life and death. There’s the rational choice–the sane choice, and… the other one. But what if?
Sometimes we don’t make a choice because we don’t see the choice. We’re stuck in a rut, and tethered down by the rational justifications for staying in that rut. But sometimes, circumstances force us to the brink of other possibilities. There’s a terror in that. And a thrill. It’s the feeling of being truly alive.
This is a story about hovering at the edge of possibilities. Please enjoy “L’Appel du Vide” at Metaphorosis, either with the other stories in issue 39 as a $3 ebook, or free on the site, on March 22 2019.
This story has also been reprinted in Best Vegan Science Fiction & Fantasy 2019.
I wrote this story after leaving a rut that had become unbearable, without having a “next thing” in hand. It was a scary, frustrating, and guilt-ridden time. But it was also an astounding experience of personal agency, having blocks of time that I could devote to things that I chose, for no other reason than I was interested. It couldn’t last, of course. And it didn’t. But… what if?
(Side note: This is the second of my published stories, after “Matchstick Reveries,” which features someone rising up into the air. The third, after “Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear?“, if you count people gazing up into the sky. Not sure what that’s about.)
I’d like to thank editor B. Morris Allen for his patient persistence helping me get this story up to par for his wonderful magazine.
- mahpiohanzia – the frustration of being unable to fly, unable to stretch out your arms and vault into the air, having finally shrugged off the burden of your own weight
- volander – the ethereal feeling of looking down at the world through an airplane window
Raj Against The Machine 