His pupils were stranded in those breaking waves as his eyes ceased to do more than drift along the underlying shore. Marooned in the kind of black thoughts that blind-out the eyes he began to notice that his own heart was beating along in syncopated rhythm with the sound below, and that his breath came in and out according to that same cadence. Noticing this synchronicity his mood shifted from myopic dysthymia into a powerless rage that made him feel as if his mind were an island in hell.
It had been his suspicion that the whole universe was merely one great conspiracy hatched without any design or designer, and obliviously functioning as its own assassin. He'd come to the edge of this cliff with this hunch in his head, and now his breath fumed as the first traces of fog began to accumulate along with his befuddlement. Having been so very close to sending himself off the edge of this cliff like one last wave defying the depth and direction of all the others, he found himself in the wrong temperament.
There had been almost no doubt in his mind that he was right about all of this, and that the universe was wrong about everything comprising itself. If there had been any doubts they weren't the kind that could be explained and perhaps even impossible to consciously sense. Now he was even more convinced than ever before, but something inside this stranded rage seemed to have been abandoned by- something. That something could only be likened to some abstract without any definable features or identifiable traits other than its apparent ability to cause this disruption in his head.
For what must have been a timeless hour in eternity he seethed with anger in the rising fog. Gradually he began to formalize a means of explaining what he was experiencing. This hellish feeling that had come over him was perhaps the one contradictory concept that confounded all of existence according to his pending indictment of the universe. It was a feeling of certainty.
The universe couldn't be oblivious to functioning as its own assassin if a part of it were certain of this fact. He was certain of this very thing now, and so the universe had to be something far worse than he'd imagined. It had to be certain. The whole damned universe were certain in its own demise.
For the universe to be certain implied some design or designer. If it was made certain by some designer than that would mean that gawd had designed destruction. His whole life then had been kept afloat on waves that were designed to drown him, and the fact that he'd been afloat at all seemed to be some sadistic torment or an incompetent form of inefficiency. The thought of a foolish or devilish gawd just didn't add up to him.
As mad thoughts drifted in and out of his head he began to notice that the fog had started to fade. He'd spent more hours trying to figure this whole thing out than he could even believe. The night he had spent in oblivion was breaking into day as he started to formulate a new theory in the breaking fog.
What if the universe were oblivious to it's design initially, and then became aware of this conspiracy later on, much like he had done? The whole befuddlement of a design/designer would still exist, but the context and relevance of this would become uncertain in the event that their designs could be made certain. It was difficult for him to clarify what this notion really meant, but there was perhaps something to it.
As he muddled through logical assessments of all these notions he began to sense a calming feeling of... uncertainty.
From this point his mind became too immersed in the abysmal depths of philosophical thoughts to properly explain without going on at great length. His mind went back and forth convincing him that he was certain, or uncertain, or that the universe were this, or that, etc, etc, etc... Eventually however he managed to formulate an experiment to settle his indecisiveness of what to do concerning himself and the edge of the cliff.
Reaching into his pocket he found a single half-dollar coin. He had received it as change for purchasing a ticket to some already forgotten movie at a local theater. For some reason they always handed these damned things back instead of quarters like every other business in his continental reality. If the theater was part of some universal scheme this would seem to make sense, but to be certain of this was still too fragile a thing for him.
With the coin in his hand he went to take another look off the edge of the cliff and into the crashing scene below it. He committed to the idea then and there that if the universe were certain then he was sure to become its victim either by chance or his own doing. If instead the universe were uncertain then the only way to know was by chance.
So he decided to let the coin determine his fate. Then it wouldn't matter if the universe were certain or oblivious in the whole scheme of demise. After all, he didn't come all the way to the edge of this cliff to rise above the secrets of the whole universe. All he really wanted to do was either sail over the edge into certain death, or drift back into his life having made the choice to do so.
He felt the wind against him as he turned his back to the cliff and took one deep pre-filp breath. Then flicking his thumb against the coin he watched as it rotated high in the air and descended to the ground at his feet. Though he could see the spot where it had landed the coin itself seemed to have vanished with the dull thud that announced its arrival. A strange panic began to swell inside of him as he dropped to his knees in search of his fateful coin.
Like a beggar in some hopeless form of anxiety he combed his fingers through the grass desperately scavenging for the coin. He absolutely had to know his fate, and this token had been ordained to minister such truth unto him. His inability to find the coin of his destiny fueled his sense of animosity for the world that mocked and tormented him in ways like this for as long as he had lived. With only the coin, and his fate, and his rage in his mind he searched an impossibly large after his lost token.
Then, just as he was standing to resign his search he noticed a glint of light reflecting off of the ground. He lunged toward it, and pronated his body before it so that his eyes were as close to its elevation as he could cast them. Sprawled out like some repentant servant before its master his pupils expanded to their blackest potential, engulfing the entirety of his eyes. And in them both reflected stood images of a coin resting upright on its edge, casting the image from each of its two sides upon the respective surface of the eye closest to it.
In the next instant those eyes would have surely appeared to shift from black reflections into an inferno's blinding blaze. His hatred was not cooled by the winds that grew stronger and seemed to be ushering him toward that edge. No, his hatred only spread as if it were a wild fire that had come upon that same wind, and was now scorching everything around him. The whole world was aflame with his hatred. From far beyond the terrestrial horizon to the very edge of this cliff the terrain was engulfed with metaphorical flames. Even his own being was being consumed in the volcanic might of his all consuming hatred.
The heat he felt from this burning rage began to destroy every other sense within him. He became deaf to the sound of everything but the noise of combustible frustrations. His skin felt only the torment of the imagined inferno of the world surrounding him. Then even these diminished senses seemed to evaporate, and the only thing left in his mind was an image of the edge that conspired with the oceanic horizon and the sky above to form a most mocking gawd-face laughing right at him.
Without any thought he hurled his body at the laughing face like some fist-body hay-maker. Instead of smashing into the teeth of clouds his heap of hate was swallowed whole by the laughing sky, and began to plunge down the digestive tract of the cliff. Though his descent could have only lasted a mere instant, in his mind the fall lasted an eternity.
Within the eternity of his descent he experienced the entirety of his preceding life. He felt himself crashing over and over as the failed waves of his life flowed back through his mind. As his eternal descent fell into the moments where this story began he sensed a sinking feeling within him. Somehow this caused him to feel as if he were suspended in the air with the image of the coin resting upright at the moment he'd gone over the edge.
He thought of the fortune he had imposed on that token. He thought of all the other things in his life that had been no different to him than that very coin. He thought of how everything he'd ever experienced seemed to be suspended on edge in just the same way as that fatal object. He wished he hadn't placed his fate in all of those things that could only land in such impossible positions. He even prayed to go back, and pick that coin up off the ground. He pleaded with no entity in his appeals to allow him to go back. He swore that given the chance he wouldn't have imagined that token as an object of fortune, but would have valued it for what it was. However cheap it might have been, he begged the laughing face to spit him back out, so he could spend it somehow.
But his eternal descent just continued as it had all along. Without comprehension he drifted through the space that held him, unable to reconcile his frustrations, alternately certain and uncertain of the universal conspiracy in question. Even after he reached the shoreline of reality, and the waves passed him into the undertow, and the abyss welcomed him into its depths he remained forever doomed to continue his descent, over an edge.
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