There should be that, some un-thinking sanity, clarity of vision and purity of movement-as-emotion moment. But there isn't. Falling is like that. You see everything in intimates, every moment flashbulb absurd and goofy. That rock, hey, it's not supposed to be there and you have plenty of time to think about how much it will hurt when you hit. Plenty of time.
There must be some sort of chemical flood to the brain during those moments, some endorphin-triggered chemical stopwatch that kills off the perception of time, makes the eyes capable of picking out tiny detail, the tiniest of scratches on the surface. Significance in every femtosecond, a way for the brain to deal with panic in fight-or-flee times, giving clarity to the exit strategies or defensive capability. The brain is a tactical mess, too much information and not any analysis in panic; we see all these things but cannot muster the eight or ten steps to accomplish them.
Falling is like this, exiting the third floor window of a bombed out office building, pushed by the invisible hand of heat and high explosive, shoved hard in the chest, deaf now, ground coming soon, too soon, certainly, to have any time to consider.
The weight of a thousand years of evolution on his back, guns, ammunition, maps, electronics that all add nothing to his descent except a sense of impending expense.
A hell of an insurance bill.
When the ground does smack into his back and dig his backpack belongings into his lungs, he does the only thing he can think of.
He wakes up.
Screaming, again.
The ward cool and dark, the other beds writhing in their own free-fall nightmares, the world outside German, foreign in a different way.
The world unchanged.
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