(For a variation story on the first two paragraphs and the topic of a suicide attempt, see the sr71plt story "Helpful Hiker.")
*
I will always remember the barn. How could I ever forget it? It was a big, corrugated iron one, dull with age and with no windows on the lower level and just one at each end, up in the gable. Tall narrow windows that let light into the loft, while below the barn was dark and silent, cluttered and filled with dust. But I didn't know that when I first saw it.
I came upon it slowly as I emerged onto the top of the mountain, after a steep climb from the bay below, which had taken me through the untouched forest of the National Park. And I came at it from the rear, seeing the high window lit with the full afternoon sun, and I saw him there caught in the sun, naked and golden, like some lost angel. Perched up there on the windowsill with his arms spread wide hanging on to the frame. He is the reason I remember the barn so well.
I stopped there, breathing hard, recovering from the climb, and staring, fascinated by the erotic image before me. I was half expecting him to disappear, to be some trick of my mind. I wasn't as young or as fit as I once was, and a dizzy spell had caught me out the day before and left me unsteady for a while.
But no, the golden angel didn't vanish; instead, I now saw that he was looking towards me, and I waved at him. I waited, but he never waved back; he just stood poised on his perch, ignoring me and apparently unconcerned that I was staring at his nakedness. Yes. I was staring at him, drinking him in, and letting his beauty soak into me and send a warm rush though my body. And as my breathing returned to normal, I became increasingly aroused.
Then suddenly I realised that he was falling. His arms were still spread out and he appeared to be standing, but as I watched he slowly began to fall forward. And he didn't make any sound, or any gesture to save himself.
I was frozen and part of me was saying, "It isn't real, this isn't happening," and part of me was screaming "Nooooooooooo." A long drawn-out cry of rage rising up in me at what he had done as I watched. At what he was doing to himself, and to me.
He continued to fall silently, performing a perfect swan dive, as I stood there frozen, my mouth opening in a silent helplessness, but part of me still saying, "No, it can't be real." It seemed like forever that he fell, but it must have been only moments before he silently disappeared. Then there was a puff of dust and the spell was broken.
I dropped my heavy pack and ran towards the rear of the barn where he had fallen, thinking, "Have I got my mobile? Who will I ring? How do you treat a broken neck? Shit, it's twenty years since I did first aid, shit, shit. Why? Why would he do it? Why to me?"
The grass had only been ankle high where I had been hiking past, but as I ran closer to where he had fallen, it got longer, and thicker. I was imagining broken bones poking out of skin and almost vomited just thinking of it. Then I got within a dozen feet of where I imagined he was and found myself slowed down and almost wading through thick thigh-high grass.
Then I was trying to climb a huge pile of decaying grass clippings and rubbish when I heard a soft moaning, and I finally saw him. He was pulling himself out of the centre of the invisible pile of lawn clippings and moaning.
"Fuck it. I can't do anything right," he suddenly shouted and started swearing. "Fuck, fuck. Whyyyyy?"
I was only feet away from him now, but he still didn't seem to know I was there.
"Ouch," he yelped, collapsing in a heap, half buried in dry grass and twigs as I noticed small branches sticking out of the pile he had landed in.
I stopped, only about four feet from him, standing knee deep in vegetation and in danger of twisting something. I was panting again, and he seemed to be crying as he nursed his left arm.
I struggled the rest of the way to him, "Are you OK?" I asked as I reached out to touch him, still afraid I'd find something awful.
He jerked around. "Oh shit," he gaped at me, "Who . . .? Were you . . .? God, did you see? Oh," He seemed completely flustered now. "I'm sorry. I've made a complete mess of it," he wailed, kicking a leg out at the rubbish he was half buried in.
"I should have checked, shouldn't I?" he continued looking up at me, with tears streaking his cheeks. "Garth always told me I was no good at the details. "You're bloody useless at the detail, Ty," He was always saying. And I can't even manage to kill myself."
He was young, but not as young as he had looked poised up there in the barn window, and I was in shock myself and started yelling at him, "You frightened the bloody life out of me. Seeing you fall like that. And I am damn glad you didn't get badly hurt. Stop wallowing in self-pity. I hate blood. And I have no idea who to call if you were seriously hurt. I don't even know what the mobile reception is like here."
I sat down beside him, still panting, and he looked at me, peering at me with his mouth open. "See. Details, you think of them," he said with admiration. "I did take my contacts out, though," he added with a flicker of a smile.
For a moment I thought, "The twit can't see. Geez." But then I was looking into his eyes, and god, those blue eyes of his, and I thought instead, "God, how I'd love to be gazing into them as I fuck him."
"You're hurt," I said, pulling myself back to the present situation where I was playing the Good Samaritan. "How's your arm?" I asked, wondering how bad the arm he was nursing was and trying to remember what to do for someone in shock, as he obviously was.
And I was worried that some awful injury he couldn't feel yet was being hidden by the rubbish that half covered him. I could see scratches everywhere, small ones that were oozing a drop or two of blood, and a couple of nastier gouges from small twigs that were starting to bleed trickles of blood.
"Come on. You need to get up and, well, get out of here. Do you think . . . Um do you think your arm . . . is, um, broken?" I asked him, but not really wanting to know, because I couldn't remember what I was supposed to do if it was.
"Um," he looked down at it sitting against his chest. "Um, it hurts, but I am not sure. I think I landed on it. It may just be bruised."
"What a stupid thing to do," I couldn't stop myself saying. "You could have given me a bloody heart attack."
But that wasn't the real problem just then. He had turned more towards me, and I now had his half hard cock just in front of me. Christ, I was already dying to fuck him and now he was showing me his goods. His skin was pale all over, a healthy glowing pale, not the dull pale skin of a shut-up city person. And there was nothing tidied up about him; his golden hair spread out from his bush, up his belly, and was also sprinkled thickly over his balls and inside his thighs. His cock was a hairless pale, veined sausage with its red head just poking out of his foreskin.
I couldn't help myself, I was in shock. I was running on the primitive drive to mate that overcomes us all when we have just escaped death or seen another do it. I slid my hand under his tool and lifted the head to my open lips and lowered my lips over it.