The Grammar of Falling

The bus let me off at the corner of Ash and Ninth, a neighborhood where the streetlights flickered like dying stars. I was walking home from the late shift at the all-night pharmacy, my feet aching, my mind already rehearsing the argument I’d have with my landlord about the broken radiator. That’s when I saw her.

She was sitting on the edge of the roof of the old Meridian Hotel, a crumbling brick behemoth that had been condemned for years. Her legs dangled over the void, swinging gently, and in her hands was a thick, leather-bound book, the kind you’d find in a library’s restricted section. She was laughing, her voice high and clear, carrying through the still air. But she wasn’t alone. She was talking to someone—responding, pausing, laughing at things I couldn’t hear. I squinted, but the rooftop was empty except for her.

I know better than to get involved. I’ve seen things, shadow-things that cling to the edges of perception. But the girl’s voice was so… ordinary. She sounded like a child playing a game. So I called out, ‘Hey, are you okay up there?’

She turned her head slowly, and her smile was too wide. ‘I’m practicing,’ she said, holding up the book. ‘The grammar of falling. Do you know it?’

Before I could answer, she flipped a page and read aloud: ‘The participle of descent is a dangling modifier.’ Her voice was sweet, but the words felt wrong, like a sentence that shouldn’t exist. An icy tendril slithered down my spine.

‘I think you should come down,’ I said, my mouth dry.

‘But I’m almost done,’ she said. ‘Just a few more pages. He’s helping me.’ She gestured toward the empty air beside her, and I felt a presence, a pressure like a held breath. The hairs on my arms stood up.

‘Who’s helping?’ I asked, my voice cracking.

‘He’s the one who taught me the rules,’ she said. ‘He says I’m his best student. He says I’ll get an A.’ She giggled again, and the sound was too bright, too brittle. ‘He wants me to practice on you.’

I backed away, my feet stumbling on the cracked pavement. ‘No, no, I don’t want to learn,’ I said.

‘But everyone learns,’ she said. ‘You just don’t know the lesson yet.’ She turned a page, and her voice dropped a register, deeper, almost adult. ‘The verb of being is a lie. We are all in the passive voice.’

The air around me grew cold, and the streetlights went out. The darkness crawled with a whisper, like pages turning. I ran. I didn’t look back until I reached my apartment, slamming the door and locking it, my heart a frantic drumbeat.

For days, I couldn’t shake it. The phrase ‘grammar of falling’ repeated in my mind like a stuck record. I started seeing the girl everywhere—in reflections, in the flicker of a dying screen, in the shadows cast by passing cars. She was always holding the book, always smiling, always talking to someone I couldn’t see.

Last night, I woke up to a tapping at my window. I live on the third floor. I pulled back the curtain, and there she was, standing on the fire escape, her face pressed against the glass. She held up the book, and I could see it was open to a page with my name written on it, my full name, in spidery red ink.

‘You’re in chapter three,’ she said, her voice muffled by the glass. ‘He’s waiting for you to make your first sentence.’

I woke up screaming. But the worst part is, when I checked my mirror, there was a thin red line around my neck, like a footnote. And in the corner of the room, a whisper: ‘Begin.’