Elevation

by Stephen King

Hands on a clock, numbers on a bathroom scale, weren’t they only ways of trying to measure invisible forces that had visible effects? A feeble effort to corral some greater reality beyond what mere humans thought of as reality?

Why feel bad about what you couldn’t change? Why not embrace it?

Not a wind, not even a high, exactly, but an elevation. A sense that you had gone beyond yourself and could go farther still.

Gravity is the anchor that pulls us down into our graves. There would be no grave for this man, and no more gravity, either. He had been given a special dispensation.

Everyone should have this, he thought, and perhaps, at the end, everyone does. Perhaps in their time of dying, everyone rises.

They watched until the last golden sparks went out, and the night was dark again. Somewhere high above them, Scott Carey continued to gain elevation, rising above the earth’s mortal grip with his face turned toward the stars.