Should she really jump?
Sally stared out the window at the ground. It was cobblestone, with leaves scattered everywhere. That 3-man band was endlessly droning on, playing a mournful ballad. She looked at the basket of food she had dropped down and wondered if she shouldn't just pull it back up and sneak down past Dr. Finkelstein instead.
No, she thought. He'll hear the door open.
Sally had not jumped down from her window in quite awhile. When she was newly made, she would do it on almost a nightly basis. Then, she would sneak off to the cemetery and tend to her garden.
These nighttime excursions had ended a few years ago, when she nearly died. Her head tore off from the rest of her body, and nobody had found her until morning. Dr. Finkelstein spent an entire month trying to repair her. The only reminder of that incident was a thick scar around her neck. If you weren't looking closely, it just looked like another stitch on her rag doll body.
Why had she been so anxious to get out that night? She only remembered jumping out and being in pain when her head was severed from her body. And who had found her?
Sally looked out at the sky. There was Jack's house, lit up with a strange green light. She smiled slightly.
That's right, she thought. It was Jack who I jumped for…
She was going to visit him that night, but Dr. Finkelstein had found out beforehand. He locked her in her room, forbidding her to leave. Of course, she had ignored this and left. At the time, she had thought nothing of it. After the accident though, she never tried to jump again.
Dr. Finkelstein never locked her in her room again, preferring her to escape and be safe than risk death again. This was the first time in 3 years he had locked her in her room.
There was still such a risk in jumping…
But poor, poor lonely Jack was up in that tower…alone.
Sally smiled wider. Jack...she loved Jack. She loved everything about him; loved the way he walked, the way he laughed, his neurosis, the way his very voice sounded. And if it meant that he would be happy for a minute, a second even, she would die for him.
In that moment, her mind was made up. Sally climbed up to the window sill, and let the wind carry her down to the earth below.
Her body hit the ground with a soft thud. The band looked at Sally's fallen form with ghostly expressions of wonder on their twisted, marred faces. Sally's limbs were almost all severed from her torso, and laid on the cold brown cobblestones with leaves falling out of the severed seams. The only appendages still attached were her head and her right arm. Her eyes were closed, and her face was glowing with pure, unbridled peace.
Then, her eyes opened.