On The Bridge

by Ada Uzoije

  He could hear people exclaiming at his movements to the steep incline of loose gravel and weeds as he slowly navigated his footing, but soon realised that there was no way to the river from the flanking banks. Rather than meet his fate, he reconsidered. Besides, the only way to the briefcase was straight into the raging water and as much as he desired to collect the elusive item, it would be suicide to attempt it.

  Suicide. Yes, indeed, there was that word again. It drifted in front of him, yet out of reach and so he stood defeated, just looking at the compelling and unattainable thing. Behind him the traffic still crawled, roared and clamoured but he heard nothing. Disappointed he stood glaring at the river he could not breach when suddenly a firm hand clasped his upper arm in a vicious grip.

  “Are you out of your bloody mind?” a deep voice roared behind him, startling Doug. He turned at saw the burly policeman staring at him with a stern scowl. He was an older man of about 57, in uniform, holding his hat with his free hand so that the wild gale could not abduct it. “Come on, then, I’m taking you home.”

  He roughly pulled the scrawny school boy upward towards the road, much to Doug’s protest. Incessantly the police officer cussed and moaned as he pulled the boy, motioning to the glaring motorists to continue their journey.

  “Nothing to see here, then, nothing to see. Damn teenagers think you are funny. Just until you land up in hospital …” he looked at Doug, “… or dead!”

  “But sir, I was looking at the briefcase in the water!” Doug tried to explain, but the robust lawman would hear none of it.

  “I don’t give a damn what you were doing, sonny. You are distracting the motorists with your antics and before long we’ll have a big bloody pile-up here and who will be responsible for such a mess? You!” he shouted, and Doug thought of how angry his father was going to be at him for engaging himself in such things, especially those concerning the blasted accident they had witnessed.

  As Doug looked back at the drifting case, a furious gale swept over the river and pushed it toward the other side, slipping it down the speeding current now. He watched it gliding over the silvery foam until it disappeared in the distance where he could see it no more.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The glare of the computer drove Krista crazy tonight. No matter how she tried she could not get any further with the banking details she was trying to enter on her bank’s online site. It kept rejecting her code and she finally just minimized the screen and with a pursed mouth and a yelp of frustrated rage she jumped up to walk it off. On her digital clock a song cracked through the static and she turned the knob to get the needle on the right frequency. How she loved jazz. It had such a calming effect on her, even when she was in the throes of depression, holding the blade inches from her skin. Jazz always reminded her that everyone has problems and nobody ever escapes heartbreak or the nightmares of self-doubt, failure and hurt – the trick was in how one handled one’s problems. She hated those self-righteous pricks who never had a day’s misery in their lives and then went around telling her how her problems were her own doing. It was simply not true. Many times a bad patch hit her because of some idiot who would not employ her, leaving her broke and in trouble. How was that her fault, then?

  Now Krista pouted, but the music soothed her out of the heavier upset at the banking site and its terrible tech which vexed her no end. She found the clearer side of the station and turned up the music, allowing the blaring saxophone to take her thoughts off the irritation which could easily drive her into dangerous temper tantrums at the drop of a hat. Unknowingly she had been grinding her teeth and her jaw began to ache as she turned up the music, but soon her stress declined somewhat as the delirium of the vibes from the meagre radio speaker possessed her heart. Krista twirled with it, barefoot, in her room and she soon twirled her way to the fridge for a soda. It was too hot for coffee, she decided, and elected to enjoy the bubbly coldness burning down her parched throat.

  A ping sounded from her room as she stood in the dark kitchen, swallowing a huge gulp of soda until her skull ached with brain freeze. Again the ping came.

  “What?” she shouted into the atmosphere. “What do you want?” But she was curious about who it was, so she decided to tolerate her annoying online toils to investigate. Can in hand, she sauntered to the computer and seated herself, opening the screen. It punished her eyes with that wicked sharp glare and she adjusted the screen to accommodate her eyes a bit better.

  It was Icarus. Krista smiled.

  “Hey you!” she wrote and watched the pulsing cursor.

  “Hi Suicide Queen,” Icarus answered and the two engaged in some small talk over the boring events of the day before Doug started talking about the briefcase he wanted to retrieve, but failed to catch.

  “Why the hell would you do something that stupid? You could have drowned, you know?” she said.

  “I know, but I simply have to know what is in the case. It is driving me crazy!” she read, and shook her head.

  “You should just give a thing like that to the police, Doug. You never know what is in it,” Krista advised him.

  In his ill-lit room, Doug watched her message come through, confirming what he thought she would say. Like all the other people, she did not grasp the urgency he felt for the case and its contents. Nobody seemed to understand the things which happened to him, so he decided to change the subject and they spoke for a while longer before Doug excused himself and said goodbye to his Suicide Queen for the night.

  Before he went to bed, he thought about the swimming tryouts and how Mr Browning said he had potential to be really good. It made him proud to know somewhere he was doing something right. It was raining outside. Jean had been complaining all week about the unusually arid conditions in the city of late and Doug imagined how happy his mother must be that her precious garden would not be wilting away after all. The rain pattered against his small, shuttered window behind his drawn curtains.

  ”Good sleep weather,” Doug thought as he sank snugly into bed and turned off his bedside lamp s that the room was beautifully illuminated by the ever–so-slight blue light of his aquarium. Tonight he could not hear the bubbles, as the rain hammered on the walls and glass. For a change he felt utterly peaceful and accomplished and sleep came easily, for once.

  Under his feet the loose stones and broken pieces of tar cracked as he walked, pushing his scooter through the wind. He was so glad there was no traffic today and no motorists snooping to what he was doing. Of course there were no cars – it was late at night and the stars above him glimmered over the dismal stretch of empty road. Black and warm from the day it quietly snaked over the bridge and onto the next few miles of meandering curves into the faint horizon where it disappeared.

  It was not cold, but Doug lamented forgetting his jacket as he lurched through the unforgiving gale force wind which left his hair unkempt and wild. Then Doug noticed that he was not in his body anymore and he watched himself pushing the creaky chrome scooter along the shoulder of the road where it started over the bridge. Not even a quarter of the way across he noticed something in the water below. For a moment Doug wondered how he could see so well in the night, but the street lights perched across the sides of the bridge shone like sunshine. Sunshine? He saw himself walking to the barrier to make sure he saw what he thought he did. Clothed in his school uniform, the boy leaned over the barricade and to his astonishment, there it was!

  Bobbing along the rise and fall of the water of the water surface, Doug saw the black briefcase again. This time it hardly moved forward and he knew this would be the best chance he would ever have to fetch it once and for all. In his gut the excitement grew at the possibilities of finally discovering what it held and he quickly descended from the road onto the whipping weeds which bent under the force of the wind. Without any reservation, the curious young man leaped into the water and caught his breath. It took a bit long for him to resurface and around him the water was dark and murky, bubbling and churning in the thrall of t
he angry current. He wondered why it wasn’t cold. In fact, he could not feel the water much as he paddled with his outstretched arms to reach the outside air before he drowned. Krista said he would drown and he felt his chest burning as he failed to reach the top while the water threw his body about. Submerged under the river he watched himself struggle to come up and he told himself to remember what Mr Browning said.

  Remember, you have potential! You can swim well if you really try!

  With a mighty effort Doug slid through the water and broke the surface with a loud gasp. Outside the wind was howling but the water had no temperature, still. The briefcase was just out of reach and did not drift any further than it had when he first saw it. It was waiting for him. With great glee he started swimming, just like he had that afternoon at school and he was good, too. Quickly he approached the item he so wanted to get his hands on and from the foamy water he reached out to it. It felt hard and warm under his hands as his eager fingers grabbed at it to get a firmer hold. Doug pulled the case closer until he had it in his hands and hoped it was not locked or sealed with a code.

  Clumsily his wet fingers fumbled to pull the two knobs aside and unlock the hold.

  ‘Click’

  He loved the sound of the right lock opening and shortly after the left. Not even bothering to get out of the river, he stood waist deep in the current in the starlit sky which looked exactly like a dusky day and he lifted the lid to see what hid inside. The first thing he saw was his own eyes, staring back at him. Doug’s body jolted with fear and disbelief as he opened the lid wider to reveal his own hair and face, his expression contorted in a frozen fit of terror. His mouth agape and his neck severed, his decapitated head filled the briefcase just perfectly inside. It seemed to be screaming and he could have sworn he heard his own scream before realising it was him, uttering an involuntary hysterical shriek which echoed across the river and the reverberated under the confines of the bridge. Raw and coarse, his throat kept hissing under the force of his screams, but he felt nothing come out. It was his head screaming.

  With a start, Doug awoke in his bed. The rain and thunder pummelled the exterior of the house and he could hardly hear anything else but the clamour of the restless weather. Soaked with sweat, he wiped his brow and panted to catch his breath. His throat still hurt as well and far away in another dimension he could still vaguely hear himself crying out in shock.

  Maybe he was just thirsty. Caught painfully between his teeth, his tongue felt swollen and dry as his eyes combed the smooth bluish walls and ceiling. Doug sat up with much effort and a deep unhappiness crawled around in his chest. Just when he thought he would be okay. Turning to get out of bed the poor boy looked right into the ghastly fiend which visited his bedside this night. Standing beside the foot of his bed, Doug saw the dead man once more as large and true as a real person, staring ahead of him in a trancelike state. The thing’s mouth was slightly open, like someone waiting to say something, and his dead papery eyes were pale and opaque in the blue light where he stood motionless. The teenager froze in fear, choking on his dry tongue and the horrid feeling of his burning chest. But it was not the water which burned his chest now, no, it was pure and raw terror attacking him and he wished he could scream for help before the thing saw him, but he found his throat constricted.

  He had to! He had to make alarm or this would not end well for him. With all his might Doug collected his breath, expanded his chest while tears swamped his terrified eyes. And then he screamed. The petrified boy screamed with every ounce of strength he could muster, careless now whether the ghost could hear him or not. He screamed as if his very soul depended on it, loudly and long as his voice brought with it all his fear and desperation. From deep inside him it came, shaking his body under the sound of his bellow and he did not waste time taking another breath.

  Above him the dead man moved, stirred finally by his screams. It turned its head robotically, only its head. A grotesque and filthy demon of nightmares with a posh suit, it looked down at the frightened child with no life and no mercy in its eyes. The gaping mouth fell wide open while it stared at Doug and without warning the dead man brought forth a wicked and high pitched shriek. Like a banshee he wailed, letting out a deafening and horrible sound which smashed all the windows of Doug’s room simultaneously. Throughout the house he could hear the glass explode one by one as the sound overwhelmed the whole house.

  “Doug! Doug!” he heard his mum and dad calling frantically.

  The two adults had raced into the room of their screaming son after being woken by his unsettling shrieks in the embrace of the stormy night. He opened his eyes and slipped from the nightmarish blue room with its broken windows and beheld his parents standing by his bed, holding his hand and consoling him. He was so relieved to find that his first sight was his parents and he calmed down immediately. The windows were intact and everything was back to normal. Heaving, he fell back into his bed in relief, elated to know that it was just another nightmare. He was certainly relieved when he realised that it was Saturday morning and he did not have to be at school.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Krista hated the news. She hated actuarial programs, health shows, reality shows and documentaries. Only sitcoms, movies and music videos ever made it onto her TV screen. There was something deeply distressing about reality and the sour reports of everyday life, other people’s bad luck and sadness, which she avoided in her life ever since she left high school. Her mother always said that happiness is a choice and, at the time, she would mouth off about her pathetic life and the total lack of choice in her life, but her mother, much like a Japanese sensei from an ‘80s movie, would simply smile and say, “You know it’s true, Krissie.”

  Krista smiled as she went back in time and she could have sworn she could hear her mother’s voice.

  “You’re just too stubborn to shut up for longer than two minutes so that the idea can get through to you. All this fighting against the truth, against anything you don’t agree with, will just wear you out, and when you are tired and tapped out, you will have no choice other than to listen, to feel.”

  And it was true. Happiness was indeed a choice, she would find out later, too late, after her mother had succumbed to a heart attack at 55 and Krista could not tell her that she understood it now.

  So she chose to lock out all things that made her unhappy or announced the misfortunes of others. Surely it was a form of denial, but it worked for her and she refused admittance to any source of misery. All she cared about now was her animals and her newfound appreciation for cycling, something she took up to whip her overweight butt back into shape in hopes of at least landing a husband before she was a full-blown spinster. Then again, she doubted any man of proper calibre would pay attention to a scarred ex-officer who flaked out on several occasions and now tried to make amends to life by washing dogs and listening to jazz. At least she found quite a few kindred spirits on the website and she could actually help people who took it more seriously and had more trouble to deal than she had. It felt good to use her darkness and her road to hell to teach others the other highways they could take instead of the one she decided to travel. She had many friends there and they didn’t see her as a freak or a head case as most people in the normal world would.

  Her story had helped cutters quit their blades and some self-mutilators turned to therapy on her advice, which made her feel like she was making a difference. Suicide Queen’s screen blinked again, and this time she was wide awake and excited to hear from Icarus and any new developments on his front, but she was disappointed to find no messages from him today. There were four unread messages from her other contacts, people she hardly spoke to, save for when things get a bit too much and their names in her message box was an omen of something new she had obviously not heard about in her sheltered world.

  First she read an archived message, she had not seen before checking her older unread messages and she was surprised that she missed this one when it was sent. It came from
King Midas, one of her long-time pals, who would spend hours online with her in the dead of night when she thought she was going to fall to pieces. In all honesty, Krista may well have had a crush on King Midas, another course of denial she would implement when confronted with her jumping heart at the sight of his name on her screen. His messages always came first. Again she sipped at her strawberry milk and turned on her relaxing music before she opened his message.

  “Dear Suicide Queen…” she smiled and licked her lips, “I’m going to be offline, so don’t worry if my profile is inactive. I am planning a very nice business trip. I have received an offer I can’t resist, so to speak, and I can’t let this chance go by. And no, it’s not just the money. I know that‘s what you are thinking! Ha-ha.”

  “Oh it’s always the money, honey,” Krista chuckled, reading the rest quickly, as she was eager to get through her other messages before getting ready for work.

  “And I will think of you when I get there! Stay sweet! Rory.”

  “I’m always sweet, Rory,” she said out loud as the jazz poured a shiver of amour over her.

  “Next?” She opened a message from Cutty P. and scanned over the message. Her heart stopped.

  “Krista, remember the guy who walked into traffic a while back? They checked his laptop as part of the investigation, trying to find out why he did it and what happened to him before he did it and they found his website history, hon. His sign-in was King Midas on this site. Krista, it was Rory! Rory is the guy who killed himself on that bridge!”

  She could read no further as she felt the bile push up from her stomach. Krista sprinted around the corner of her bedroom and scarcely made it to the bathroom. Her tears came as she ran and she fell on her knees in front of the toilet bowel, puking profusely as she screamed through her tears, cursing and clutching at her flesh, wailing as her ribs convulsed.