The Bridge.

Sitting on the edge of the bridge and looking down, there is no vertigo, no anxiety, no fear at all, just peace. Josh held out his hand and dropped a stone, the wind caused it to fall backwards, and he leaned over as much as he could to see it plop into the ocean below. He adjusted his weight so he didn’t follow the stone and sat back up, breathing in hard, the salty air stinging his nostrils and drying out his throat. He stretched his arms up, holding onto the fingers of his left hand and pulling up straight before letting them fall to his side. Josh shut his eyes and imagined he was a bird, soaring through the clear skies, dipping low and fast like a fighter plane, then screeching up towards the sun, feathers warm and soft, bright eyes and clear mind. Freedom, that’s all he really wanted, freedom; free from these voices that shackled him, pinned him to the ground like an overzealous cop, rough and dangerous. Free from mood swings that split open his head, abusing lows and high pitched mania, unpredictability forcing away friends, leaving him with empty corn fields to roam, on his own, talking to scarecrows who understandably don’t answer. The lies that he tells to anyone who will listen ensure that in confusion and exhaustion, he now believes. Is he part of the CSI, is he undercover, does he have a model girlfriend who sucks him off whenever he clicks his fingers, is the sports car that is parked outside his flat really his? He opens his eyes momentarily to watch a ship disappear between his legs, which he rocks back and forth, making his body unsteady on the ledge.

If he is telling the truth, if everything he says is real, then whatever anyone else tells him must be a lie, surely? So the car is his, the woman who will please him sexually on demand is his, the job, is his. The web of lies inhabited his brain, vulnerable and ready to collapse as he swung his legs, faster, as the voices reassured him that all he believed was true, not to worry what the others tell him, they lie, they hate him, they want to see him suffer. Believe in us, they whisper, believe in us, but there you go again, the lie in the middle intimidating, threatening to ruin everything.

He used to have faith in his logic, the ideas that perpetrated his soul, causing reflux around him, good and bad. There used to be a dream deep inside, while drawing mom and dad with orange crayons, so enthusiastically that each colour was snapped in half. The scene was always the same, outside a large house, legs disappearing in a mass of lush grass, two cats sitting uncomfortable on top of the green blades. The family would always have oversized, bright red smiles that protruded off the black outlines of each face, dangling in mid-air. The drawings changed as he grew up, as did the scene; 12 years old and now using HB pencils to sketch his pet dog, small and faded to mirror his personality. 16 and now using paint to colour images of girls who lay at the bottom of worn pages, dark red blood seeping from invisible wounds. 24 and now using any material closest to him to rapidly sketch out the visions he saw racing past his eyes, hallucinations that exposed his helplessness and isolation. Bodies that swung from unseen ropes, spiders that tapped on his skull, eyes that taunted and leered, blood pouring down the white walls of his flat, viscous murders and unimaginable torture all occupied the spaces in his sketchbooks now.

He grimaced as he thought about the people who have come and gone from his life, the ones who wanted to help but obviously couldn’t, the ones who didn’t give a shit and just wanted the sex or the drugs that he happily gave away for free. The ones who wanted to change him, make him see the world the way they did, ‘the better way,’ as he had so often been told. The ones he had loved, with all his soul, heart and body, the one who had poured water on everything he believed, that tiny spark that was once there, it once burned bright, apprehensively waiting for more logs to be added, to turn it all into a roaring fire, intense heat, and extreme light. No one could have looked away, not one person, they would all stare as he walked down the street, a fiery mass of excitement, belief, determination and courage. But she put it out as quickly as she discovered it was there and now he was sat on the ledge of the bridge waiting to fall.