Trust

I spent some time today trying to write, but didn't come up with much of anything to show for it. That's how it goes, I guess. But in an effort to pass time I began sifting through old files and stumbled on some stuff I'd written a few years back. This is one of those. 

           His hands were dry and cold on my wrists, which were bony and strangled from the grip he held on with. My toes were planted firmly in the concrete edge of the trestle bridge. I stood straight ahead, eyes squeezed tightly shut. I knew the sky would be streaked red-gold and blue; clouds dividing the space in gradient color. But my eyelids cut off the pigment and doused my senses in cool, clear black. I squeezed tighter.

This was a bad idea. I could feel his palms start to sweat. Maybe this wasn’t as genius as we thought it’d be.  If he slipped a millimeter I’d be hurtling into the river below me.

I felt my pulse rise as I leaned forward, feeling hands on wrists cement their grip as I tilted out, a forty-five degree angle away from the edge, eyes shut, the breeze from the river pushing my hair off my forehead.  I felt him shift his weight away from me, then heard his boots digging into the gravel.

Trust, I heard him saying in my head. He’d done this with his brothers way back when. Before girls and college and careers resettled and reevaluated just how strong blood ties are. They’d come to the bridge and take turns hanging each other off, one boy to each arm of the trustee.

Rushing water down, down below me. His hands on my wrists. Cold, steady, still a little damp. I squeezed my eyes shut ever tighter. Shapes moved under my lids— inkblot cards shifting and sliding in and out of one another. My pulse still rising, breath caught in my chest, body rebelling its teetering position so far from safe ground— one man’s grasp the only substantial link that kept me from a fifty yard drop.

He said it always felt like you were flying— that after, he always felt more human. He said it gave him a bigger appreciation for his skin, his bones, the blood in his veins and the air in his lungs.

Carefully, I exhaled. Stretching my senses out and away to feel the space around me. I knew I couldn’t open my eyes to face it. Trees were rustling in the same breeze that’d flung my hair back. My arms and shoulders were stiff from keeping my body rigid enough to maintain contact with the trestle. My ribcage was pounding. If I didn’t fall to my death, I would either vomit or go into cardiac arrest.

 I hadn’t been feeling very human lately.

 Somewhere to my left a high whistle blew, close and maybe too close and too late. My toe slipped from the ledge to meet open air along with my left wrist. I felt him pull back hard on my right— I opened my eyes to the sound of a second whistle and saw the river down, down below me. Rocks stained pink by the setting sun, darker in pockets dampened by water.

My face collided with gravel, and his hands pressed me into the rocks as the train flew past us, the trestle shaking my bones, sending quakes through my nerves.  Grabbing a fistful of gravel I stared out over the water, not breathing until the train had passed.

In the stillness I inhaled quietly, tasting new air.