Bridge

Late evening, it’s dark already. A young man with a backpack walks on the bridge. He wears his favorite bomber jacket is white with a blue horizontal line across it. The rest are usual: jeans, sneakers, blond hair… oh, and a flashlight to see in the dark.

The bridge he’s on is made of stone. It is wide, perhaps too wide for an abandoned bridge. It looks and feels antique, like a relic of a past era.

“Hah, a bridge is a literal bridge between eras,” thought the young man. He doesn’t do that often.

On his usual late evening stroll, he always picks to go on this bridge. Even though his work is quite exhausting, he still has strength to always get here and go further.

The place is abandoned. It goes over the forest canyon, but the bridge is so wide you can barely see the trees even at day.

The young man has been walking for a while now. And now he looks at the rock formation on the bridge that is comfortable to sit on.

After he sat down for a little rest, he pulled out something from his backpack.

It’s a map.

Of a bridge.

It is unfinished, but so far there is something marked on it, aside from the straight road.

Drawing the straight road would be boring, so on his way, the young man adds numerous landmarks to the map.

A broken rail, weird looking rocks, old graffiti. All of that and more he marks on the map. And yet, it’s still a straight road.

Finishing drawing of the chair-rocks, the young man puts the map back in his backpack.

He continues his journey.

“The night’s soon,” he says. But he won’t stop now.

Alone on the giant bridge.

With nothing but a pit below.

The bridge is ready to crumble any moment.

But the young man isn’t scared of that. This isn’t an uncanny situation for him, it’s just a late stroll after the long day of work.

And his somewhat weird hobby won’t let him ever get lost… Well, not like you can get lost on a straight road with nothing but an abyss below.

The time passes.

It’s been a while since the young man marked down anything. So instead, he chose to draw the road itself.

Pebbles, dust, occasional insects… It gets boring after a while. But there isn’t much left ahead.

“Soon.”

The road gets worse. The bridge looks less and less stable and more damaged. But the young man isn’t afraid of that.

Once again, he sits down to draw a map. Even though just a straight road, it grew with intricate details over time.

This time though, the tiredness got to the young man’s legs.

“Argh, legs finally giving up. Gotta get a second wind… but…” the young man stopped in his thoughts for a moment.

He feels more tired than ever. But isn’t this a good reason to keep moving?

“Well, it doesn’t matter how fast I’m gonna get there. After all…” It’s his weekend after all.

But he can’t just sit here, right? He has to move. One way or another. He chooses forward.

His thoughts lately have all been about how to grow up. But not in height, yet he wants to be bigger.

He wants to go ‘up’. Stopping in the middle of the bridge, or wherever he is at, he does a small jump on the place.

“Huh. I guess the only way is forward.”

That soon moment he was talking about is nearing its time.

Time passes.

The young man approached the missing part of the bridge. He sits down to draw it.

“Well. It’s time,” he says.

Then, he gets up. And…

…

“No. I want to go further.”

He jumps. But lands on the supporting column. He climbs up.

It’s the other part of the bridge. He just has to draw it. And then to keep going.

The never before seen world unfolded to him after the leap…

It’s the same bridge. This part is just even more abandoned.

“Huh. So it doesn’t get better than that.”

But it’s certainly different for him. His map will grow more, yet the path will remain the same. Only forward. Only straight.

What is moving sideways on a bridge? It’s just going within the same path, just slightly to the left or right. Yet certainly not up unless the bridge goes up.

But most of the time it’s just straight, supposed to be a road between two points where there can’t be a natural one. Is there even an upward going one?

“I don’t know.”

Bridge is a definition made by humans. It is a path between two points where ground is none below it. There are no bridges in nature, it’s always paths.

You can go everywhere, but you ultimately have just one direction. No matter where your legs move, no matter where your face looks, the only path is forward.

Unless you are standing in one place. Then, it only goes down.

But the young man wished not to dig down. He chose to move forward.

But it is also time to return. He only moves forward, yet the path he takes is never straight.

After a while of drawing the same bridge, the young man had returned to the place where it had crumbled.

How can he go back?

“No. There is no back. Just forward.”

At that moment, a bridge appeared. It is a blue straight rectangle. It makes its way from one end to another.

And so the young man walks. By his bridge.

Then by the one he so scrumptiously drew.

And then, he returns to the beginning.

“Well. Tomorrow, the same place.”

This isn’t the first time a young man strolled on this bridge. In fact, he cannot recall how many times he did that.

But he will return tomorrow. And he will draw the same map.

The same straight path.