The Bridge

By Tanner Bruckmann

In loving memory of all of the angels who couldn’t be themselves

          “I need the room for the night,” Jason stated rather than asking, to his roommate Dylan.

“Whatever, man” Dylan replied. Neither Dylan nor Jason were very fond of each other and while both young men always had been friendly with others, their conversations together were just as often blunt as they were scarce. Dylan left the room, leaving his roommate alone to study.
 Jason was sitting on the foot of his bed, frozen it seemed in his thought, his eyes were fixed on his spiral-bound notebook, but his thoughts were far off.

The notebook started to transform. Slowly it shifted into a computer screen, and his bed changed into cardboard boxes stacked up in the very same room. He had just finished settling into his dorm, he was a freshman at the New Jersey State College and he was now anxiously awaiting a reply message from his parents. He had just let them in on some big news, life changing truths that they never had known, that they never expected. But no matter how hard he stared at the screen they wouldn’t reply. He sat and waited, and just as soon as he was about to close his laptop, his heart skipped a beat. There was a message. Your father is proud of you no matter what Jason, as for me… We both love who you are, I just need time.

“They love who I am?” He questioned. It ate at him as he read and reread the message. He put down his computer, stood up and walked the short distance to the mirror. He was average height, average weight, he wore thin glasses that sat upon a thin and freckled nose. He had a short jaw and small lips that were set in a way that made him look as if he were always smiling. He looked down to his hands, rough and strong, that what was important in his life. His hands and his violin. They drove across metal twine to make beautiful music. He had hands shaped of gold, beautifully crafted to navigate the instrument he loved so dearly. What people saw was a smart young man and his ability to play the violin, not the Jason that he kept hidden for so long.

 He looked back up from his hands and into the mirror, He reeled in horror, knocking over everything behind him. Looking back at him was his parent’s nightmare, his fellow students joke, he saw a man who’s skin was ripped off and pasted back on, his eyes burning as red as the gunk smeared over his lips. The demon reached out in agony, and Jason fell backwards.

A knock at the door made Jason jump, his notebook scattered on the floor and his papers fell silently to the ground.

The sun swam upon the edge of the sky, painted every shade of pink and purple, preparing to take its final breath before it plunged beneath the horizon. A second knock made him sprint to the door not realizing how long he had dozed off. The door opened to a familiar face, and a warm smile.

“Excited?” the smile laughed, as they immediately fell into each others arms. They pulled apart, their eyes locked, and the pair embraced a second time. Pulling each other closer, Jason closed the door as they stumbled into the room. Their lips touched once and then again and again, until they were tightly locked, neither wishing to ever pull away. Time had frozen for Jason,  but his heart was punching out of his chest, and his lips stretched into a joyous crescent that he felt would never leave his face. 
But it quickly faded, a shiver ran down his spine, and the hairs on his arm stood on end, there was someone watching, he could feel it. Pulling away he started to search the room.

“Come back to the bed,” insisted his lover, pulling on his shirt sternly. Lust clouded Jason’s fear and as their bodies met the two fell deeply in a pit of fiery excitement.

Rays of light poked through the dorm room window, collecting themselves on Jason’s shoulders. He met them with heavy eyes and a fistful of sheets. He danced with the covers but it soon turned to a desperate struggle for comfort,  he soon gave in and shook the sleep from his eyes. Jason was awake but his day felt like a dream, he floated in and out of memories from the night before. So much so that he was yet to notice the smirks, the whispers guarded by hands and the quick double takes as he passed others, a symphony played in his brain that no one could hear except his heart.

Then somewhere in the music a note was missed, and then a chord, the Orchestra playing inside Jason was falling apart. Watching himself, he saw his music end, he saw the sun falling in the sky outside of his dorm room. He found drops of pain salted with anger dropping from his eyes. The room that once felt like a safe haven was like solitary confinement, he was alone, he was alone and no one could reach him, but there on his desk sat a secret window to the outside world. A truth that Jason could not handle, he threw the monitor across the room, the power cord flying through the air, landing on the floor after whipping against the wall. In one motion Jason left his chair and ran out of his room leaving the door swinging.

    The day’s light was growing short and the moon was beginning to cast her cold grey across the horizon. The few autumn leaves that hadn’t fallen were turned up to the heavens waiting for drops of guidance. But the chill in the air was cold as steel and was quicker to anchor the leaves to the ground than let them glide through the air.

The steely cold stung Jason’s cheek. The coiled metal cut into his body. His whole body ached, but his heart raced faster than the cars behind and under him. His feet balanced on the edge of a rusted handrail, the lightest push could have made him fall back on the hard concrete, or to the infinite depths of the black River Styx.

 Jason’s heartbeat added to the Bridge’s concerto as he teetered on the edge of despair. All the noises seemed to be amplified; but then the music was drowned out by the ticking of his wrist watch. He looked down to his arm and the starlight illuminated the glass of his watch, there he saw the man, the man with the torn face and red caked across lips, and he jumped.

Had the sun still been falling, Jason would have fallen with it, but there was no light. Only the cold glow of the moon watched his folly. The music reached its climax, but the bridge was silent. Jason heard the coo of harps, and the slow beat of wings, his wings. He was in draped in gold and his radiance reflected off of the bridge’s cold metal beams, Jason looked around as he kept ascending. Everything was brighter and looking down he saw the man with the torn face smiling his eyes bright, and his hand waving as he stood on the cold metal bridge. And he smiled back.