They warned me about the bridge.  I didn’t listen.

The mechanic on the phone says my battery is dead, but he can’t send someone to fix it, they’re short-staffed.  He promises tomorrow. I am six blocks from home, but it’s cold and I do not know who lives in the houses I stand in front of. How embarrassing. Keys in my pocket, I resign myself to facing the forty-five minute walk ahead of me. 

Fifteen minutes in and I am frozen. I pass a hedge, the same one I was always curious about as a child. They say there is a bridge, laying across a creek, just past its branches. They say it leads behind two blocks of houses, closer to home. It’s a short cut. They also say never to walk across it; whoever does regrets it. But it’s cold, and I’m hungry, and the sun set five minutes ago.

I climb through the bristles and branches and am surprised to find an archway. The bridge is old and covered in brown and green vines, with old rotting rails. I take a step. The floorboards creak under me, and I wonder if they will snap. I take another step, and another. Soon I am in the middle of the bridge, halfway from where I started, halfway to the end. I stop.

I still am not sure why I stopped on the bridge, but I will tell you, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I just kept walking. Maybe I would’ve made it home.

I looked down into the murky water beneath the bridge, and I saw my reflection peering back at me. My nose, mouth, my blinking eyes. I stopped  breathing. My reflection was blinking, but my own eyes remained open. I leaned closer. I realized the face I was looking at was not my own. It was the face of a little girl. She reached  an arm out, beckoning me to come. I had to help her. I ran back to the  end of the bridge and began to crouch down. I reached my arms out, hoping to catch her.

“Help me!”

“Grab on!”

I stretched my hand out farther, using my other arm to grip the bridge tighter, for leverage. The girl grabbed my hand and I pulled.  The girl fell onto the grass next to me, panting. I looked up at her, searching to see if she was alright.  Spluttering and coughing, the girl slowly lifted her head and turned to look at me. My heart stopped.

Her eyes were dark like the murky water, and her grin resembled that of a weather worn scarecrow.  Her nose was crooked on her face, and the shadows casted by her sunken cheeks aged her almost fifty years.  Her dress, once white with a pretty floral pattern, was now a gray slate and torn off the shoulder, and her hands and feets donned long, wiry fingernails. Her hair hung clinging to her neck and forehead in red clumps.  In that instance, she looked like death.

“Thank you for saving me,” she said in a shrill voice, that spoke out from her face, even though her stitched mouth never moved. “Now it’s your turn.”
With a hard shove, she pushed me into the creek.

I felt the ice cold water rush around me, covering my eyes and mouth, muffling my cries for help.  It poured down my throat as I gasped for air and thrashed for a foothold. The taste of dirt and soil overwhelmed my senses and I tried to spit it out. In the distance I could hear the high pitched giggles of a young girl, a sound about as welcome as nails on a blackboard. Gazing upwards, those sunken black eyes seemed to be mocking me. I began to give up my struggle. I thought it strange that the current hadn't pulled me away from the bridge, but instead down below it.  My arms began to tire and I felt my eyelids droop. For some reason, as I started to drift away, I thought about my poor old car, abandoned by the side of the road. Would it be lonely without me? Who would feed my dog? What would happen to my house? My eyes closed and soon everything  was calm.

So now you know the dangers of the bridge. Please, heed my warning; do not cross it if you ever come to it. Don't be like me. You're much better off taking the long way around. But, if for some reason you ever do find yourself walking down the path towards the old creaky boards, in search of a shorter way home, just stop and lean over the side. Maybe you’ll see me. And if you do, can you do me a favor and pull me out? Just one good yank and I’ll be free.

And then, it will be your turn.