0.5 Miles

By Emma Bingham

You’re finally walking home from work, after around eight hours, your eyes hurt and your feet drag. It’s only about a six or seven minute walk, but you’ve gotten to the part you always dread, the small trek beneath the highway overpass that you and your friends grew up calling The Bridge. You take a second to stare at it from across the street, the paint chipping off the sides, the crumbling sidewalk underneath inviting you over. You step into the street before you look both ways, a bad habit your parents tell you to break. You walk across slowly, rocks crunching under your feet as they slide across the ground, you take the small step up onto the sidewalk underneath The Bridge. You stop. The moonlight doesn’t reach there, and it’s only lit by a single, shitty yellow light. You can hear the pigeons who make the small cracks between the support beams their home; they coo loudly and it echoes right back at them. You stand by the entrance, in front of the stop sign by the intersection. You can hear your heart pounding over the music you’re playing through a single headphone, the other dangling loosely, “for safety” people tell you.

The Bridge isn’t big, you can see the other side clearly, but the person who’s standing on the other end is stopping you from continuing, their face darkened by the moonlight at their back. Or maybe they’re turned with their back towards you, you can’t tell. You take a deep breath and take a step forwards into the darkness. You stop. The Person on the other side takes a step forward. They stop.

You can feel your heart drop, your stomach tighten, everything that usually happens. You can taste acid in the back of your throat and you swallow harshly. Certainly this is just another person just as scared as you are, who’s trying to make the short half mile walk. You bring a hand to your face, wiping your eyes as you take another deep breath. Surely, you’re just being dramatic. You take another step forward. The Person on the other side takes another step forward.

You can no longer look up and see the comfort of the moon, only the wet dirty concrete slabs that make up the bridge. You can no longer take a deep breath, your throat constricts and forcefully pushes the air back. You stand still for a minute, just watching the other person, wondering what’s happening and why? It’s not that late, it was around eight thirty when you left work, but who knows how long this standoff has been going on. You can see headlights flash brightly behind The Person as they pass through; they don’t turn to go under the bridge, they just keep going. The car doesn’t illuminate the person; the light almost seems to avoid them. You stare at them, you can feel their eyes on you. You can feel the burning in the back of your throat, you swallow it back again. 

You turn to look behind you quickly, just a short glance before you whip around again to look at them. You can still feel their eyes on you, but you cannot see them. They are still there, standing starkly. You look around again, keeping them in your peripheral vision, searching for someone else to appear out of nowhere, someone who is probably just as terrified of The Bridge. You look down to see your hands shaking, you shove them in your pocket before looking up again.

The night is oddly quiet, like the birds went to sleep early. Like all the people purposefully stayed away, tucked away in their safe little homes. There aren’t even any pesky mosquitos nipping at your exposed skin like usual.

You look behind you again, seeing if anyone miraculously appeared when you were distracted. There is no one. You take a deep breath and take a step back, a small meek step. You look towards them again and stiffen when they take a large step forwards. You suck in a breath to try and get your heart to stop pounding in your chest, you take another step back as far as you can. They take another step forward. Their stride seems wider than what their legs should be able to manage. You are suddenly wishing that The Bridge was a lot longer than it was before. You take another step; they take another, bigger, step. Again. And again. You can see the moonlight again, but you know that she will not protect you anymore, you can see the way the light around The Person is almost sucked in, similar to a black hole. 

You are standing in the middle of the road now. You take another step before you remember to look both ways, up and down the long street. You realize you would rather confront a car that doesn’t see you than The Person under The Bridge. The space between you and the other person is nearly halved, you cannot see their eyes, but still, you feel them. The world stays quiet as both of you stand there.

You know that you cannot evade this.