I slid to a stop, unable to fathom the strange sight before me.
It was early; the late November morning was drenched in a thick fog, a haze which turned the thick roadside flora into indistinctive and often menacing shapes. Trees on either side of the vacant road stood as towering sentries, glowering down at their vagrant trespasser in disapproval. Above them, the premature dawn dyed the sky a dreary gray.
Just beyond the trees, a high cliff climbed toward the sky to my left; to my right, another plummeted roughly half a mile below.
With my hands jammed into the pockets of my brown suede jacket, I drifted on, aimless but deliberate. The cold bit at my nose, stabbed at any skin I had unknowingly left exposed. I breathed in the still morning air--allowed the taste of it to linger as its long, icy fingers reached through my body and pierced my lungs.
Walks such as this one, usually taken due to my recurring inability to sleep past five AM, was a personal way of losing myself; of disappearing into the fog in hopes that I could be forgotten by fate--if only for a moment. I was a ghost wandering down an abandoned road, each familiar step both terrifying and intimate. At times, as my body and spirit seemed to become one with the mist that clung to the air like a damp washcloth, it felt possible to believe that I no longer existed... as if my life had slipped from the consciousness of the world.
Somehow, the notion struck me as comforting rather than strange. But as steeped in morbid thoughts as my mind had become, it would not allow me to accept what I now saw.
I had come upon a bridge, down the center of which ran a rusted railway. Many long years of wear were evident; if I recalled correctly, a single train still ran along this route. Because I was looking down at the loose pieces of gravel beneath my feet as I walked, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until it was only a few paces away.
For a long time, I could only stare. My gaze wrestled with the sight, trying to make sense of it but failing. The gears in my head turned desperately, grinding against one another in a clamor. As realization slowly sank in, I felt my heart hammer, then flail wildly with panic--a tempest raging against my chest.
For there, lying face down on the bridge, was the body of a young man I recognized as Stephen McKnight.
![[send message]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/mail.png){kind=small}
![[befriend]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/friend.png){kind=small}
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Flag Writing
