The Bridge That Pulsed

The Bridge that Pulsed

1

Approaching the bridge, Lenin could now see that it was not made from wood, stone or even metal. Instead, the structure was entirely organic, gently pulsing with life, occasionally twitching, as though under its umber surface throbbed veins and arteries, warm, thick blood coursing through them, keeping the thing alive. He almost didn’t want to cross the thing, it feeling as though it were an animal he were standing before rather than a bridge, but there seemed to be no other way around the chasm. To his right, the terrain faded off into a yellow horizon, an almost infinite plain of the same black dirt that he had walked over for hours since leaving the city. To his left, an angry fog waited, never moving, as though poised aggressively, determined to defend its post. A low hum emitted from the wall of clouds, an ominous drone, as though something horrible waited there. No, Lenin would take his chance on the bridge; no one ever returned from the fog.

Lenin peered over the chasm, warm air seeping over his face as though there were a hungry giant lying in its bottomless depths, giving itself away with its breath as it waited for him to cross the bridge so it could eat. Endless blackness, the chasm so vast the sepia skies were unable to illuminate its entire depth. Lenin’s mind wandered. If he fell, would he starve to death before hitting the bottom?

The sky gave a deep rumble as though something enormous toppled over in the distance. The clouds slowly shuffled together, sharing their nicotine yellow health, occasionally revealing wounds where sickly sky poked through. Around him, the world seemed to quietly moan, as though all sound were being played back in slow motion.

God, Lenin thought. Why did this have to happen? Why did the city suddenly turn on him the way it did after so many years of nurturing and warmth? Sure, it was a little rough around the edges; a mugging here, a murder there, but it wasn’t that bad, and it wasn’t as though anyone had anywhere else to go, the city being the only place that they knew, the only place where one expected to survive - that is, as long as they stayed away from the deep pockets of darkness that dwelled in alleyways and isolated roads, and as long as they didn’t venture too far away from its steel walls - just as he was doing now.

The unnamed city was a scattering of fifty houses, a few shops, a few inns, a bar and the farm. A single main road ran its entire length, branching out into smaller roads and dark alleyways where the undesirables lurked. In the centre of town, a simple fountain ran spectacularly, the origin of its water unknown to everyone; no rivers or bodies of water existed anywhere within travelling distance, everything had dried up generations ago. Everyone just remained thankful that it existed to support them, and hopeful that it never stopped running. It was for this reason that locals kept large tanks full of the stuff, piles of containers heaving with it, just in case it did dry up. The fountain governed their lives.

The home that had cast him from its nurturing belly was nowhere to be seen behind him; he was past the point of no return. Still, Lenin seemed to be doing alright. He had a few hours until the sky went from a terminal yellow to pitch black, an overhead vast ocean of darkness, thick with the moaning of the hovering ones; sightless people who had already been claimed, doomed to float limply across the sky, their slight touch enough to drain the life from any unlucky straggler. Those raked by a withered hand would crumple to the floor as though their bones had turned to lumps of lead, then they would rise like puppets, floating to join the others, to drift among the black clouds like sleeping sentinels.

The Congregation, the people of the city called them, their appearance depending on how long they had been ‘dead’. Some of them hovered naked, their pale skin standing out in the night as they silently descended upon a town; others half dressed, their clothes hanging from their bodies like an unnecessary skin, being slowly shed as they quietly drifted through the air.

Somewhere above him at night hovered Lenin’s mother and father, drifting peacefully in a dark slumber. Lenin would often have nightmares that he had forgotten to bolt the windows, and that he had awoken to find them coming through the open frame, their limbs hanging limply as though they weren’t part of them, that they had been loosely taped to their shoulders and pelvises instead.

He shivered. Lenin would never forget the dark night in which his mother had gone mad, howling and clawing at the walls of their home after years of decay, of anxiety and depression. She had been a beautiful woman at first, a blonde, humorous vixen, until the first symptoms of her afflictions became apparent, then she began to decay like a corpse, her skin yellowing and wrinkling, welts gathering in the corners of her eyes and mouth, her hair falling out and revealing her scalp. On the final day of her life, she had thrown herself at her husband - now cold and remote from watching the slow erosion of the woman he loved - tearing at his skin and hair. Then, when he had tumbled over against the wall, she had thrown herself towards the doorway into the cold streets. His father had picked himself up and rushed after her, catching her in the town square, attempting to restrain her as his son watched from the doorway, her limbs jutting and the tendrils of her hair splayed.

Before his eight-year-old eyes, the creatures appeared from the rooftops. They descended over his parents, slowly dragging forgotten shins across black dirt, gradually surrounding them. In their struggle, Lenin’s mother and father hadn’t noticed their terminal approach. Slow, but numerous, they soon ensured that every exit was covered. Realising that they were trapped, Lenin’s mother began to weep; his father stared vacantly.

As his parents slid over the dirt, hovering ambiently towards him, their heads flopped forwards in an eternal dark sleep, Lenin latched the front door, switched off all the lights, and wept.

2

There was another thump of great weight in the distance. Lenin, aware that he would have to be in shelter by darkness, approached the bridge, a single step from mounting it, and gazed across its fleshy surface. It seemed to stretch on forever, and he was sure its length amounted to about an eighth of a mile. The umber structure seemed to glisten, as though the thing was sweating, or perhaps emitting some other sort of secretion. What sort of organs lurked under its warm skin? The thought of crossing the great thing disgusted him, and for a moment he could not bring himself to place a foot onto it. Then, at the thought of the sky, and of his parents drifting towards him, he swallowed hard and took his first step.

Not only did the bridge look as though it were part of an animal, but it also felt like one. It felt as though he had trodden over the back of a great fallen thing, and that any moment it would emit a great roar of pain and surprise, buck, and sent him toppling into the dark abyss. Lenin precariously walked on. Above, the clouds grumbled with displeasure.

Lenin’s stomach began to grumble, his throat rasped dryly, and his legs sagged with fatigue; none of which mattered. Before he would succumb to any of thee fates that these symptoms threatened, The Congregation would have long finished with his body. Lenin pushed the pains from his mind and concentrated on crossing the structure.

He cast his mind back to the morning in which the city’s butcher had found him alone in his house as he passed on his way to work, drawn in by the lost voice crying for its parents. No-one had wanted to take the child in, the inhabitants of the city being selfish and dark characters, keeping to themselves and avoiding eye contact with their neighbours at all costs. No-one ever came out at night either - for obvious reasons - although if The Congregation didn’t exist, they probably still wouldn’t have anyway; the sewers throbbed with illegal activities: gambling, kidnapping and alcohol. A trot through the dark streets would surely culminate in abduction or murder.

In the end, a farmer had buckled and welcomed the boy. Mansfield, his name had been, a very selfish man; his reasons for letting the boy stay were only so that he could let Lenin take care of the hard labour and take an early retirement. Ever since his wife had fallen victim to the plague some few years back, and since arthritis had begun to stick its claws into his joints and muscles, Mansfield had not been able to work as well as he used to. His share of the farm money, the largest share out of the two of them, mostly went on alcohol at one of the inns.

Within the walls of such a small farm, Lenin had plenty of time to tend to the tiny amount of crops and animals before the sky grew dark. Sometimes, the way the farmer smirked at him from the window as he tended the pathetic plants or struggled with one of the cattle, Lenin noted that it seemed as though Mansfield had been glad that The Congregation had come for his parents and left him orphaned. He bet the old man viewed it as a blessing.

But still, Lenin was thankful for not being left to rot within the house that he had once shared with his parents. He milked the two cows, collected the chickens’ eggs, raked the pathetic field, and sometimes even got to slaughter a pig if he were lucky. Lenin always thought there was something fascinating about the way a creature would thrash around in agony for a moment before dying in a bubbling of its own blood, all with a single slash of a knife, drawn across the right point, with the right pressure. Over kicking crimson legs and flecks of red, Lenin forgot about the deaths of his parents, and about the sightless ones; on the nights when he killed, Lenin found that he could drift into a pleasant sleep for once.

Once, when it had been over two weeks since his last kill, Lenin had begun to feel the urges. Driven by the pleasure that his next kill promised, he had snuck from the farmhouse under the early morning light - a dull, cloudy yellow - and made his way over to the tavern. Picking the lock - a technique so well-known in the city that there was no point in having any locks - he had made his way inside to the lobby fireplace where the owner’s dog lay sleeping contently. Lenin snuck over the thing and gazed at its sleeping form. He was amazed at how lively something could look one moment, and then so still the next. He wished he could have awoken the creature, to see it run around and thrash and howl as it knocked over chairs and tables, but he could not cause any commotion or he would have been caught. Quietly and deftly, he bent down and severed its jugular vein. It had been the only time he had killed anything other than a pig. The next day, he had awoken feeling refreshed and cleansed, and the dog’s death had been blamed on the vagrants that lurked in the sewers.

Smiling at the thought of the last pig he had killed, its legs kicking violently as though it stood a chance of escaping within its tight shackles, its pulsing bubble of ruby that grew and died and grew again from its left nostril with its fading breath, Lenin walked onwards over the throbbing surface of the bridge a little more confidently, almost forgetting that it was there.

A swollen section of the bridge, a huge beating boil, emitted heat as Lenin approached. Placing his hands over the shape - not quite touching it, but almost - he could feel the torrid throb from within. Cautiously avoiding the lump, he walked on, curious of the way it pulsed as though there were something inside it, something desperately eager to tear through the dark flesh and be born, something bathing in warm liquid, nurtured by the bridge, still in utero. Looking ahead, Lenin could see that there were more of these pulsing masses spread across the fleshy structure's length..

Lenin remembered the unstoppable urge that had shot through his body like some sort of drug addiction, an urge that was beyond his control as though something cruel had taken control of his body through strings. Lying in his meagre bed as the city slept on, with the rustling of The Congregation outside of the window, Lenin had found himself unable to sleep. He thrashed in a pool of his own sweat as he fought to control himself. The covers knotted over his body as though constricting him, as though they were yet another danger that lurked in the evil night. Swearing, he had given in, leapt from his bed, made his way down the cold stairs, and stood by the window.

The meagre farmyard was swarming with The Congregation, at least fifteen of them, floating steadily on the spot as though listening for a victim, waiting for one. Scanning their pale faces as he always done, Lenin was pleased to see that his mother and father were not among them. Gripping the heavy bolt on the door, Lenin hesitated. Then the frustration came back as though triggered by this pause, and suddenly he found himself pulling the latch open and stepping into the night.

The cold air froze him on the spot, and for a moment Lenin found himself unable to move. Around him, The Congregation slowly rotated like silent music boxes to face him, and for a moment it were as though Lenin was a helpless animal. Slowly, they began to drift towards him. At the sight of them moving, Lenin let out a gasp of fear and shot off for the small building next door. It was in this building that Lenin made one of the two mistakes that had him cast from the village.

3

Lenin shivered at the memory of leaving his house that fateful night, at the sightless glances that The Congregation had given him as though urging him on, forcing him to do what he had done, the thing that had ended his residence at the town. Below him, the bridge murmured in sympathy as if to say I understand, as if to offer its support. Curiously, Lenin looked closer. He noticed that the secretion on the bridge had a somewhat white cloudiness as though it were laced with milk - and what else was that he could see on the bridge's surface? Little brown dots, no larger than tiny coins. Jesus, they looked like teats, dimpled over the bridge’s entire surface. No doubt where the cloudy substance was being secreted from. What the hell were they?

As Lenin pondered over what may or not have been some sort of orifices, he found himself being lost in his thoughts again, back on the farm, with The Congregation in pursuit.

He had rushed through the door to the smaller building and slammed it shut, firmly bolting the door. Through slight slits in the walls, Lenin could see the sightless ones hovering in front of the building, but it was fine, they would not get in now. A horrid smell hit Lenin’s nose. He took from his pocket a booklet of matches, and struck one of them against the stone wall. An amber firefly was born at the end of the match. It traced its way over to the torch by the wall, meeting with the oily straw and wood that sat at its top, and exploded in an excitement of light and flames. The room lit up, slits of orange cutting through the windows and laying dead across the outside mud.

The pigs began to grunt excitedly, thankful for this unexpected midnight feast in their home, blissfully unaware of the kitchen knife in Lenin’s hand as it sent amber spears across the room as it turned. Lenin licked his lips, a sharp grin spreading across his face as he approached the first pen, his body a vessel for the torrent of excitement that rushed through him. Hungrily, the pigs rushed to greet him.

Another distant boom met the bridge, another giant tumbling over, and Lenin felt his pace quicken automatically. The end of the bridge drew closer, larger, attainable. Lenin stretched his arms out, greeting the escape from the bridge. In his haste, he tumbled over a cross between a root and a vein, and went sprawling over it headfirst onto the floor with a grunt of surprise, but not pain. Hands met the soft surface, its warmth spreading up them, caressing him, relaxing him like it were a pair of nurturing arms. It was as he lay on the floor that he became aware of a warm vapour rising from his side. He turned to it and noticed a set of parallel vents like gills, rhythmically opening and closing slightly like content eyelids, each opening releasing a not unpleasant odour with each breath. To Lenin's surprise, these slits ran all the way down the bridge's length at spaced intervals. So the thing breathed! Christ, Lenin thought, the thing really was alive!

Lenin looked up at the end of the bridge, at the grim terrain that waited for him that would no doubt take his life. How had he ended up here? How had it ended up like this? He remembered the morning he had awoken to the people's faces clearly, its memory never leaving his mind for the life of him.

Bleak morning light toppled across Lenin’s face as the door was broken in. He leapt to his feet to defend himself, almost sticking flat to the floor with the pig’s blood. He turned to face his attackers. A gathering of horrified faces stared back, a myriad of spears and batons poking from their mass like sharp limbs. The townspeople. Lenin felt himself growing ashamed for taking the lives of the pigs, but did not regret it; he could still feel traces of the ecstasy of doing so running through his body. But why were they here? It was his pigs that he slaughtered, and he was free to do so if he wished. What did they want? The townspeople’s horror switched to rage. They raised their weapons and slowly advanced. What are you doing? Where’s my old man? Lenin had screamed as they grabbed him with rough hands and led him to his house. Where’s Mamsfield?

Lenin had lost The Congregation’s attention when he latched the door to the pig sty, and soon they had drifted off in another direction. Something else had caught their attention. There, right before them, lay the door that Lenin had sprinted from in fear, leaving it wide open as he made his way towards the pigs, granting the sightless ones entry. Gradually, the things had drifted upstairs to the unfortunate farmer’s bedroom as he snored away. Quietly and mercilessly, they had taken the old man in his sleep. Only trails of dirt and a twisted sheet remained in the farmer’s room, vague clues to the atrocity that had been committed there. The villager’s angry hands became vengeful hands. The next thing Lenin knew, they seized him again, leading him down the main path of the streets. As he passed the old fountain, he heard a distinctively authoritative voice warning him to never return to the city or he would be hung. He was then tossed from the gates, which were loudly bolted shut behind him.

Still on the floor of the bridge, Lenin turned from the end of it, from the endless plains that went on until infinite. He curled up in the foetal position. As the clouds darkened above him, he rubbed a hand over the fleshy surface, over the glistening liquid, and felt for one of the brown teats. Finding one, he crawled over to it clumsily, and settled down beside it, caressing it with his fingers, finding the correct way to extract the cloudy substance from inside. A bead glistened from the teat. Hungrily, he placed his lips over it, savouring the sweet warmth and nourishment that was extracted with every suck. Every mouthful filled him with vitality.

Lenin no longer cared for The Congregation, they meant nothing anymore. When they came, the bridge would protect him, that he was sure of. Burping, Lenin rolled over and closed his eyes. The warmth that emitted from the structure intensified from both its flesh and the vents in with which it breathed, enough to support him through the night. As the liquid settled in his stomach, Lenin felt himself dropping off to sleep where he was sure only happy dreams awaited. Around his body, brown tendrils began to wrap, encasing him in a protective layer, much like the ones he had passed earlier on the bridge.





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