Encounter

The ledge of the bridge is narrow and treacherous. She walks across it in a straight line, scratching her bare feet against the gritty cement as she plans where each will fall on its next step. She appears as if she could be balanced on the tightrope, perched on the highwire—for any spectator regardless could recognize that iron stability. In truth she feels anything but stable, and it's all she can do to try and find a rhythm in her silent footsteps. It's the dead of night and there is nothing to distract her—well, there shouldn't be, anyway. There are no cars on the road, no headlights floating in air, the water of the bay below ripples as the moon sends shimmers of light dancing across the surface and her hair gleams as it catches an unseen ray of that same light.

It's something about the night, it feels stronger to her now, thicker, stifling in its opaque unknowns and mysterious edges. It's completely calm, so calm that she is slightly unnerved by the general lack of motion. The back of her neck prickles and she swivels around, but there is no one there, and in doing so she almost loses her now tentative balance. To fall one way would mean a set of scraped knees at the least. The other...well, she wouldn’t be so lucky. Her death would be imminent and certain. The drop itself would probably knock her unconscious before she hit the water, but even then…she shivers, looking out at the shimmering blackness below, eerily beautiful, hypnotic, alluring. But she knows. It is terrifying thinking of how cold and helpless she would be as the waves sucked her below the merciless current, thrashing her screaming, writhing form till she was blue and limp, because no matter how hard she fought she would still be pulled under. The agony of five minutes framed in the hysteria of drowning. Death would be a relief. She shivers again, clearing the image from behind her eyelids and focusing on the cracked cement under her feet a mere four inches wide, taking a deep breath. She knows what she is doing. She isn’t going to fall.

She continues her careful footsteps, watching the way the shadows fluctuate on the ground, sheen of light so faint it could fade into the darkness at a moment’s notice. She stares ahead at the solitary streetlamp on the far side of the bridge, a beacon spilling its welcome in a warm glow. But it’s so far away. She walks toward it as if she’s in a trance, as if the streetlamp is all she’s capable of seeing. So mesmerized is she that she fails to notice the pale green illumination that has come to hover directly overhead. She is bathed in an otherworldly luminescence, a light composed of air and stardust and particles from orbit, of the foreign, the unreal, of intrigue and distortion and rebirth. She feels her hair stand up on the back of her neck as her eyes find the skyline from the gaps of the bridge’s structure, widening in disbelief.

A spaceship is approaching, lit up like an entire city in itself. It’s too much for her vision to process, the emanating green blurs into splotches of untamed exposure and she can’t tell where darkness ends and light begins. Why is she here? She needs to get away. She turns to the solitary lamppost, reaching blindly for a sense of direction, any direction, but the light has gone out. Her only flame of hope. Gone. She panics as her vision settles. The blinking shuttle has landed and the door opens a crack, emitting a violet wavelength that triggers a sharp burning sensation in her veins, making her gasp in shock. The door appears to disintegrate into the open night air—it hasn’t moved, it hasn’t been manipulated—it’s simply no longer there. She stifles a bloodcurdling scream as three creatures step out of the interior. There’s no one there to hear her. It’s deserted. The night will swallow her up and no one will know the better. Her heartbeats are crashing, her stomach in her throat. She is sure of only one thing as the distorted forms close in on her wavering silhouette—she must not be taken. She allows one fleeting glimpse toward the glittering darkness below, knowing it will be the last decision she ever makes. And then she jumps.