The Back Door

(Write for at least 700 words about an accomplishment, a prison, and a hat.)

A thick blanket of water vapor smothered the jungle canopy and penetrated its thick leaves. Gnarled tree trunks and  knotted vines formed almost impassable geography. Hundreds of animals sang their songs, filling the dark ecosystem with a cacophony of chirps, rattles, and groans for miles around. Willie Scott chopped through the lush growth that impeded his movement along the terrain. He was a tall man, dressed in khaki, and under the brim of his greasy boonie hat, he had the bright spark of adventure in his quick, brown eyes.

Willie had always been fascinated with the likelihood of undiscovered ruins and their contents. Even as a kid, he took a wooden box and removed the bottom, replacing it with a piece of metal screen. He would spend hours sifting dirt through it so he could find ancient artifacts and treasure that was surely buried in his Columbus, Ohio back yard. That was a long time ago. Since then, he had earned an archaeology degree at Oxford and found himself alone in a South American jungle with nothing but his expedition gear and a deep passion for exploration.

He stopped for a moment and took out an old, worn canteen. He sipped the warm water and looked as far through the mess of vegetation as he could, hoping he would spot an old structure or something out of the ordinary. He put his canteen back on his belt and adjusted his pack. Willie didn’t see the huge insect on the vine next to him because it blended in so well with the environment. When he walked into the vine, the bug got spooked and took flight, bombarding his face in a flurry of panic and getting caught up underneath the brim of his boonie hat. The raspy beat of its thick wings startled him and he stumbled backwards. A root caught his step and he fell over into the thick underbrush. The bug was long gone at this point and when Willie calmed down enough to stop frantically swatting his hands around his face, he noticed a carved, pyramid-like stone slightly coming out of the earth. He forgot the encounter with the insect immediately and crawled towards the anomaly. Willie moved dirt and weeds from around it and the stone maintained its symmetrical shape as more of it was exposed. He had finally found something.

Willie set his pack in a cradle of vines and untied a machete from its place. He began to chop away a small clearing, just enough so he could set up camp and begin excavating the area as best he could. He couldn’t focus on the work he made for himself because he could not stop looking over at the stone he found; his imagination ran wild. It was a long-lost, man-made fragment of an ancient civilization that he could have easily missed. If it was buried underground, then there was no telling who had previously looked upon it. This discovery was purely accidental and finding it would immediately make him a renowned individual in his field.

He carefully dug around the stone that had caught his eye and dusted it off with a brush as he moved farther into the ground. The stone continued to widen as he dug deeper until it was even on all four sides. After hours of patient excavating, the result appeared to be disappointing. Well, maybe to a layman. It was a sealed door to a tomb of some kind, flanked by two rectangular columns with pyramids at their peaks. The entire structure was mated with solid granite underneath. The tomb inside must have taken years to carve out with only hand tools. The surfaces were so finely crafted that the entire structure connected to the rock with perfect edges.

He examined the stone that sealed the tomb and decided it would come off easily. After this, he should be able to see what was inside. It seemed a little too easy, but he proceeded anyway. He selected a flat, wide piece of metal from his toolkit and wedged it into the side of the sealing stone. Then he grabbed a miniature titanium crow bar and stuck it on the bottom of the stone. He pressed down on his pry bar and wiggled the other tool until he could feel some movement. Finally, the stone budged. Removing it was easy enough and the sealing surfaces made sticky, peeling noises as the piece was removed. 

A musty odor poured out of the opening. Willie returned to his gear and took some photographs of his progress. He rummaged through his equipment and produced a small black case. Inside was an oxygen sensor that was to be used whenever entering an enclosed space. He brought it with him on expeditions just in case something like this would actually happen. Chemical reactions that happen inside of a enclosed spaces can remove the oxygen entirely. If a perfectly sealed spot was filled with rusty iron tools, for instance, an adventurer would not last very long before he became one of the permanent inhabitants of the abandoned toolshed. He was surprised to find that the sensor read 20.8% oxygen. The space must have been naturally ventilated by some crevice in the rock.

Willie crawled carefully inside after clearing the quality of the air with his oxygen sensor. He was wearing an elastic band around his hat that had a lamp mounted on the front of it. He switched it on and immediately his breath was taken away. Gold and silver shined back at him brightly. Gemstones of red, green, blue, and yellow glittered as he looked around. The room could not have been any bigger than the waiting room at a dentist office, but it was filled with all kinds of treasure. Willie looked down and a bright reflection came back at him from a floor made of polished silver. The contents of this room would fill a hundred museums.

He was amazed at the treasure he had found, but it didn’t distract him from searching the walls for any sign of a passageway. It was possible that this cache was filled up in the jungle and sealed away as a hiding place, but it was very unlikely. Willie knew that whatever this place was, it needed to have some kind of grand entrance. He was convinced he had found a secondary opening to this room. Willie tried looking at the smooth granite closely, but it was difficult to examine since the treasure was pushed up against the walls. He could get his face two feet away at the most. Only because he was looking for it did Willie see the outline of a door. It stood as high as Willie and was trapezoidal in shape, wider on the bottom than on the top. This must have been an Inca ruin based on that geometry. He tested it by planting his body against it. The stone would certainly move, but he would need some kind of mechanical advantage if he was going to move this stone out of the way.  

He made deafening noises when he tried clearing away some of the gold and gems in this small room. As careful as he was with the artifacts, it was just too hard to take care while handling everything simply because there was too much. He could finally see where the door met the floor of the treasure room. Willie could barely fit anything in between the door and the wall surrounding it. The tolerances were so close. He managed to slide a thin piece of metal between the polished floor and the bottom of the door. The piece moved and it became free. The thickness of the slab was unexpected. He thought it would be an eight inch door but it was only about a half inch. Like the cover of a sarcophagus. He let the slab come towards him so he could lay it gently on the floor. As thin as it was, it was so heavy he could barely handle it.

Torchlight blinded Willie when he stood up again. The door led to a much larger room and he saw spears pointed towards his neck when his eyes adjusted. Hundreds of men and women stared at him with both fascination and disdain. These people were Incas. They must have been the last surviving group of them and they were hiding in this jungle. It seemed the conquistadores let a few of them slip through their fingers generations ago when they destroyed their civilization. The small group had rebuilt its community and remained in hiding in this unexplored region of the jungle. 

Unbelievable.

This was all very exciting to him, but Willie realized that as much as this secret, reborn civilization intrigued him, he knew he was a dead man for discovering it.  

His boonie hat was pulled off of his head, snapping the strap under his chin. A roughspun, faceless hood was thrown over his head and calloused hands squeezed both of his arms, forcing him to follow. Willie had always wondered how he was going to die. He knew it would be an early death considering his adventurous spirit. A wild animal could have eaten him or a venomous creature could have bitten him. He could have cut himself on the stone that caused this discovery and died from an infection days later. Never in his wildest dreams did he think that he would be executed by real Incas.

The group stopped for a moment and he felt a vine or rope of some kind wrap tightly around his torso with his arms at his sides. They continued to tie him up until he was as immobile as an insect in a spider’s web sac. The men transporting him shoved him so that he would start walking again.

His arms were slick with perspiration underneath the bindings. He stank of fear. The long walk he was forced to take had led them outdoors. He could smell the jungle air and feel it on his skin. The wildlife still sang their songs. Willie was so full of fear and wonder because of how surreal this all was. It didn’t hit him that he was probably going to be dead within minutes. 

Until they stopped.

The situation set in at that point and he began to panic. Tears that would have otherwise blurred his vision streamed down his face and urine pooled up around his feet.  He heard them shuffling around and speaking in their ancient tongue. He heard gear being dropped and metal clanging. He was waiting for the leader of this group to kick one of his legs out from beneath him to prepare him for a decapitation and further debase his dignity. Willie realized that there was nothing he could do to save himself now. There was only one outcome in this predicament. He could either die by accepting his fate, or he could attempt to escape. He wouldn’t get far with a hood over his face and his arms bound to his sides, even if he was alone. He decided to accept the consequences of happening upon their secluded village.

Was it going to be sudden, or would there be time to suffer? His body tightened with anticipation of the unexpected, leaving his imagination to torture him. The voices faded and the sounds with it. He seemed to be alone except for the music of the jungle, for what felt an eternity. 

The instant Willie decided he could relax, tough fingers seized him by the hair on the back of his head and he felt a sharp piece of threatening metal slowly scrape down his neck. This was it. Willie tensed up his entire body and whimpered through clenched teeth. His arms popped free as the vines were parted with the blade that teased him. He stood in the damp soil with his arms free and his back hunched in an eternal shrug, waiting for the final blow.

But it never came.

He reached up and slowly and removed the hood that was covering his head and scanned the area with bloodshot eyes. No one in sight.

He realized his gear and excavation tools were where he left them outside the treasure room, but there was no chance of finding that. He didn’t care anyway. At least he was alive. It would take weeks for him to be able to sleep soundly after that experience. 

 He was finally able to relax. He lowered his head in defeat and was surprised to see a few leather sacks and a large arrow made with smooth river stones pointing east. He grabbed one of the sacks and it was plump with liquid. It was a water skin left for him. The other sack had dried meat and fruit and dried corn kernels. The last one was filled with gold and rough gemstones. He looked down at the arrow again and judging by its easterly orientation, it was a marker so that he could find his way out of the jungle. The water skin was positioned at the head of the arrow. At the tail, was a human skull with the boonie hat he was wearing when they captured him. He decided that he would respect their wish. Their threat. He would bring this treasure back home and leave their quiet life the way it should’ve been untouched. 

Getting this stuff on an airplane would be tricky though…

1842

(Write for at least 600 words about a change in plans, a clock, and a number)

Walter had his hands in his pockets while he stood in his studio apartment. At home, he could stand in one spot and get lost in his thoughts for hours. His thoughts were not exactly profound or anything. They were mostly repetitive and obsessive and overly analytical. 

Today he was thinking about whether he should go outside of his safe apartment to pick up takeout from a Chinese restaurant he frequented. After more time than it would take a normal person to make that decision, he finally mustered the nerve to go to the place around the corner and get the same thing he always got: orange chicken, among other things. The other things were always the same. He liked to call orange chicken something different though. He called it chicken and goo because that’s really what it was. 

Upon this painstakingly made decision, Walter thrust his hands into his pockets again and was surprised to feel a piece of paper in his pocket that he did not remember putting there. Was it a receipt? No, he discards them upon receipt of the receipt. Was it a federal reserve note of some particular denomination? No, the paper was too thin and not large enough to be currency. Was it a gum wrapper?

“Just see what it is, asshole,” he said to himself out loud. He could have been at this for hours.

Walter carefully produced a small scrap of paper that looked like it had been torn from the corner of a yellow legal pad sheet and a number was printed on it in ballpoint pen:

1842

The piece of paper seemed vaguely familiar to him. Before he could recall why this was, his mind took a wild tangent. This had to have been a coded message! The numbers were written on there as if its author had been trying to destroy the paper, or even the pen. The stokes of each numeral were multiple and deeply indented into the minimal thickness of the paper, tearing through it in some spots. It looked as if a crazy person had written this number down. But who? And why was it left in his pocket with its unclear intentions as a message of some kind. This was an unwanted change in plans. He had to sort this out before eating dinner. He had no choice.

He glanced at the grandfather clock he had since a boy. The mahogany casing stood about as tall as Walter and through the beveled glass was a large brushed metal pendulum that kept the time. Only six more strokes of the pendulum until it was six thirty. That meant it was time to go someplace where his dinner would be prepared for him. Six thirty was when he would leave, assuming he could gather enough confidence and convince himself it would be okay to go outside, that no one was going to try and talk to him or rob him or try to convert his religion. 

He looked at the slip of paper with the frantically written numbers on it:

1842

What did it mean? 

He thought back to the last time he was in close contact with other human beings. He could remember these encounters vividly and he would shudder at the memories of them. He didn’t like people. It wasn’t that he was a misanthrope, it was simply that people frightened him. They made him uneasy. All he wanted to do was mind his own business. He didn’t want to make small talk. He didn’t want to shake hands with people that knew from work or school or whatever. He just wanted to be left alone. The only place he could have been when he was wearing these particular pants near other people was at the Chinese restaurant he was planning on going to tonight for some chicken and goo.

Walter realized he had been standing in front of the grandfather clock for five minutes without moving except to look up at the clock and back down at the scrap of paper.

The time was six thirty-five. 6:35. 1835. He looked dumbly back at the scrap of paper and it finally made sense: 1842. Six forty-two. He had exactly seven minutes to see what this all meant. Six minutes. He now had six minutes to-

JUST LEAVE ALREADY. 

He sometimes thought simple thoughts violently while keeping his expression neutral. It was a bizarre feeling that could sometimes snowball into a fit of rage, only detectible inside of his mind. From the outside, a person would never be able to tell the intensity of the thoughts that burned in his mind.

***

His shoes slapped against the sidewalk as he ran awkwardly to the Chinese takeout place. He had three minutes left before it was going to be the time on the scrap of paper and he had to understand the connection between that time and whatever it signified. 

He burst into the restaurant, bells jingled and heads turned. He looked at everyone wildly and glanced at the clock. 6:42, on the dot. He looked at the patrons like he was expecting something to happen, but nothing ever did. The customers recognized him, then ignored him.

After catching his breath, he realized how hungry he was and decided to place his order, “I’d like an order of crab rangoons, a quart of chicken lo mein, and some orange chicken.” 

The person behind the counter could have guessed the order since he got the same exact thing every time, “That will be $18.42,” she said.

He realized he didn’t have exact change, just a 20 dollar b-- 1842!

 It always bothered him to not have the exact amount of money that people asked for and he wanted to make a note of this amount so he would not forget next time. 

DON’T FORGET NEXT TIME, he screamed in his head. He would bring the exact amount next time. He promised himself that. In fact, he should make a note of that.

The Wish

(Write for at least 600 words about a message, a holiday, and a horse)

It was one of those autumn days where the scent of the air triggered old memories of comfort and happiness. A gentle and cool breeze sighed through the leaves of the trees, but didn’t cause a chill. A bright and warm sun spilled light across the landscape, but it wasn’t oppressive. These were Lisette’s favorite days of the year. Maybe that was because they never lasted long enough between the sweltering summer and frigid winter. She tried to spend this time outdoors and away from home, especially on a night like this. It was Halloween tonight and that meant no relaxation at home if she were to stay in and read. So she decided to leave out some candy for the brats and go for a walk instead.

Lisette already lived out in the sticks in a small Maine town, but she still relished those long walks that took her even farther from civilization. It was a perfect day for that so she had packed some snacks and water to get the most out of the clear afternoon.

The orange sun perched in some branches of a tree that had already lost its leaves. It cast long shadows across the clearing Lisette was walking through. Some rustling in the shrubbery to her left caught her attention. It wasn’t unusual in this part of the country to hear wildlife doing their thing, especially when this far away from a road. It wasn’t unusual until she her a horse snort from back there.

She froze in her tracks and turned towards the noise. A brown horse walked out slowly and stared apprehensively at her for a minute.

“It’s okay,” she said soothingly as she approached slowly towards the nervous mare. 

The horse seemed nervous or alarmed and was lifting its head up and snorting again. It seemed agitated for some reason or another. Lisette was determined to calm the animal.

She noticed something shiny in the horse’s black mane that was about the size of a cigar. She closed in carefully and slowly, crunching wild terrain beneath her hiking boots. With her arm outstretched, Lisette finally made contact wit the side of the horse’s neck and pet her gently and offered some soothing indistinct words to calm her down. The mare felt immediately at ease with Lisette’s approach.

She could now see what was in the mane and she felt safe enough to investigate it. Lisette brushed away some of the hair to get a better look. It was a metal tube of polished metal, possibly aluminum, and it had a screw top with an eye for tying a loop through it. She thought it looked like a cigar tube. She had never one with a top like this though. What was bizarre about it was the way it was fastened to the horse. a small lock of the horses mane was braided and looped through the eye of the cap. The free end of the braid was spliced back into strands before the eye, making it a perfect loop with no bitter end. The braid was too tight to loosen, so she decided to leave the cap on the horse if she were to open this tube.

Lisette began to think it through. What if this tube had some crazy disease and opening it would start an epidemic? What of it  was filled with diamonds or some other valuable item? What if this was all just a Halloween prank and it was just a snake popping out or, even more disappointing, nothing at all? She couldn’t help herself and made a decision to open it. 

Lisette began to unscrew the tube and was surprised how finely machined the threads were. There were no imperfections and it rotated very freely. She held her breath when she pulled the tube loose, allowing the cap to dangle freely from the braid in the horse’s mane. Peering into the tube, Lisette could see a piece of paper that was rolled into a tight scroll. She let her breath fall out and pulled out the paper by a small ribbon attached to it. It slid out effortlessly.

The excitement of the situation caused her fingers to tremble when she was pulling open the spiral of paper. She read with anticipation and fascination, her eyes flitting this way and that across the page. Her expression changed from eager to confused, then finally her eyes filled with dread. She slowly lifted her head and looked at the horse. The horse was no longer there and instead was a naked woman with skin as white as porcelain and hair a light brown. It cascaded down her shoulders and covering her breasts. Lisette saw the unique braid that held the cap to the tube she just opened and the strands of hair comprising it slipped apart from each other like slick noodles until the cap fell free and into the woman’s hand. 

The woman took the tube from Lisette’s hand and put the cap back on slowly. She reached out with one hand and stroked a lock of Lisette’s hair. She was petrified and couldn’t move a muscle or even scream in terror. The woman’s dexterous fingers began to impressively form a tight braid like watching a spider wrap its victim in a web sac. With the other hand, she slipped the tube’s eye around the braid she just made then spliced it into the rest of the braid forming a loop.

Lisette collapsed into a fetal position on the ground and blackness clouded her consciousness.

Two weeks later…

Two hunters were trudging through the snow in a small clearing. Dead leaves and twigs crunched and snapped beneath their footfalls.

“Earl, take a look at this,” Jimmy pointed at the ground towards a piece of rolled paper.

Earl spat, “It’s a shame that no matter where you are, no matter how isolated it is, you will still find trash, ayuh.”

Jimmy picked up the old piece of paper and began to unroll it, “It looks old though, I’m gonna see what it is.”

“Don’t touch that; it’s trash Jimmy, jeez!” Earl was distracted when he heard a horse whinny off in the distance, “There aren’t any horses in these parts,” he said.

“It looks like the page of some little girl’s diary,” Jimmy frowned, “Gee, Earl, this is from the 80’s. At least that’s what it’s dated as.”

“Well?” Earl looked intrigued.

“Well what?” Jimmy asked.

“What does it say?” Earl started to look impatient.

Jimmy scanned the page, “It is dated October thirty first, 1981. It’s just some girl’s account of her trick or treating experience,” he read some more, “She dressed up to look like a horse and she goes on and on about how she wishes she could be a horse.” 

Earl stroked he beard, “It sounds like the lass really liked horses.” 

“Ayuh, you know if I could be somethin' other than a person, I would wish that I was a tree. That would be peaceful, you know?” they sauntered away and Jimmy dropped the page and followed him through the clearing. 

The Crutch

(Write for at least 5 minutes about a crutch, and a bridge)

Rigoberto Corripo was recently discharged from his local small town hospital after being involved in a car accident. The circumstances of the accident had made it apparent to the authorities that Bert’s involvement was purely innocent as he was simply a pedestrian that had never strayed from the sidewalk. Many witnesses could vouch for him. A Volkswagen Jetta, a brown one, was causing a ruckus on his rear horizon. It was difficult to tell if the vehicle had lost control or if it had been operated by an reckless moron. Either way, Bert wasn’t aware of the commotion it was causing when it struck him from behind. if he hadn’t had his earbuds buried deep into his ear canals he would have heard the car approaching instead of Chris Cornell screaming about a rusty cage. If he could hear and see, he would have had plenty of time to find sufficient cover from the chaos that was inevitably drawn to him.   
             

Bert woke up in a hospital bed with his leg in a giant cast and suspended in a cradle. 

A doctor was already next to him doing his rounds, “You know you’re very lucky to be alive, Mr. Corripo- may I call you Rigoberto? My name is Doctor Antoine Tiller.”   
     

“You can call me Bert. What the hell happened?” His throat felt like sandpaper.

“Can I have some water?”

Doctor Tiller filled a plastic cup from a nearby pitcher. “Well, from what I gathered, a guy that was high on methamphetamine decided to take some poor girl’s car from the gas station when she was inside paying for the fuel,” The doctor shook his head. “He must have thought he had somewhere to go but instead he ran into you after causing thousands of dollars in property damage,” He pulled an x-ray out of his chart and held it towards the window. “You had a compound fracture to your femur,” He put it down and laughed to himself, ”I suppose I don’t really need an x-ray to see that, since the bone was just about to poke through the skin on your leg. I guess you’re also lucky to have not felt that snap in half. You were already out from the impact. No concussion though, so that’s good, right?”

“I don’t know, why are you asking me?”

An orderly came in to the room with a wheelchair. Doctor Tiller said, “Anyway, you are being discharged now. You’re pretty lucky the bone didn’t cause too much damage inside. Just some bruising.” The orderly had Bert put one arm around his shoulders so he could lift him off the bed and into the wheelchair. As he was being pushed through the hallways, his leg stuck straight out in front of him.

“You’ll be more comfortable moving around with a pair of crutches than trying to roll around in a wheelchair with your leg out like that,” the orderly said. He handed him a couple crutches which he laid across his lap.

The bright, humid afternoon flooded through the sliding glass doors and assaulted his senses. Bert adjusted to it quickly enough and started to get up from his seat with the crutches beneath him.

“Would you like me to call someone to pick you up?” the orderly asked.

Bert had no one that could come get him, but he considered a taxi, then changed his mind. “I think I’ll just walk. I’m just beyond that bridge over there. I need some fresh air anyway.”

“Whatever rocks your boat, man.” The orderly was already on his way back inside.

There was a police station across the street. It was the only one in this small town Bert grew up in. Not a lot of people broke the law around here but there was a bit of a drug problem so cops would frequently arrest meth addicts for possession or lock someone up for petty theft. A gaunt looking man with stringy hair and scabby skin emerged from the station and looked frantically around while he scratched his neck. Bert thought he looked familiar. The sickly man decided to turn left towards the bridge that Bert was headed to. He walked briskly with his legs straight and not pausing from his scratching. Once he began to walk, Bert recognized him as Trent Kump, one of his high school classmates from a while back. Last time he saw Trent was over a decade ago and he was healthy then.

Bert assumed that Trent had to have been the guy that drove into him so he decided that he would confront him about it. It seemed unlikely that he would even be able to catch up to him considering his swift pace and Bert’s current impairment. He followed anyway as quickly as he could manage.

When Trent reached the middle of the bridge he stopped abruptly and looked over the edge. The only thing between him and a quick drop to the stream was a short railing. He glimpsed Bert approaching him and after a double take, he began to cover his face and sob. “Please, don’t hurt me,” he screamed as he collapsed to his knees. “It was an accident, I swear! I’m sorry!” After some reluctance, Trent dared to look back up at Bert. Trent’s demeanor while begging for mercy transformed into a snarl with hate filling his eyes. “Get back! I’ll jump! I swear I’ll do it!”

“Then jump; see if I care,” Bert said without skipping a beat.

Trent winced at this. “You’re supposed to tell me not to jump, you big meanie!” His eyes were ablaze as he glared at him through thin, sweaty hair falling across his grimy face.

Bert was disconcerted by his childlike petulance. After gaining some composure he closed in on Trent and pulled free the crutch on his good side and jabbed it at him, “Here, let me help you out.” Bert couldn’t believe what he was doing, but he realized how angry he was at Trent for nearly killing him the other day.

“NO!” Trent screamed. Baring his rotten teeth, he clumsily clawed at the crutch with his scabbed hands until he had a good grip on it. Trent got his arm entangled through the framework of the crutch so that he had a better grip on it. Despite his frail physique, Trent was a lot stronger than he looked. He swung the crutch towards the bridge railing forcing Bert to hop on his good leg to keep his balance. Bert’s body slammed into the bridge railing and he toppled awkwardly over the edge with Trent in tow. The middle of the crutch slipped over a piece of metal jutting from the bottom of the bridge and effectively breaking their fall. The force of this tore Trent’s shoulder out of its socket while his hand and wrist were still stuck inside the crutch. A shrill cry escaped from him.

Bert held on with one hand onto the cushioned part of the crutch while the screaming addict’s filthy jeans were crotch first in his face. They both were suspended from the bridge on this crutch like an unbalanced set of scales with the addict on the higher end, screaming and unable to release himself. Bert held on as best he could but the plaster cast that came up upper thigh was weighing him down threatening to pull him towards the rocky stream below. He couldn’t get his free arm above him to grab a hold of the crutch because of Trent’s erratic kicking. If he was able to calm down, Trent probably could have done something to help, even with his injury. But there was no point in trying to communicate with him.

Bert’s knuckles were white with stubbornness and just couldn’t hold his own weight any longer. They slipped from the cushion and he dropped silently to the rocks. Bert landed head first and at an angle. The sound of the impact was like a wet branch snapping.

The sudden change in the crutch’s stability caused it to pivot about the fulcrum that had been supporting the two. Trent’s body swung in a rapid arc and freed his hand from the crutch before his body smashed into one of the supports that made up the web of construction for this bridge. He continued to fall onto a horizontal beam about 8 feet below him. When he landed on his dislocated shoulder there was an audible pop as the joint slid back into place. He cried out through the rust and blood that covered his mouth and rolled over a bit, bawling like a child. He tested his arm and it moved okay but it was still in a lot of pain. He held his bad arm with the other and peered over the beam towards the rest of the bridge’s framework. He could get down from it if he used the supports as a sort of ladder.

The descent took him about an hour before he made it to the bottom. He looked over at Bert’s body and, with tears in his eyes, began to hobble towards him. Bert was most certainly dead, but Trent approached him and attempted to wake him. The motion from shaking his shoulders caused Bert’s caved head to bleed and wobble unnaturally about his shoulders because of the broken neck. After a bit of hesitation, he rolled Bert over and pulled a leather wallet out of Bert’s back pocket and pulled out the twenty seven dollars that was inside. The addict apologized to Bert once again, this time for killing him, then made his way along the bank to find a way up to the street.