Thursday, October 29, 2009

Human Bridge, a Parable

The exposed meat on bodies writhing. And more walking, crawling on top. Those that were well underneath had stopped moving months ago. Month? I'm not sure anymore.

All at the beginning of the bridge are just hardened, stinking meat. I'm near the beginning, deep in line, waiting for my turn to drop and lay myself on the great writhing mound of meat. I will fold and bury my limbs and face into the human muck in time, as is the vow we take, with abiding resolve and content. This brick mentality has purpose, a grand design, though I'm not clear on the precise nature of that design. There is risk. There was rumor great devouring creatures dwell in the dim-lit netherworld that seek our destruction, a ruin to our purpose. Thankfully the nether-world is vast, and their kind, few. We are building a human bridge to get out of the nether world, with the only resource we have on hand, our bodies. But why or where, I have no clue. The how is what I know.

We proceed with our moving queue in silence. In fact we are a tongue-less race. We chose to remove our tongues ages ago to avoid a more miserable fate. Sometimes a foot will sink deeper than one would want in the writhing top layer of brothers and he will trip and fall. That is his time. He will not try to rise and rejoin the queue, but simply sink his limbs whereever he can and take his accidental spot on the bridge. But there are no accidents. I'm careful with my feet placement but I know it's impossible to gauge precisely where hard bone or soft slippery muscle might be. Where a gap between a shoulder and another's armpit might be. It is not total darkness, but very close. I would describe it as red dusk. Always. We walk on, gently rising, arching over the abyss and out of this forsaken world. Into one more so?

In our routine, our plan, there is no optimism, but there is a kind of pleasure. It is dim like our lighting in the nether world, but it's discernable. Sometimes while walking, or crawling, a live arm will rise from the bridge and stroke my cock, or inside my thigh, and I will feel a kind of pleasure. There is that: the accidental contact of a brother on random spots. But there is also a more abstract pleasure we feel. Assuming "I" is "We", which I always have. It is a pleasure of belonging to a purpose-driven group, a brotherhood, of working together to build our bridge to the other side. We are apparently in endless supply, because we have been building thorugh the soft tint red haze for months, which could be years or decades. I'm really not sure. It is a numbing, slightly throbbing, sensation in my head and not my cock.

I do not know how long it took, but at some point in my journey across the heaps of bloodied trampled maloderous brothers, I begin to realize we were no longer arching up, but down. No one person decides on this deviation. It simply happens. Nothing changes in what I see all around me, other than an everpresent and quite vague, falling sensation. We were told of another danger, in the beginning. That the bridge at some point, way off, might crumble beneath us, and fall. We were comforted by the assurances that the fall would be forever, and we would die well before we hit a bottom. So we were not in fact, immortal? They could not gaurantee that.

At some point, I begin to feel a curious feeling: that I have not dropped in my natural place on the bridge at an appropriate time. I am overdue. The anxiety grows with every step. The other brothers, new companions, walking faster, look upon me oddly, with I suppose, derision. Though for ages the queue had proceeded without force or malice, I fully expect any moment to be jostled or even pushed down upon my fallen comrades, but this does not happen. It is of course, forbidden. But then, no one spoke of a renegade. As such, I become that renegade. So many times, I wanted to drop, so tired, drugged by desire to comply, out of love for the cause, out of lack of will to go on, but I did not. I simply, quite simply, continued to walk. If I tripped, slid, fell, I got up and walked on.

Not long after, several months or years, I hear a distant rumbling at my back. At the same time, for the first time, I see the absolute edge of the bridge. I see where it ends and a bottomless pit begins. And even more surprising, I see beyond the gap to a massive heap of rocks, a cliffside, an end to the chasm. I would only have to slow down, let others pass by me, for a good while, and I will actually make it to the other side. I decide to do this.

But all the while the rumblings, bass echoing grunts, grow louder, as if emitted by living things. I slow to what I can only describe as a putter. The others pass me and glance with abject derision. I have broken the brotherhood. The misery and heartache I feel is almost enough to cause me to fling myself over the edge of the bridge, but I know I would have to walk miles in either direction to find it. Why did I not just drop with the rest, do my duty?

Then suddenly, the bridge is complete. I am on the other side of the nether world. I find my feet hurting with the incredible difference in sensation between walking on my brothers' meat and bones and rock once again. I have but a vestige of a memory of how rock feels under my feet.

I stand and look back at the bridge arching vastly into oblivion. Those brothers that can view the end, simply begin a mass retreat, others fall in line, knowing instinctly what has happened. I am the only human that stands on the other side.

Then I see what made those rumblings. I stand in horror. They-- the great devouring beasts of the nether world-- are coming. Hideous, massive, incomprehensible. They are crossing the bridge. The bridge was always for them, not our brotherhood. The brotherhood is a lie.

It will be a matter of months, minutes, before they reach me at the other side. I have no escape but up the rocks. I am too tired to climb. I will surely be ripped apart, eaten in a flash, and be no more. Very soon.

I await my fate.