look I'm deleting this so soon, but you can see it for a sec
I met Jorg by accident while hunting for cool rocks in the creek.
My pockets already bulged with stones, the weight pulling my pants dangerously low on my ass, but with the sun high above, I felt plenty ready to continue my search. That is, until I splashed too close to the old bridge.
“I cry your mercy, my peerless paramour,” came a voice like stones and kittens in a shaken bag. It took a moment to parse it as language.
“What?” I said, unfolding from my crouched position in the water.
“Seekest thou a trinket?” From the depth of shadows under the bridge, I saw two eyes shining like silver coins.
“Uh,” I said. “Just rocks, really. I’m hoping for a fossil, or maybe nice and sparkly to put on my shelf, you know? Or wait, here.” And shaking my hand dry, I shoved it into a loaded pocket, searching by touch for the best of my finds. “Here,” I said, pulling it out, “See how yellow this is? With white banding? I’m fully ignorant about its geology, you might know more than me, but it looks lovely. Like a lemon custard. Would you like to see?”
A terrible hand unfurled from the shadows. The wind shifted then, and its smell hit me, like freshly dug earth and the salty musk of an overworked horse. I continued to smile politely as I sloshed closer. Under the bridge’s shadow, the summer lost its warmth.
I placed the rock onto its central paw pad. It struck me, then – I’d forgotten to clarify I’d like the rock back afterward, but now it seemed too late. Fingers closed about the stone.
“Again, I don’t know much, so apologies if it’s ordinary. I’m actually in an engineering program, so could tell you more about this bridge than what’s under it.”
With my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could now assess the creature. It hunched to fit under the confines of the stone bridge, all pale wormy skin and tufts of colourless fur, with ears that sharpened into points. As the creature brought the stone to its muzzle and huffed, I let my eyes roam the bridge’s underside, searching for something I could comment on.
Unfortunately, I found it. “Oh, fuck.”
“Yeah, you see the cracks there? The bridge’s foundation is crumbling. That’s no good. I mean, not that it’ll collapse at this exact moment, but–“
The bridge shook then, as something heavy passed across it at speed. I sloshed out into the sunlight and squinted at the vehicle speeding away: Mr. Manor, who’d renovated the farmhouse across the creek into something modern and flavourless.
“Asshole!” I shouted after the car. Wading back under the bridge, I said, “Sorry about that. Got a bit carried away.”
It hunched, shivering in the shadows. “Beshrew that rolling waste,” it hissed, and I nodded in agreement. Once again, my eyes adjusted to the dark, and I realized that it was a he.
“So, not big on clothes, then?” I leaned against a bridge wall, running my fingers along its cracks. “I get that.”
He grunted acknowledgment, before turning to dig through a heap of rags and trash. When the creature found what he sought, he yipped in delight. “Your trinket, dearworth!”
Between two taloned claws, he brandished a lump of shiny yellow.
“Is that gold?” Despite my waving and stuttering, he kept his enormous hand held out to me, and so with some nervousness I took the lump.
The creature radiated heat. Fresh sweat broke out across my chest from our proximity. “Honestly, I can’t possibly accept this.” Though, turning the lump this way and that, I did admire how it caught the faint light beneath the bridge. I could already picture how it might fulfil a similar role on my windowsill.
“By my troth,” the creature insisted, in his clicking hiss, “It is fitting.”
“I feel like I’m being courted.” I cradled the precious stone like it was an egg that might crack. At his unwavering stare, I blanched. “Am I? You know that I’m a guy, right?”
“A choice sweetmeat,” the creature said, and grinned. He unfolded his long, simian arm, and brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen across my eyes.
Oh, so the creature was a homosexual!
“Be that as it may,” I coughed, feeling my cheeks heat, “I do actually have to go. I promised to do the groceries today. But you know…” And I hesitated, unsure how to broach it. “This is an old bridge. It can’t handle all this modern usage.”
“Aye,” the creature said, in a sad grumble, before perking up. “Pray thee come again?”
“Of course!” I said, a little too eagerly, and then look away in embarrassment. “I mean, always more rocks to find, right? Thank you again, for the. . . thank you!” For a second time, I splashed my way out from under the bridge. Then I turned. “What’s your name, by the way?”
His eyes gleamed like twin moons in the dark. “Jorg,” he rattled. Or possibly ‘George’, it was hard to tell.
Only when I’d waded to the shore and slipped into my waiting flip flops did I allow myself break into a full grin. I didn’t slip the gold into my pocket, instead dancing it between my fingers for the full walk along the roadside, and into the shopping plaza.
Only after I’d entered the No Frills did I realize that a crackling layer of creek sediment coated me from the waist-down,. I grabbed a plastic basket from the entrance stack and, suffering a few glances from the more cleanly folk, began hunting. Dish detergent, paper towels, a bag of honey crisp apples, all bran cereal…even with that repeated mantra, it was hard to focus. My body tingled with the remembrance of the creature’s wafting heat and salty odour. Self-checkout took far longer than it otherwise might, with the woman behind me sighing pointedly, but that hardly mattered.
I stepped into the parking lot with my arms and heart full. Truly, I wasn’t planning on a confrontation, until I saw Mr. Manor's parked car. “Ah, damn.” I said, and turned to head back in.
The doors slid open for me with a cool puff of air. It felt strange to walk in with bags of purchased produce, like the opposite of stealing, but nobody stopped me.
I found Mr. Manor in amongst the vegetables, fingering a ripe tomato. His face held a similar colour, his cheeks branched with broken veins.
“Hey there,” I said. He acknowledged me with a polite nod and then tried to turn away, so I stepped in closer. “Hey, I’m a neighbour, sort of. I’ve been away for college, you won’t have seen me around.”
“Okay,” said Mr. Manor. He held his tomato in one hand, and a plastic bag in another. Clearly, he was wondering whether it would be rude to start loading his bag while I still demanded his attention.
“Anyway, so the old stone bridge? I’ve seen you driving over it with, what is that, an electric car? A Tesla?”
“Yeah.” He had shaggy brows, which crept closer together.
“So, the bridge is old, like real old, probably meant for horses and wagons, right?”
He stared back at me, gripping his tomato.
“You’ve got some kind of mythological creature living under it, did you know?”
“Yeah,” he said, and carefully placed his tomato into the plastic bag. It was a signal to me, that his civility was waning. I cut to the chase.
“So, I reckon the bridge isn’t meant for the repeated weight of a car driving over it, right? I was under there – “
“You were under my bridge?”
“Well, sure, looking for stones, so anyways I saw cracks and stuff? Signs of degradation? And normally I wouldn’t bother you, except you know, you’ve got a mythological creature living under there.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” said Mr. Manor, and in rapid motions stuffed three more tomatoes into his bag. “You needn’t concern yourself with this any further.”
The billow of air conditioning, and the gentle misting that kept the bins of assorted greenery hydrated, all conspired to give me energy.
“You know, the mythological creature, I think he’s a homosexual?” I said, as Mr. Manor tried to quick step away.
That stopped him. “That’s not something I care about. I mean, my niece is going through a lesbian phase right now, I’ve always been accepting.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t, only that the bridge probably can’t take the weight of your car over and over.”
“I always vote left-wing.”
“Okay, so the bridge, though?”
Mr. Manor nodded, his face going even redder, and I knew in that moment that he wouldn’t do a thing. My fingers ached from standing with full grocery bags, so I gave up and left the store.
Outside, the parking lot shimmered in the heat. I squinted, pained by the sun. Even with sweat beading on my forehead, I still altered my route to pass Mr. Manor’s tesla, and lightly kicked one wheel. The motion swung my grocery bags, one of them hitting me in the thigh. “Ow!”
The walk home had me regretting the confrontation. My arms and fingers hurt, no matter how I shuffled the bags, and sweat rolled into my eyes and stung them. Walking up my front steps brought some relief, though I grew unbearably annoyed fishing for my keys. Finally, with a click and a creak, the door opened. I dropped the bags in the front hall and stood there, luxuriating in the air conditioning.
My sister sat in the kitchen, scrolling through Instagram.
“Hey Mary,” I said, and she grunted in response. “You know, there’s some kinda creature living under the bridge?”
“Like a fifteen-minute walk away, -ish? Anyway, so his name is Jorg, I think. Or George. Probably Jorg. I think he’s a homosexual.”
“Oh?” Mary looked up from her phone. She’d overloaded her mascara today, so that flakes of it deposited on her upper cheek as she blinked. “Are you interested?”
“Mary, he’s a mythological creature.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Yeah, I guess I’m interested.” I considered telling her about the bridge, but she’d probably ask what I planned next. She might even start a social media campaign, and I hadn’t decided to care to that extent. Not yet, anyway.
The next morning, I woke up incredibly aroused. “By God,” I said, staring at my bedroom ceiling. “I need to get back to that bridge!”
My head felt wonderfully empty. I choked down bran cereal, fended off conversational attempts from my mother, and scraped the black mud from beneath my nails with a file. No concern existed, as to when I’d be back at my university program, or how I’d finance it, having thoroughly fucked up my scholarship. Only the careful selection of which shorts and shirt a bridge troll might prefer me in. I’d just settled on a tight-fitting grey number, emblazoned with a wriggling salmon, when the first ambulance drove by. The whine of its siren came first, like the breathless scream of an animal, and then my room flashed red and blue. Then, it was past,
It took 9 minutes of jogging to reach the bridge, and as I panted my way down the country roadside, another ambulance passed, and then a tow truck. I clutched at the gold in my pocket, feeling it take the warmth of my hand.
When I approached the scene, my fears became a solid thing in front of me. A pile of rumble blocked the creek, which, resisting this imposition, climbed its bank to trickle into new paths at either side. Mr. Manor’s Tesla had come close to making it across before the collapse, before falling. It reared like a horse, statically, its back end crushed by centuries-old stones. Mr. Manor himself lay in a wheeled stretcher, seemingly uninjured, though they’d strapped something stupid about his neck. Likely a precaution. His face, red as a tomato, contorted with an anger that he took out, in barks, on the paramedics. While I might have rolled him into the creek, the EMT’s stoically loaded him into an ambulance.
“Hey,” I called, as they shut the doors, leaving one of their fellows inside with Mr. Manor, “There’s a guy who lives under that bridge!”
A thickset woman with a peeling sunburn looked at me with deep-blue eyes, while her co-worker, a short man, grimaced at her in anticipation of further work.
“Sorry, not a guy,” I corrected, “A mythological creature.”
All the tension left their shoulders. “That’s not our department,” the woman said, scratching at her sunburnt cheek.
“But, I mean,” I spluttered, “You won’t do anything at all?”
“Legally, we can’t. You have to take a special course, we don’t have the credentials.” She spoke with a patience that bordered on kindness, but it didn’t feel as though any of that kindness extended towards Jorg. I couldn’t think of anything further to say, so they left.
The ambulance took off with a silenced siren. Its lights flashed calmly, painting the collapsed stones blue and red in turn. Its sister ambulance, whose occupants hadn’t bothered to step out in my presence, peeled off and followed, leaving me alone with the tow truck.
“Can you move the rubble, at all?” I asked.
The tow-man stood with hands on his hips, surveying. I recognized him from around town, but we’d never spoken. He always kept his grey-streaked hair high in a ponytail.
“Not my job,” he said, “I just gotta get that car out.”
“There’s a mythological creature underneath all that.” I pointed at the rubble, but the man said nothing in response. “I think he’s a homosexual.”
“Hey, my brother’s a gay,” the man said, lighting a cigarette, “It’s still not my job. Don’t even have the right stuff on hand for this.” Then his voice lowered into a indistinguishable grumble, listing all the materials he needed, and the traffic that awaited, and the general progression of his morning. I didn’t listen, but I also tried not to cough on his cigarette smoke, as that might be rude.
Seeing as nobody else would do a damn thing, I took off my flips flops. Then, I carefully climbed down the bank into the creek, letting the water swallow my feet up to the ankles. Glancing back at the road revealed it to be empty, with the tow truck finally having cleared off.
“Damn,” I said, “This isn’t my department, either.” Even so, I pried at the piled rubble, lifting small, manageable pieces. These, I heaved into the creek with great frothing splashes.
“Jorg?” I called at intervals. Each time I stopped, straining for any hint of a reply. I never heard any.
The sun got higher, and hotter, and I ran out of pieces I could lift. Sitting on the creek bank, I wiped my hands dry on a pant leg, then scrolled through my phone to find out whose department this was, exactly.
Broken websites. Links which lead to more links, which lead back to the original page in an ouroboros. Government sites in need of updating. No numbers to call, nobody to email.
In a last ditch, I called 911. “Hey there,” I said, when they asked for my emergency. “So, the old bridge collapsed, close to the No Frills? Off the highway?”
“Sir, we’ve already had people on the scene for this situation.”
“Well,” and I clutched grass between my fingers, tearing it free from the earth. “There’s a mythological creature buried underneath the rubble, is all.”
“We don’t deal with that, sir.”
“He’s a homosexual, I’m pretty sure.”
“We don’t deal with that, sir.”
“Okay, well there’s got to be someone who does deal with it. Who should I be calling here, what should I do?”
She gave me a web address that I’d already looked at, and then ended the call. “Fuck,” I said, without real passion. The Tesla couldn’t speak, but standing vertically with its ass pinched by rubble, I reckon it would agree with my assessment.
With the exception of the car, and the bridge, the day seemed perfectly ordinary, all blue sky and pleasant warmth.
A few more handfuls of pulled grass, and then I got back to work, scrabbling over the collapsed bridge and prying at its ruined components. My carefully chosen shirt grew wet with sweat, and as my odour developed, I realized that I’d ran out without applying antiperspirant. “Sorry if I smell,” I said to nobody, as I threw another Victorian-era stone into the creek. Then the bridge shifted under me, and I fell to one knee, scraping my skin.
“Damn,” I said, shaken. Carefully, I climbed down from the ruin, splashing through the creek to the shore. With the present instability, it could easily shift and crush a leg or a foot.
“This isn’t my department,” I said to the wreckage. “This isn’t anyone’s department, it seems.” Beads of red trickled down my shin, diluted by the water that still dripped from me.
I rested back on the warm bank, and took out Jorg’s gift, rolling it between my fingers. With my free hand, I scrolled through websites, their links already purple. The gold lump cast reflected beams of light across my touchscreen.
I dialed a few town council numbers, without result. Nobody came, no more flashing lights. Once I thought I heard a scratching, but when I pressed my ear to the piled stone, the only sound was my own ragged breathing.
For a time, I kept the gold on my windowsill, where it sparkled in the corner of my eye, throwing its reflection across my work, demanding my attention and my guilt, until in an angry rush I swept it into my hand and locked it in a drawer.
When I returned to the creek a year later, having financed my return to engineering though a loan, the piled debris was gone, and something modern and concrete bridged the water in its place.
Standing at the summit of this new construction, I threw the lump of gold in a glistening arc. It disappeared into the water with barely a ripple, and that was that.
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