Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Bathroom Monologue: Bridge of Nowhere



This asylum assures that only a specific kind of patient may enter. It was constructed with twelve specialists inside, already on the grounds, and they live there year-round to give the poor mad-folk the attention they deserve. It’s a safe haven for the hopelessly schizophrenic, who’ve been abused and persecuted by the normal world. I was happy to jump into the project. It became my baby.

Well, I really only built the bridge, but it’s the best part. The grandiose Bridge of Disbelief. It’s a beautiful work of blacksteel, of invisible glass, of whitestone bricks, and gaps of thin air. It functions on a specific quantum magic that reads not the feet of the visitors, but their minds. 

The initial steps are the same for everyone – five paces by the widest gait, in which the bridge assesses what you believe you are seeing. If you believe you’re about to step on invisible glass, then it is thin air, and it dumps you into the bottomless chasm, where abyssal bugs will gnaw your bones. If you’re random fool who thinks he’s stepping on thin air, then it’s blacksteel lined with traps that trip off your limbs. If you believe it is blacksteel, then it’s whitestone that gradually dissolved your body as you walk on it. It manifests whatever you disbelieve.

Functioning as it does, it prevents anyone of sane mind from crossing. And anyone who is merely foolish or conventionally crazed, believing their own reality, is also banned from the asylum. Only the profoundly broken, who earnestly believe the bridge is all things, can make it across the entire span.

To prevent them from jumping over the edge on their way into the asylum, I built very high railings. They’re not particularly inventive. Not much to be proud of.

9 comments:

  1. I have to say, the very pedestrian railings are my favorite part.

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  2. Is this bridge an analogy for your books? ;)

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    1. Do you really think they'll be that obtuse, Pete? I feel like a debut of this sort would be career suicide. At best, career homicide.

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  3. That part about the rails was inspired!

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  4. Whoa. You have just destroyed one of my dreams. There is a Leunig cartoon (I don't know if you know him) which shows an insane asylum. On the very top floor, through a window, a man is smiling. Widely. As he looks at the commuter rush to town.

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    1. PS: The part I didn't make clear in my comment is that from time to time I have thought that if the men in white coats were to come for me I would put my hand trustingly in theirs and go off without a backward glance.

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    2. I am ignorant of Leunig, and will have to look him up. Why did this destroy your dream?

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    3. My dream/hope/aspiration/back-up plan was destroyed as I am not certain that I would qualify for the sanctuary of your insane asylum. Leunig is dark, and his sister Mary Leunig is darker. Both thought provoking. Not unlike Callaghan.

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