The city is cleft in the middle by a wide and raging river, as powerful as each side’s distaste for each other. It’s not the river that divides the city so much as the people who have sundered it; the river is only a geological happenstance they use as a pretense, to support the division they have created.
It was only a creek before, but as the city grew so did its banks. Industry further toward the headwaters rerouted bodies of water, playing God with the landscape, and so the people believed the schism was fate.
On the east side of the river lies an urban center inhabited by people more interested in lines on a graph than their children. Vacations are less of an opportunity to unwind or experience something new and more of a chance to flaunt wealth. Luxury cars in pristine condition choke the roads. Sterilized, the east houses a corporate congregation, worshiping climbing numbers on a computer screen.
On the west side of the river are the low buildings of industry and public housing, the neat rows of two-family homes. People here are more likely to hang photos of Marilyn Monroe or Duke Ellington on their walls than photos of their families. A certain type of joie de vivre permeates the streets, where today is all that matters and dreams prevail.
These two distinct communities less border and more haunt each other. To suggest someone move to the other side was akin to telling them to go to hell.
The only thing they couldn’t deny they shared was the bridge. A high truss bridge, built not to connect the two sides but to fulfill a mandate from the government that a bridge be built. Hardly used except by traversers, it serves only to underscore the separation between east and west, a steel testament to their division.
As the sun rises in the east on a beautiful day in early March, Callum feels a crushing sense of doom. Another day, he realizes. He is forced to live another day and the dread it inflicts on him seizes his heart and says, another day.
Blankets over his head, Callum is trying to keep his emotions contained as he chooses between getting hit for lazing in bed or getting up. He will be forced to face another day either way, so he just needs to decide which will hurt less.
No, better not to upset his parents so early in the day. He sits up in his bed and turns his alarm off before it rings, stealing another second of silent solitude before standing. He is tall, like his father, lean but strong; a young baseball player. He has black hair like his mother, and her amber eyes.
Since before he was born, his life was planned– a web of requirements, of mandated milestones, the concrete path of his future, a handful of contingencies, and thus a boy is made.
Not a real boy, though. A robot boy, programmed only to follow commands: sit, stay, roll over. No, he wasn’t a human boy at all.
The die of his fate had been cast and the results were written in stone. No motion of rebellion could change anything.
He pulls slacks on over his long, bruised legs. He pulls on an undershirt and a navy cable knit sweater, covering the cuts on his arms.
He swallows his tears as he opens the door and steps into the hall. His father is there, certainly about to go inside to wake him, and the first command comes swiftly. “Comb your hair.”
The automated response: “Yes, sir.” It doesn’t even matter that he hasn’t made it to the bathroom yet, the expectation is uninterrupted perfection, no excuses.
In the bathroom, he locks the door. He closes his eyes tight, he clenches his jaw, and he pulls desperately at his hair, as if to rip it all out. He steeps himself in this silent torment, the physical pain, the darkness, then he lets go. He opens his eyes, takes a deep breath. He brushes his hair and teeth, washes his hands and face, and pauses at the door. Can he steal a few more seconds of silence?
“Callum!”
No, he supposes not. He yanks the door open, adopts a chipper tone, and says, “I’m right here.”
He’s lying. He’s not here, he’s somewhere else. He’s placed a screen between himself and the world upon which he projects humanity, while his true self cowers in the dark, dreaming of an escape. The family, the girlfriend, the grades, baseball– he was only going through the motions of being human.
As the sun rises on the west, Ezra is pulled awake by the searing of its rays into his eyelids. He’d fallen asleep in his mother’s truck, afraid she might try to drive it, and drained the battery playing the radio all night for good measure.
He’d made the unfortunate discovery that the station he likes plays the same rotation of songs between the hours of midnight and five a.m. At first, he found the consistency, the familiarity, comforting, but now it only makes him feel like he’s reliving the same night over and over again. The same night, every night.
He crawls out of the truck barefoot, the soil frozen and hard beneath him. He takes a few deep breaths of fresh air, feels the sun on his skin, prepares himself to go inside.
He’s of average height with bleached hair in dire need of a cut, a missing incisor tooth and sunken eyes. He’s thin, all sharp angles and bones, evoking the image of a stray cat. His ears are pierced and so is his tongue. His pants are too loose and his sweater is too small, as he only gets what he can from the church.
He’s so hungry his stomach twists and growls. Inside his mother’s trailer, the grocery budget is scattered on the floor in the form of discarded, empty bottles and cans. A dozen disappointed prayers. He steps over them carefully, approaching his mother on the couch. He holds a hand up to her nose and feels an exhalation. Relieved, and disgusted by his relief, he goes into the kitchen and grabs a rag. He cleans the vomit first and then picks up the trash. He pulls the blanket down from the back of the couch and drapes it over her, then goes back into the kitchen.
He drinks three glasses of water, one after the other, hoping to alleviate some of his nausea. As he does, he stares at a photo of his father on the wall, smiling with Ezra in his arms, until the loss is so overwhelming he must close his eyes.
He’d died six years ago but his mother keeps looking for him at the bottom of bottles and cans; or maybe she’s trying to forget him. Ezra had never figured it out. Probably both. He wasn’t sure what he himself wanted, though alcohol wasn’t his preference.
He pulls half a pill out of his pocket. It’s early, but he is feeling too much and it will help with his hunger. He crushes it with a small mortar and pestle his father used for garlic and fresh herbs. He brings the mortar to the living room and dumps the powder carefully onto the glass coffee table, kneeling before it. His mother is passed out on the couch in front him, but Ezra is unconcerned. He divides and lines the powder up with a dull razor blade, two clean rows. He snorts it with a cut section of a plastic straw, faintly smelling rosemary, and being sure to leave nothing behind.
He sits and vacantly stares at his mother’s body, wondering if she dreams of his father, if that’s why she’s like this. Vaguely, he considers which of them might die next. He has a personal preference.
Sniffling, he gets up, puts his shoes on, and goes out the back door, leaving behind only three words scrawled in the corner of a collections notice envelope.
“Callum! Are you even listening?”
He flinches. He hadn’t been, but he says, “Yes, I’m sorry. I just feel a little distracted today.” A tiny seed, a secret thought that had been planted in his mind years ago had sprouted that morning and now he was watching it grow.
“You have something more important on your mind than your girlfriend?” Margaret asks.
Yes, he thinks. But he says, “No. By the way, I’ll pay today.”
This is enough to please her and she continues her one-sided discussion of plans for spring break. He was relieved the trick worked but feels bad. She deserves better than this.
He had exactly two hours of free time for the day and had agreed to spend it with Margaret– though he was dissociated and focusing on this inclination that was growing inside of him, growing every second he had to participate in this parody of a life.
They were on their way to a cafe, his go-to when he needs to think. She would carry the conversation by herself and he just needs to nod, validate, affirm.
They order their usuals and sit at their usual table. Wasn’t he supposed to be comforted by stability, routine, consistency? It had only ever felt oppressive. It suffocated him.
He looks at Margaret, her red hair and her freckles, her green eyes and her collar bones. Couldn’t he confide in her? Didn’t he love and trust her? No, he knew he didn’t. She wanted to date the star of the baseball team, and he wanted to look normal. She didn’t even really like him– she called him morose and boring, which he couldn’t argue with. When she finds someone more interesting, more engaged, she’ll drop him like so much waste, as she should. A waste of time, of space, of life.
Life. He looks around him and out the window, observing life. Before he started cutting himself, he’d wanted to travel, to see and experience life. Then he learned, through violence, that he’d never be able to make his own decisions. His life was a prison built, perhaps, out of a place of love, but a life sentence nonetheless.
He has no meaningful friendships, though not for lack of trying. His parents need to approve of them, a process very few pass. He has nothing truly worthwhile to offer anyone, anyway. In fact, a friendship with him was likely to be destructive, damaging; he felt bad for Margaret sitting in front of him. Behind his curated facade is nothing and nobody, only sorrow. He’d been robbed of his humanity as he’d been robbed of a childhood, of choice.
By the time they get up to leave, his idea has borne fruit. He’s made a decision, the only one he has any control over, and he feels a burden is lifted. He is light with relief. He skips cram school and walks toward the bridge.
Ezra wanders the city, directionless. He sits on a curb and listens to a church choir sing, their voices carrying out into the street, maybe even up to heaven. Can God hear them? he wonders. These beautiful and layered hymns, songs of praise, of adoration. Even if He could hear them, He is a monster.
He goes to the bus terminal and people watches. There’s a busker doing an incredible performance, the skill she has on the guitar is extraordinary, but she’s playing for change to an audience in passing, nobody lingering longer than a couple of songs. There is no justice in the world, he thinks, No equilibrium, only chaos.
God was a monster for killing his father and not him when a truck jack-knifed into their sedan six years ago. God was a monster for the grief that consumed his mother. God was a monster for making addiction inheritable, for robbing a child of both father and mother, for teasing the poor and disenfranchised with the promise of prayer.
Ezra takes a bus to the library without paying fare. He looks out the window at the beautiful day, at the beautiful people, at the beauty of life, and he feels ugly. He should’ve died with his father. It’s a cosmic mistake that he’s here now and his father is a pillar of ashes. He feels it in his soul.
He sits in the library reading Kafka. He’s read the book of short stories a thousand times and likes the consistency, the familiarity of it. He dropped out of school but visits the library nearly everyday, escaping into other worlds, other’s minds.
Reading Kafka, he gets an idea. It just pops into his head like an unexpected visitor, though really it had been there all along, lurking, waiting for the moment Ezra was ready to entertain it. Now was that moment, in the library reading “The Judgment.” He looks up in sudden clarity, stands, and walks toward the bridge. Not even Jesus could stop him.
Step after step after step, very nearly a compulsion, Callum is almost running now, as if afraid to be caught, afraid to linger any longer.
Ezra clicks the ball of his piercing against the back of his teeth, tonguing the hole that was made the night of the accident. He’s clicking it in time to his pace, which is leisurely. He loves his idea, he is doting on it, his heart is light.
The sun sets in the west. Light pollution has rusted the sky above them, killing the stars.
They have been approaching each other all day without knowing, their dreams abandoned at the same instant like balloons in a toddler’s hand, floating up to pop and mix together in the atmosphere, leaving behind only shreds and emptiness.
Callum arrives first, now calm and resolved. He takes his shoes off first, then his watch and jacket, hanging it on the railing. He wonders if he should have left a note. What would he have said? Probably something pathetic like, “I’m sorry,” or, “Everything and everyone will be better off for this.”
Ezra doesn’t notice Callum as he takes his first step onto the bridge, distracted by the eastern skyline. It’s so imposing, so powerfully overwhelming, a testament to the hubris of humanity. He’s never been this close before.
Then his eye catches Callum, who is already looking at him, staring, as if assessing a threat. Prey sizing up a possible predator.
Ezra stops a few yards away from him, giving him space. He notices the shoes, the coat. Unsure of how to process the scene, he turns away and faces the water. He won’t be distracted from his desire for peace; he takes deep breaths and steadies himself.
“Are you cold?” Callum’s words interrupt Ezra’s focus.
He looks at Callum again, at his coat and shoes. “Are you?” he asks back.
They stand face to face, east to west, seeing in the other too much of the self. It dawns on them both, at the exact same instant, that they’re there for the same reason. They look away, to the frigid, twisting water below.
“Together?” Callum asks.
Ezra looks at him and their eyes meet, dilated pupils to sorrowful eyes, bruised spirit to broken skin. “It’d be nice not to be alone.”
They close the gap between them, meeting in the middle. Standing so close now they can see each other shivering in the dark. They climb over the railing and perch on the narrow ledge. Neither can say why but they hold hands. It just seems right.
Callum says, “It’s too bad we didn’t meet under different circumstances.”
“Different circumstances would’ve changed a lot,” Ezra says. He sniffles, swallows hard. “Are you scared?”
“I thought I would be. Are you?”
Ezra is silent, staring into the dark waters, sticking his tongue through the hole in his teeth. “No. It should’ve happened a long time ago.”
They say nothing for a while, each reckoning with his decision, with this final moment. The silence stretches until it’s clear neither has changed his mind.
“Count of three?”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three,” they say together.
For half a heartbeat, they’re floating above the river like birds in a breeze. Inexplicably, with their last breath, Ezra and Callum embrace. They float together and fall together. Not even the water can tear them apart.
j.k. armstrong 
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