Every day… since that first day… I had seen at least one person walk that bridge until he or she was out of sight.
Sometimes there were several people throughout the day… but never more than one or two in sight at the same time.
If there were two, there was always a good distance between them… and I had a strange feeling it was planned that way… but I couldn’t guess why.
No doubt there were others whom I did not see… it’s just that… for some strange reason… I seemed to have become more conscious of the bridge.
However… and I found this very strange, but… I never saw anyone coming back.
Questions burned in my mind… where did these people go? Why didn’t they come back? Did they return by another route? Or did I just not see them?
Still… after almost a year of watching… would I not have seen the return of at least one person?
How long was the Snake-back? I couldn’t see the end of it from my balcony… both the wetland – and the bridge – seemed to just disappear over the horizon.
I had to find out… I needed answers… my curiosity demanded satisfaction… and I had to know what drew them… what the big attraction was.
Finally, the day came when I could wait no longer.
I was free for the day… and it felt like the right time to seek the answers to my questions.
I finished my coffee… slipped on my shoes… then went out to the balcony… where I watched and waited.
The first person on the Snake-back that morning was a man… average height… white hair… with a slight limp in his left leg.
When he had gone what I judged to be far enough for him to not notice me… I set out behind him.
Matching my pace to his, I kept the same distance behind him… so as not to give the impression that I was following him, if he did look back.
I felt confident that I was on the verge of finding out just what was going on here… where these people were going… or had gone! .
Fifteen minutes out, I turned and looked back. I could still see the building where my home was…. all good so far.
Each time I paused to check, my apartment building looked smaller and more distant, and… I started to feel uneasy.
I wasn’t entirely comfortable with being that far from my home… no walls around me… no roof over my head.
Cold shivers ran up my back… goose bumps rose up on my arms… but somehow I kept going.
After walking for nearly an hour, the man stopped… and I stopped too.
A few minutes later, he started walking again… but I remained where I was… while his pace had increased a little.
In the distance I could see some sort of building… so I took out my phone and snapped several photos, then turned… and looked back.
I could barely see the buildings now… the place where my snug little home was.
A sense of dread overwhelmed me… and I began to shake… but I forced my trembling legs to move.
When I was safely inside, I locked the door behind me… gasping for breath… and collapsed on the floor.
I was pretty sure I had set a new personal record on my way back this time.
My jaws ached… a good indication that my teeth had been clenched for longer than I had realized.
As my breathing slowed to normal, I looked at the photos… enlarging them as much as possible.
The building appeared to be made of steel… or perhaps aluminum… and looked a lot like a subway entrance.
There was a door, with a sign up over it that said… “End of the Line.”
What line? Was it the end of the Snake-back? Was there a subway on which the people who walked here could travel back to where they had come from?
Or was it something else… where they entered and never came back?
Perhaps I should cease my fantasizing about the Snake-back… and where it did – or did not – go… or end. Perhaps I should leave it alone from now on… and just enjoy the view.
