extract #3

It's got to be Erskine Bridge where the people jump. Yet no-one is climbing the fences and there are no cars. The toll booths lie empty, the barriers are up.

There is silence like putty in my fingers and it clasps my hand and leads me on to the bridge's wide yawn over the Clyde. Clouds collect like hemorrhoids overhead, awash in battleship grey.
I take a step and it gives me breath. I take another and it feeds me for my purpose. I walk the centre lines of the bridge's dual carriageway, cutting through the unspoken broken lines. I am making something now, and I know it.
I am led to the top of the bridge's curve and then brought to a halt. There is a calling to my left through the suicide-proof fencing. I go and look, of course I do.

Below is an expanse of shit-brown tidal sand that stretches to sunset unbroken in the west. There is a thin liquid silver flow of water that marks the centre and I watch it drain away to the Irish Sea leaving a deep muddy trench. Warning buoys flash green and red just for me and my landing.
So fly, I must. I climb the tilted fence, grasping the razor slices of its lattice. Bare fingers and toes are cut and bleed but soon I am up and round and over and in free fall, unburdening the sky in rushing air.

A blink and I am waist deep in the trench's silty floor. That great tight press of earth and water bind me. My legs are encased and I can't move in the deep pressure that holds mountains.
Then I look and see the bubbling mud around me. Air pockets rise, gasp and pop in release where I am waist-locked. There is writhing and slither and I see that the floor of the trench is a live body of fish packed, slurping and slapping in the narrow trench. My guts twist and coil in recognition.
Then a motion. I am being moved, transported west by this slithering, slipping snake, this roiling living mass. It is squeezing me westward and I know where and I know why. I am being taken back to Port Glasgow: finally.