💾 Archived View for tranarchy.fish › ~autumn › break › out.gmi captured on 2023-09-08 at 16:29:42. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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<- Back to break: a hypertext exercise in hyperempathy
you press on down the tracks, not doubling back. you pass into a section of tunnel that runs straight and monotonous for several hundred meters, clearly designed for trains and not for lousy bipedal offcomers. every minute or so your progress is marked by an electrical junction box, you must've counted at least 10 before finally the line begins a shallow slope down, and then steers to the right. an embossed, rusted-white plaque on the wall reads "bank street". a little further round the curve and you start to see the ambient glow of the open night at the end of the tunnel.
as you near the exit the smell of overground replaces underground: street trash and cigarettes and wet pavement instead of dank brick. even closer you hear the chatter of rain growing against the hush, like children in church.
the tunnel opens out onto a short lip above a bend in the river. the ankles of a ruined bridge wade in the water below, and across, the tunnel bores back into the steep bank among the foliage. above you, the sound of the road, and the light of the half-moon. you sit just inside the opening, sheltered from the rain, and your companion crawls parallel on all fours, the pair of you peering out at the night like woodpeckers in a tree hollow.
"i've never felt more like a badger" she says.
"interesting, i was thinking woodpecker"
"oh! yeah, that makes sense" she shifts her weight back into a bird-like crouch. "hmm i don't really think of woodpeckers as nocturnal or very tunnel-dwelling but i can see where you're coming from with the vantage point"
"fair enough"
"this reminds me of when i lived with my brother for a bit. his flat was on the top floor, and it looked over a bend in the road like this, and nearly every single day that i was there, it rained, and rained, and rained-- so much that part of the ceiling in my room fell in, and it didn't get fixed for the whole winter, and it was uncomfortably cold but i was like, basically nocturnal, i used to sit up by the window at night in a bundle of blankets and hot water bottles and watch the water stream down the road and the cars come by through the puddles while i was shivering waiting for my estrogen gel to dry"
"i think you told me about this before, or like, some of it at least, maybe not so romantically"
"really? huh. i don't usually tell stories about my family. but yeah anyway i think like, if you gave that place a couple hundred years, and just left it alone, it'd turn into a river like this. it clearly wants to be one"
you idly pick up a fist-sized chunk of rubble from the floor and toss it over the lip. "yeah, some roads are destined to be rivers". the rock spelunks into the murky deep, creating a spore of bubbles, and a wide ring of waves that ripple across the surface of the water.
"and they're gona be so fucking gorgeous" she says, watching the reflection of the moon shudder as the waves [break](.) against the columns of the ruined bridge.