CW: Suicide

It’s a familiar question, one we’ve all heard. It’s the one your mother used to ask when you got into trouble. An ugly, tiresome question. But perhaps it gains new meaning for you today.
You’ve never really thought about the bridge before. It’s different once you’re standing here, with the river far below, the wet-cold air stinging your eyes. You can smell watery rot, the whiff of dead things. There’s darkness below the surface. Darkness and dirty water. And perhaps other things, too.

You left home this morning not knowing you’d end up at the bridge. That’s not unusual – the bridge can surprise people – but it’s also not not unusual, you understand. For most, the bridge looms up gradually. You might sense it from a young age, or after a difficult life event. Its shadow might darken your horizon as you edge towards adulthood, always alert for the glare of sunlight on steel, the whine of wind between railings.

You don’t talk to your friends about the bridge. If your friends end up there too, that’s on them.

So you didn’t know where you were going, this fine November afternoon. You walked in a pack, probably. A shrieking, schoolgirl pack, the kind that old ladies cross the street to avoid. You chewed gum, swapping headphones between the intimate, soft-skinned hollows of your ears.
So how did you end up at the bridge? Was it a dare, a stupid joke? So-and-so or so-and-so’s brother or sister did it here. Did what? You know what. Let’s go look, you probably said. You like to scare each other at that age. (At any age.) Let’s go see where they jumped.

You assumed the police would have installed a safety rail. Blocked off the footpath, even. All those deaths! There should be memorials, flowers, handmade signs taped into plastic to protect them from the rain. It should be a site of national mourning.

But it’s not. It’s just the same old bridge. You looked for yellow tape, for WARNING signs. STEEP DROP. DANGER. Seeing none, you crept closer. Onto the bridge itself. Hands on the railing, single file. Slowly, as if escorting a coffin.

In the middle of the bridge, you formed your neat little row, looking down. That’s when you got the giggles. You yanked each other’s arms, screaming, pretending to skid towards the edge. Thoughts of so-and-so’s brother or sister evaporated in the face of your exhilaration. The water stared up at you, black and impassive.

I don’t understand your laughter. I’m not like you anymore.

My own experience blurs into itself the longer I’m down here. I don’t remember individual incidents, only feelings. The scarlet embarrassment of being different. The way I looked down, always down, as though staring into deep water even then. The gut-sick loathing. The rage which pulsed with misery until rage and misery became one.

It got worse after puberty. Social capital began to translate into sexual value, which translates into self-worth. I stood at the mirror and squished my face as if it were putty. Smeared the makeup I wasn’t allowed to wear around both eyes until I couldn’t see myself. Tried to pretend I was pretty, although it wouldn’t have helped. Even then, I saw the outline of the bridge, etched across my tearful, teenage eye like a floating lash.

So: to return to the railing. You’re there, and you’re cold (none of your friends wore a coat, so neither did you). The wind moves along the bridge with purpose, as though trying to push you back to firm ground. You ignore it. You’re a fourteen-year-old girl; you can’t be swayed.

Should we do it?

Your friends shuffle closer, giggling. This is a lark to them. Everything is – school, grades, family. They’ve got their whole lives ahead of them.

Beringed hands clamp the railing. The girls release high-pitched screams of laughter into the breeze. You’re silent. Your throat has closed up.

So-and-so did it. So-and-so really jumped. Stood right here and jumped.

From my chiaroscuro vantage below the surface, I watch your friends shriek and grip each other’s hands, up there on the bridge. You’re at the end of the line. Pretending to shriek too, your mouth wide, wondering if you belong there at all. You’re not really going to jump, are you? Are they?

I never thought I’d do it, either. Nobody ever does. It’s a game in your head until the last minute. A what-if, a why-not. But there were no friends to hold my hands that day.

They did a study once, of people who’d been to the bridge and survived. Not this particular bridge, but then this bridge isn’t particular. Some bridges are, for our purposes – the Golden Gate; the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge – but really it’s every bridge, it’s any bridge. The survivors all knew they would survive. They never doubted it.

If you jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, you’re two hundred and fifty feet up. Two hundred and sixty, at low tide. You travel that distance at around seventy-five miles per hour.

Can you imagine the high?

Once you jump, for most people, it’s game over. The water smacks into you with the force of a freight train. If not killed on impact, you drown. I don’t remember which happened to me. What I remember is opening my eyes in the darkness of the below-bridge and seeing the riverbed, with its dank scattering of litter.

When you fall, I’ll be waiting. The water is dark and cold, like a chest full of guilt. Swim down towards me, my love. I’ll take your bloated hands in mine. Together we’ll swim, you and I and all of your friends who jumped with you. We’ll be a shoal of smooth and limber corpses among the weeds and broken shopping trolleys of the riverbed.

Isn’t it tempting?

So I ask you again, my dear, my darling: if all your friends jumped off a bridge – would you?

Originally published in Tales From Between, Issue 2, 12th April 2023

​If you are struggling and need help, please dial 988 for the Suicide Hotline (USA). International Hotlines can be found here. 

Katie McIvor is a Scottish writer. She studied at the University of Cambridge and now lives in the Scottish Borders with her husband and baby daughter. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines such as The Deadlands, PodCastle, and Little Blue Marble, and her three-story collection is out now with Ram Eye Press. You can find her on Twitter at @_McKatie_ or on her website at katiemcivor.com.

The wax on Ella's birthday candles dripped onto the cake, causing the number three to bend forward as though wielding an invisible power. At any moment, it could collapse; perhaps it would collide with the zero and melt into one blob. Which age would she prefer it to be? Anything but thirty. It had been a difficult year, and she couldn’t help but think back to her birthday the year before when things were happier and easier.

But her friends stared at her expectantly; they wanted her to make a wish. Her boyfriend, Ethan, nodded at her as if to say, it’s ok; nothing terrible will happen. Yet, he didn’t understand what it meant to her. This was Ella’s first year with a shop-bought celebratory cake. In previous years, her Aunt Amanda would make her a chocolate fudge special with extra ganache. But her aunt had passed away six months ago of ovarian cancer, an almost silent but deadly killer. It was a mere few weeks between her first symptoms of bloating and her death. Ella held back her tears as she thought back to holding the hand of her last living family member.

The wax dripped onto the thick icing again—it was barely visible on the almost plastic-like surface, but if she didn’t make a wish soon, her friends would think she was insane. Somehow, she felt she was betraying the memory of her aunt and all those lovingly prepared special cakes. She closed her eyes and tried to convince herself that it didn’t matter. Birthday wishes weren’t real anyway.

I wish someone from my family was still alive.

She blew out the candles, and everyone cheered. Ethan handed her a mug of sparkling wine, and someone turned up the music. Ella danced around the kitchen, forgetting entirely about her earlier worry about the cake and her wish. At some point, one of her friends sliced up the cake, and she tried a bite, but even in her drunken state, she felt a pang of grief for her aunt’s baking. She left the part-eaten slice covered in a napkin on the edge of the table.

The following day, Ella woke up in Ethan’s bed alone. She’d hoped their night together might be more memorable, but perhaps they could re-enact the events later. If only she could piece together what had happened after eating a bite of the cake. Maybe the sugar had been too much after all the upset, and of course, the wine. She sat up and sniffed, and she realised she could smell smoke. With that, she realised she could hear the incessant whining of the smoke detector accentuating her headache.

She stumbled out of bed towards the door, surprised to notice that she was fully dressed. Perhaps she’d passed out before any fun last night. But where was Ethan?

The heat burned her eyebrows, leaving a singed smell in her nostrils as she entered the kitchen diner. Laid out on the floor in six perfect lines of five were the party guests, her friends. But she realised quickly that they weren’t sleeping off the alcohol. Smoke poured out of them, and their charred clothes revealed burnt red skin. The only intact thing was their shoes; she screamed as she spotted Ethan’s Converses.

In the kitchen, one person remained singing along to the radio. As she tuned out the ear-piercing smoke alarm, Ella realised the song was Happy Birthday, playing repeatedly. The woman turned around and showed Ella a delicious-looking chocolate fudge cake.

“I see you made your wish, dear,” said Aunt Amanda with a smile that looked totally different from how Ella remembered. She pointed to the bodies, “We won’t need this anymore,” she picked up the napkin with the uneaten cake and threw it into the bin.

​Samantha lives in Plymouth where she is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Plymouth on the topic of poetry and chronic illness. She writes poetry and short fiction as well as running workshops. Her fiction has been published in Luna Station Quarterly, Fairfield Scribes, Flash Fiction Magazine, and 101 Words. She can be found on the website formerly known as Twitter as @sam_c4rr.