The Tunnel
By Atlas Nagaria
Under the bridge nook and the autumn trees was a tunnel. Gaping like a cartoonish mouth as little river streams kneaded through twigs and leaves. A bellowing darkness with the gravitational pull of a magnet.
I remember the days passing by the tunnel. With its their after school cloudy blue skies, walking over the thing that separated our world and another, at least that’s how it seemed. Usually, me and a friend would end up discussing it after passing over the bridge, sometimes during, but never before, as we usually had other things to discuss deliberate over like whose candy jumble was better. We had no idea what it led to nor its nature, as to our right was the lazy, cicada chirp laden townscape, and to our left was the sky blue void where the world stopped. So naturally, curious as we were, we began speculating.
The first proposition we agreed upon was in the autumn of grade three, which was that it had something inside it. This idea was formed through the arduous, labor intensive scientific method of peeking into the tunnel before running back to the bridge as the tunnel had a “forcefield” of some kind that prevented us from looking farther inside, it also made us piss pee our pants.
The second was during middle school, hypothesized by his girlfriend, which was about how the tunnel was a metaphor for adulthood, that we were in some novel and that going through the tunnel would let us stay as our magical, middle schools middle-school selves. We tested it, of course, but it ended in lost backpacks, romance novels, and long, solitary bubble baths.
The last and final one was came during high school first year, one mournful day before winter break when my friend offhandedly reminded me of the tunnel.
“Forget it man, no one talks about it anymore.”
“It was fun though, can’t believe we did all that!”
“You mean clogging that thing with garbage? What a waste of time…”
“Sure sure, remember when you thought a spider got in your hair?”
“It felt really discomforting! I had no idea some things could be so hairy…”
“Me neither! Should have taken a photo of that…”
“Please don’t.”
“No really, I should’ve! You were there grinning and sweating like some guy with an apple in a shooting range, we were, what, 14? I think you had some kind of cold after but we still went together, closest we were to the tunnel too! Although we had to turn back ’cause you were such a loser about the spider business…”
“No, you were the loser, holding onto me and complaining how you were too cold and it was too dark, no wonder I got so spooked…”
“Hehe you got me… although…”
“Hm?”
“What.. do you think it is actually.”
“That thing? It’s just a hole.”
“Really?”
“I’d like to believe so”
“I guess that’s what it was then”
