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They were the kind of spine-tingling tales sprung from grade school field trips and carried on campfire smoke.
There was, allegedly, an entity, a creature, the demon imp who owned the bridge and was certainly close by if ever the white-and-yellow carvings were seen through the trees. The legend said that it was not so much strong, but smart and cruel, and stalked its prey in the woods. The one constant description of it was this: it’d lost its face and longed to find a suitable replacement.
Its giving foreshadowing?
Most myths have one foot in a reality so distressing mythic decorations are necessary to hide a greater horror, even as they keep the story alive.
She thought of how most terrible things in life began as terrible motivations.
Some stories simply rang true.
Brenda had told nobody and had no goodbyes to give.
Breaking a cardinal crime junkieife rule
She breathed in. She almost said its name. But like the negative vibes she feared somehow influencing the footage, even the lives of those involved with any movie, she couldn’t bring herself to say something so sinister.
And what could she encounter out there that could be any worse than what had already happened?
Was this grief’s only gift? The eradication of the highs, by way of leveling the lows?
But she was hoping to find one thing and one thing alone: a bridge.
You had to work for the big things. You had to reach out and take your accomplishments—like all the great filmmakers and artists.
Why would she hang out in drugstore parking lots like the other teens in town when she could film a movie instead? Why text crushes all night? Why scroll meaningless memes? Why stare critically at digitally altered selfies when there was real art to be made—some actual truth to capture in all its imperfect glory?
That was the thing about pushing an envelope: they’d all been pushed before, by someone else. It wasn’t the envelope a good filmmaker should worry about, but the letter inside.
In the cracks of their new realities, they’d always hear the lamentation of the vain imp, its howlsong rising like misery, like horror, from the forest deep.
