Broken Tunnel (1)

This tunnel has two ends. The grey end and the forest end. it wasn’t supposed to be like that- It was a law defying tunnel, a rather delinquent tunnel. It decided to open up four different ends to two different worlds. You could say the tunnel was rebelling against the other, plain, matching-ended tunnels. Or maybe it was broken.

Most tunnels are like this. They have many pairs of ends that sets of creatures specific to those ends can enter and exit from.

But the majority of tunnels are perplexing, because they have many different pairs of ends in which many, many sets of creatures walk through, in and out.

There are many loops and holes and loopholes through our universe and through others, but by some coincidence, tunnels are the most likely place to find them. Perhaps it’s because they resemble wormholes themselves- they have two ends, and two separate locations between them. Perhaps whatever created it, created the existence of things, found itself amused by the notion of simplicity in the network of universes that were anything but. There are lots of things like that. Things that are made to look simple.

There was something different about the tunnel that day.

Alice had lived in the Grey End her entire life, but she had never been near the tunnel. It always looked so inconvenient. Crumbly. Broken. It had cracks running from every end of it, and layers of moss grew in them, some shriveled, and some spongy. Trees, shrubs, vines obscured the entrance, so one could only tell it was a tunnel if they got close to it.

It was a terrifying amount of green for the inhabitants of the Grey End. And it was supposed to be winter, too. Nothing should’ve been growing like that.

But the tunnel was always there, and so nobody bothered it. If it had been there, and it wasn’t breaking, and wasn’t causing anyone trouble, there was no need to fix it, they said.

But there was something else.

There was a pushing about the tunnel, away from it. People had reasons why they avoided it, but if they were truthful with themselves, the reason was always second to the decision to avoid it. They were hardly ever truthful with themselves. Hardly anyone ever is, most of the time.

It was the first of November. The trees were almost skeletal, the sky almost white. The chewing gum on the wall under the bridge was almost all frozen stiff.

All except for a wet, grey-green little wad of doublemint, stuck at the bottom of a line of identical wads of doublemint.

Alice went under the bridge every Saturday for tea at the coffee shop in town. She was twelve, and her parents did not explicitly allow her to drink coffee, and as Alice was approaching teenhood, she felt it was her obligation to be obedient at least until her birthday, which was soon anyway, so tea it was.

There was a middle school near the town half-filled with teenagers who liked to put their gum on the wall of the bridge. As the school had been there for a very long time, the gum-wall had been there as long. Almost as ancient were the signs threatening to scrape the gum off the wall, that were always the same sort of thing- threatening a fine for anyone caught vandalizing - but their condition varied, depending on the day of the week. On Monday, Alice would notice, the signs were clean and proud and the slightest bit intimidating, but as the week went past, they grew ripped and sorry-looking, and by Friday they were all virtually gone. Then they would, as if by magic, reappear on Monday, as fresh-faced and bleached as before.

As there were no signs on Saturday threatening a five-hundred dollar fine, twelve-year old Alice sensed that it was the safest day to stick a wad of doublemint on that wall, which in itself was a small act of rebellion.

The line of doublemint had stretched on for forty-two weeks, but there were only thirty-seven pieces, because doublemint, Alice discovered, is not a resilient brand, and wore off the wall off by thirty weeks or so. it was her favorite part of the week, the religious gum-sticking. It made her feel a little older, a little taller.

The town here is based on the town I come from, or at least the geography of it. The gum-wall is a real thing and it is majestic. I got a little carried away with it though. The actual TUNNEL part will be in the next installment of this. I promise it connects...somewhere.

For reviewers: No nitpicks, please, like spaces or quotation-mark errors. comma placement suggestions are acceptable, but just barely. Just barely.

Hope you liked it!