I was running. It wasn't for fear or hurriedness, but for the sake of doing so. I was jogging. Jogging through dark, moist, warm tunnels past friendly people. I was home. I ran through some long corridors until I happened into a large, cavernous room. A hole in the roof let the morning sun shine in. I ran across a large bridge, and I thought to myself how wonderful this bridge was, that if Ketchikan had bridges like this, I would have take up jogging eons ago just for the sake of crossing this bridge again and again.
At the opposite end of the bridge was a very old direlect bridge. I stopped and looked at it's rusty look, the copper and bronze construction giving it a very steam-punk feel. The darkness of the cavern seemed to make an exception for this antique. The boards accross the main span had rotted or fallen out years ago, but I could climb on top of the metal truss and cross it. The rock island on the other side seemed to be a mossy oasis. Children were playing there under a happy mother's supervision.
I climbed up and crossed, finding myself not on an island, but on a rock slap, similar in size and shape to a large cargo pallet, suspended from the cave roof by two ropes. The children and mother had vanished. Suddenly aware of my precarious situation, I watched as one woman simply jumped off, across to the adjacent cliff less than a yard away. Easy, I thought.
As I prepared for my own small jump, I then found myself laying on the slab. I felt weird. Something wasn't right. I was still upright. One of the ropes had come undone. A single rope held the slab aloft, and I was laying on it, vertically, hanging by that single rope. I reached up, wrapped my arm through the rope hoping that if it did break, only the rock would fall into the dark gorge below me...
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