Lena's face was less than a foot from the ground.

But that was impossible. She should have been gazing down at the desolate street below, not bracing herself mere inches from a stone floor, inside a dreary stone corridor lit by torches affixed to the walls.

She pulled her head out of the gate. She was still crouched on the pedestrian bridge. Her feet were still perched on the worn asphalt situated in the heart of Seattle. There was no sign at all of the medieval-looking structure she'd found herself in on the other side of the gate.

"What the hell?" she muttered to herself. She felt like she was dreaming or hallucinating. What she'd just seen couldn't exist. It was impossible. And yet, there it was. She'd seen it with her own eyes. She'd smelled the mustiness of the room and heard the flicker of the torches' flames. It was real.

She wanted to run away — to go home, slide into her bed and pretend like none of this had ever happened. And yet ... how could she go on living her life knowing she'd witnessed something that shouldn't be, and done nothing about it?

She poked her head through the opening again, half expecting the dark room to be gone. But it was still there. She craned her neck to look above her and saw that the ceiling matched the floor and walls — it was all made of stone.

She placed one hand on the cold floor, then the other. She heaved herself up and crawled through the opening.

When she was fully through, she stood and looked behind her. The rectangular portion of the fence was hanging open in the corridor, looking completely out of place. The gate she'd crawled through was about an inch above the ground and looked like it was set inside the stone wall at the end of the hallway. It looked like a window into another world. She could see the pedestrian bridge and even the cafe where she worked. Yet instead of careening onto the street below, which everything she knew about physics suggested should be happening to her right now, she was standing on an ancient-looking stone floor.

She grabbed the corner of the chain-link gate and swung it back into place. As it realigned with the wall, Lena gasped as the chain links became stone, matching the wall behind it. It was like the gate had disappeared.

She stopped just shy of closing it completely, though. It had suddenly occurred to her that if it closed completely, she may not be able to open it again.

That's when she remembered the lock.

The homeless man had removed the lock from the fence at this very spot. Lena had assumed he was removing a symbol of some long lost love, but what if that lock really had been locking something? What if it had been locking this gate that led to ... what? Another world?

Without the lock securing the gate, she shouldn't need to worry about this interdimensional portal locking behind her. She turned around and took in the dimly lit corridor. It looked like it belonged in some aging castle in Europe or Scandanavia — not hanging hidden above the streets of Seattle.

Part of her was scared by the unknown this stone castle — as she'd begun calling it in her mind — represented. But another part of her was exhilarated. She was an explorer, diving headfirst into an unknown world. Who knew what awaited her — good or bad? She'd explore this place for a few minutes, then head back.

Her shoes clicked against the stone floor as she strolled through the hall, squinting in the dim torchlight. The corridor wrapped around to the right, and as she made the turn, the path that lay ahead looked exactly like the one she'd just traversed.

When she came to the next bend, however, instead of coming to another flat corridor, she was confronted with a set of steps descending into the heart of the castle. They continued down out of sight, giving no hint what treasures or horrors may lay below.

She stepped down, feeling deep down that she shouldn't descend these steps, that it would be best to turn around and walk back the way she'd come. But something kept her going, as if her body was on autopilot and she was just a helpless passenger.

Finally, she reached the last step, finding herself at the bottom of a stairwell that opened to the right. She walked through and found herself in a foyer. Her eyes stung from the sunlight streaming through several large windows in the wall.

Her mind was bombarded by the countless contradictions. It was after eleven at night, and yet sunlight streamed through these windows. The foyer looked abandoned, overgrown with wild vegetation, yet the hallways were lit with torches that required constant refueling.

On the other side of the foyer was a door that led outside. Lena walked to it. She wanted to see what this place looked like from the outside. She'd do that much, and then she'd be satisfied. She'd walk back through the gate, resume her normal life and forget that this place, whatever it was, existed.

She trudged through the overgrowth, cursing her decision that morning to wear flats and tights instead of something more rugged — but of course, she hadn't known she'd be tumbling through a gateway to another dimension built into the side of a pedestrian bridge. She tore a couple holes in her tights, and tripped a couple times over the vegetation, but she managed to make it to the edge of the forest.

She turned around and gasped as she took in the full magnificence of the castle she'd just emerged from. It towered over her, like some massive skyscraper in her home city. But it was in ruins: The west wall had collapsed, and the walls that were still standing were covered top to bottom in thick gnarls of vines.

The scene was even more surreal on account of the eery silence that accompanied the moment. There was the faint rustling of a breeze, but nothing more. For a woman who had lived her whole life in the city, surrounded by the constant cocaphany that accompanied such a life, the absence of noise was not just palpable, but unsettling.

She stood there for several minutes, letting the breeze pass through her hair, taking in the majesty of the castle, the forest and the brilliant blue sky overlooking it all. She was struck by the sudden urge to capture the moment. She reached down to pluck her phone out of her pocket.

Before her fingers met her pocket, a pair of large, rough hands gripped either side of her waist. Before she could even scream, someone slid a bag over her head and pulled it down over her upper body. Now, she screamed, a shrill, terrified scream that echoed beyond the castle but was deadened by the density of the forest.

Something struck her in the side of her head, and her world faded to black.

Lena sat still, stunned. But when the gravity of what she'd just seen finally registered, she sprang into action. A man had just tumbled off the pedestrian bridge onto the street below. She had to get help — if he wasn't already dead.

She flew out the door and peered over the edge of the bridge, scanning for any sign of the broken body that surely lay below. But it was dark and she couldn't make anything out. Her breath came out in ragged gasps. She knew that if he'd survived the fall, it was imperative that she find him quickly — every second that went by reduced the chances that he could be saved.

She had to look for him down there, on the street, and the quickest way down was a staircase at the end of the bridge. She sped down the deserted walkway, then dashed down the steps, taking them two or three at a time.

She ran down the street to where the man had fallen, but there was no sign of him. But that was impossible. He had to be here — she'd seen him fall from the bridge with her own eyes. She looked up, orienting herself to make sure she was standing in the right spot. There was the sign for her cafe, just barely peeking over the top of the chain link fence. She was in the right place, but he wasn't here.

Was it possible he'd survived the fall and skulked off into the night? She looked around for signs of blood, because there was no way he'd fallen from such a height and not been injured. But there was nothing.

Was she going crazy? Was it possible there had never been a man at all — that she had imagined the whole thing?

No. It was late, but it wasn't that late. She wasn't sleep deprived — yet. And she wasn't on drugs. She'd seen what she had seen.

She made her way back up the stairs, but there was no urgency to her movement like there'd been as she'd flown down them. She replayed the scene in her mind: The man, standing at the side of the bridge, lost in thought, then suddenly careening into the air through a hole in the fence ...

The hole. In her panic, Lena had forgotten all about the opening in the fence. The man had pushed the fence and it had swung open like a gate. But that made no sense. The whole point of the fence was to keep people from falling or jumping off. There was no point in building a gate into it — a gate that didn't go anywhere.

As she approached the spot where the man had stood, she slowed, studying the fence. There was no hole. No gate. Nothing to indicate the event she'd witnessed had happened at all.

She bent down and leaned forward, studying it closer. There had to be something.

And then she spotted it: A slight, almost imperceptible break in the fence. It looked like the gate had swung outward, then been pushed back into place — but it had been pushed back just a bit too far, making it clear to careful eyes that there was an opening.

"I'm not crazy," she whispered to herself. But that realization frightened her even more. It meant the man really had tumbled through the gate ... and he had really disappeared out of thin air.

Lena raised a shaking hand toward the fence, hesitantly, as if she feared it would shock her. When her hand and the fence connected, she pushed, and the gate swung out into the open air. She took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, centering herself. She did the balloon exercise again, this time filling it up with her fear and anxiety before releasing it into the void.

She opened her eyes. She took one last breath for good measure, then thrust her head through the hole in the fence.

Lena

Damn you, Jason.

Lena was fuming. Her manager, Jason, had scheduled her for a closing shift. He'd also scheduled her to open the next morning. So here she was at nearly eleven at night, mopping the floor she'd be returning to in the morning with less than five hours of sleep.

It wasn't the first time he'd done this, either. Jason enjoyed wielding his managerial power, but the fact was he'd been in her shoes less than a year earlier. In fact, he and Lena had been friends once, when they'd both been mere baristas. But Jason had been promoted, much to Lena's bafflement, and the power had gone to his head. Lately it seemed like he was trying to come up with new ways to ruin her life.

Whatever. There was nothing she could do about it — she needed this job, desperately, and quitting wasn't an option — so she took a minute to breathe deeply and center herself. She thought back to what her instructor had told her at a meditation retreat she'd attended last summer: She didn't control her negative thoughts and emotions; they controlled her.

She closed her eyes and imagined herself stuffing all her anger toward Jason into a black balloon. When it was completely filled, looking like it might burst, she let it go and watched it float off into the sky until it disappeared.

She opened her eyes. She was still pissed at Jason, but she felt a little calmer. She finished mopping the floor and took the mop bucket into the back to dump it. She was done for the night - finally. She hung her apron on the wall, grabbed her purse and swung the strap around her shoulder, and made for the door.

Before reaching for the handle, she caught sight of a homeless man standing outside. She paused. She didn't like stereotyping the homeless, but there didn't appear to be anyone else around and it made her nervous to leave the cafe by herself.

She took a seat by the window and watched him. Maybe he'd go away in a minute or two. She rummaged through her purse until she found a canister of pepper spray. If he didn't leave soon, she'd have it at the ready when she left.

The man looked to be in his mid to late twenties, although he may have appeared older than he was on account of his unkempt hair and beard. He wore faded, baggy jeans and an old, black bomber jacket. A black beanie and a pair of thin cotton gloves were his only other protection against the chill of the night.

Lena watched as he shuffled over to the fence on the other side of the pedestrian bridge that connected downtown Seattle to the ferry terminal. He plunged a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled something out of it, although Lena couldn't see what it was.

She could guess, though. She suspected he'd just retrieved a key.

Much like the Pont des Arts in Paris, the bridge leading to the Seattle ferry had become a magnet for lovebirds eager to symbolize their affection for each other by securing a padlock to the bridge's chain link fence. There were nowhere near as many locks on the Seattle bridge as the one in Paris, but there were enough of them to turn the heads of passersby.

Having worked at a cafe facing the fence for more than two years, Lena had seen countless couples add their locks to the collection. She'd even added one herself, almost a year ago, with her boyfriend — ex-boyfriend, now — Brett. A lock hadn't been enough to salvage their particular relationship. The lock was still up there, though; they'd chucked the key off the side of the bridge, because, why not? They thought their love would last forever.

Most people ditched their keys, actually, which is why it was so odd that this man had held on to his. Instead of thinking of him as a threat, she was beginning to wonder who he was as a man. Had he loved someone once? Was it before or after he'd become homeless? And why was he here now, presumably to remove the lock that symbolized his love? Had his lover died? Maybe, as had happened between Lena and Brett, it was simply the love itself that had died.

She felt like a voyeur as she spied on him, but she couldn't help herself. Her eyes wide, she watched, fascinated, as he raised his hands toward one of the locks. With his back blocking her view, all Lena could tell was that he was fiddling with the mechanism, but she assumed he was inserting his key.

Sure enough, the lock clicked open. He plucked it off the chain link and held it in his hands a moment, staring down at it as if it were some mystical relic rather than a common tool one could procure at any hardware store. Finally, he dropped it into his pocket.

Lena expected him to walk away. He seemed to have gotten what he'd come for, after all.

Instead, to Lena's bewilderment, the man pushed on the fence. A rectangular section, maybe five feet wide by four feet tall, swung outward as if hinged like a door. The man glanced to his left and right. He paused a moment, then climbed through the opening and disappeared.

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