Pursuits1st Place in the Fiction Writing Contest
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Issue 18
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We are a thicket of thin, pale extremities. A dense, rolling tangle beating its way down the hill as fast as our fledgling legs and lungs can take us. We’re impossibly young and our hearts full of fear.
The hill is steep and it’s easy to stumble, easy to outrun your legs and find your body suddenly barreling almost as fast, head over heels, cartwheeling amongst the pack, upsetting its strides and toppling others in turn. If you’re lucky you pick yourself up and keep on running, the fear soon driving you back to that penultimate speed where control is again at issue and once more comes the danger of losing your legs. We are naked down to our shorts, and our feet bare. Our bodies, novice yet nimble, can handle most of the falls. But occasional stones jutting from the ground might crack a bone or split a skull. And there are all those sharp elbows and hard, knobby knees to navigate, bony limbs and pointy digits constantly colliding against and ricocheting off one another. Then there’s the simple matter of attrition. A given body can only take so many blows. I take my share. But over time I find myself in the first group. Not that I’m faster than the others, but my build—tall and long-waisted—works to my advantage. And hence my stride is longer than most and yet my center of gravity low enough to more easily maintain balance descending at full speed. Still, I must constantly avoid compatriots tripping in front and beside. Even those behind, because a “roller” can at times—for a few initial instants at least—exceed the velocity of even the fastest of runners. And to be hit from behind often proves a fatal blow. Yet you dare not look back. It is the longest hill. And it drops at the same steep pitch with an occasional dip or swell here or there to further upset your balance. It seems forever that we run like this, all bunched together, an avalanche of virtually interleaving arms and legs. But in time the ranks thin. And where before there are heaving gasps and pumping knees within inches either side of me and everywhere in front nothing but a sea of frantic, white limbs, now I no longer hear the beleaguered breathing or sense the stifled cries of claustrophobic despair. No longer do we run with the constant threat of collision. There is ample space. We in front have hit our stride, the stride of those whose bodies and rhythms perfectly match the descent. The stride, we imagine, of the survivors. How long we descend without incident I cannot say. Again, it seems forever. So long that we fall into a trance of sorts, our eyes focused only upon our own feet or the heels immediately in front of us, our minds on keeping the pace. And so when the hill bottoms out, it comes suddenly and without warning. But even had we seen it coming, the going would be treacherous, so abrupt does that former steep angle pitch to the most banal of horizontals. Once again there’s a falling of bodies, of boys who fail to make the transition, who continue to run down instead of out. Their knees buckle beneath them. Ankles crack and ligaments tear, and once again those who retain their balance must negotiate those who cannot, adding even more to the growing ranks of the fallen. The fortunate who manage to resume the pace do so only momentarily. For quickly interrupting our path snakes a broad, sunken stream into which our unsuspecting momentum hurls us. The change, though a shock, brings a brief exhilaration. A slap that quickens the blood. We welcome the water both to satisfy our thirst and to cool our all-but-spent bodies. Some relax and relish the experience, as if the flight is over. And for them, it is. Others keep on running in place, as if the same mechanics will carry them through the liquid wall. But their progress is slow and labored and ultimately the stream too deep. For these, too, things have ended. Some of us take to swimming. Never pausing to make the transition from stride to stroke. Using our arms to power us as well as our legs. Pushing on under the assumption that what is behind has now invaded the stream, pursuing even more relentlessly. Still, we do not look back. We emerge from the opposite bank and are immediately running once more. Into a forest thick with pines. Shaking the water off as best we can, because it’s cold in the shadows. Some slow. Some stop altogether, easing their backs against the tacky bark. As if the canopy of needles and branches offers a protection. As if this is the end of the journey. But others, myself included, keep going. We know somehow it’s not the end. And that the ones we now leave behind are no better off than all those who failed to make it down the hill or across the brief level stretch or through the river. And so we run on. Now, instead of dodging one another, we’re evading the trees and the occasional fallen limb or trunk that blocks our way. Weaving and jumping, trying our best not to break stride in a forest that seems to grow thicker and thicker by the minute. At first, I can only see a few of the others out of the corners of my eyes. White streaks here and there interrupting the dense maze of pine. But soon more and more such flashes appear in front of me, and I realize I’m being overtaken. It seems they possess advantages: gaits faster on the flat needled bed, eyes keener in the shadows, hips more nimble in sidestepping the trees, minds more adept at calculating optimal routes and evasive actions fractions of seconds ahead. I find myself falling farther and farther behind. Soon no one is passing me, and I can no longer make out even in the distance so much as a single telltale flicker of white. I wonder if indeed anyone’s to my rear. I keep running. How long a time passes, I cannot say. It seems another forever, longer than all the forevers up to this moment—because if I am indeed the last I’m the most vulnerable. I imagine a presence just inches behind my bare shoulders, readying its fatal reach. But then the forest changes. The level floor turns to a slow but steady incline. The trees themselves morph, the tall, spindly pines gradually giving way to broad, stunted oaks whose gnarly boughs are thicker and much lower to the ground. New skills are required: the angled stride of ascent and the agility to not only dodge trunks and jump fallen wood but to duck low-lying limbs. I begin to gain ground. No longer am I the farthest behind. Twilight descends. Occasionally I hear the cries of a runner who in the ever-encroaching darkness has scraped a shoulder against biting bark or whose head smacks hard against a sudden, pendulous limb. I come across the fallen and upon those who have dropped from a run to a walk. And upon others who’ve taken to hiding behind a wide oak or tucking themselves into the hollow of its trunk. How many I pass I cannot say. It grows darker and darker, and I can barely make out the ashen cast of their bodies or the callow whites of their eyes. Some appear nothing more than ghosts in the crepuscular haze. I keep on at my pace despite the rising uncertainty and constant confusion of shape and form. I fall into a rhythm, an indefinable cadence that matches with precision the random spacing of the trees. In the dark of night how I can apprehend their unpredictable and all-but-invisible presence I don’t know. I just know when to accelerate and when to slow, at what point to sidestep left and what point right, when to drop my head and when to jump. I possess a sight the others do not. I continue on, perhaps alone. * * *
I suspect the forest has ended. The ground is flat once more, and I no longer bob and weave to that mysterious, instinctive rhythmus. I simply run forward and through the warm, parting air. There’s no sound except the regular fall of my feet and my own steady and familiar respiration. It’s the pitchest of blacks, I can see nothing at all. Except when I glance up, to occasionally make out faint pinpricks of light in the boundless night sky. Perhaps they are the uncountable stars. Perhaps mute, innominate markers—one for each of the nameless fallen now long dead behind me.
It does not matter. Sole survivor, I run on. With no intention of stopping. Of ever knowing the truth of what it is that pursues me. Or, if I’m lucky, of what I in turn now pursue. |
RICHARD A. BALLOU is a former executive with a multi-national IT consulting firm who retired from the technology world in his mid-forties to write literary fiction. His stories have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies. Close to a dozen have been finalists or top-three finishers in contests.
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