Relay

The trail continues - past, present or future.

RELAY

I can’t breathe. My brain is flooding with panic.

Senseless, destructive panic.

But I can breathe.

I slow my gait down slightly. The muck and mud are becoming harder to navigate now anyway, and I don’t want to get back smelling of it. Overflow slop from the fields. My left ankle twists slightly as it finally realizes the friction on the ground isn’t what it should be – a last warning that slowing is probably a good idea.

I breathe slightly more easily, and try to take in as much as I can, that smell be damned.

I check my watch. 10k left, and it’ll have been a good run. My shoes will probably have to come into the shower with me – I can’t leave them reeking of this compacted, watery dirt. Should be 5k left and I’ll emerge from the trail, back to familiarity.

Lynyrd Skynyrd croon at me through my tinny buds, but the song feels endless, so I tap it off and let nature in. The trail is empty – almost forlorn with abandonment. It’s loneliness. The storm had been wild, and nobody and nothing has lingered, except for the residue of shit. Remnants of rain continue to drop from the rattled leaves, and I diverge around a felled tree, morose in its destruction. I wonder how long until it’s cleared. Will it be cleared? Or will it be left to atrophy, to slowly be swallowed by this empty trail? I don’t even know how long that will take.

Continuing to inspect – and partially to click my stiffening neck - I turn my head back the way I came.

There’s a dark blot back against the trail, and I squint – the wet and the greying sky make everything just a little hazy. Is that a person?

It is a person. A runner. Heading toward me.

The competitive part of me doesn’t want to be overtaken – can I get to the end of the trail before he catches up? So I dig in, having swallowed enough air for now.

The fields pass by, and seem to become mottled with the grey, too. As if it’s leeching into them, absorbing that grey residue from the sky like my shoes are absorbing the shit from the fields. I verge again around a felled tree, similar to the one I had just passed. Very similar.

I turn, and the dark runner is still on my heels. It’s difficult to gauge more from this distance, but he does seem to be closing. Such a dark silhouette – he should probably be wearing something brighter out here, though I suppose there’s no cars.

I wonder vaguely where he came from.

And then I wonder more immediately where he came from.

I had never run the full trail before, but I’d never seen anyone else on it. It’s not exactly accessible – and the quagmire of shit and filth is testament enough that it wasn’t a particularly good idea for me, either.

There main roads are a distant memory to this place – I’m vaguely aware of them somewhere toward the sun, but I can’t even hear that omnipresent whooshing. The village is miles back, and I’m only aware of one farmstead which even slightly intersects with the trail itself.

Where was that runner from? Did he just have the same idea as me?

I look back. He is gaining on me.

I dig in more.

What if he’s not running. What if he’s chasing.

It’s a stupid thought.

But is it?

I look back and though our relative distances are hard to ascertain, I feel that he is digging in, too. No, I know he is.

My pulse begins to panic alongside me, and there’s a shiver of low-level excitement. Heckles rise, and there are goosebumps on my arms, slashed by the cold air.

Shouldn’t I have exited the trail by now? Everything looks the same.

And then I see it – another runner, heading toward me. I am relieved at first, and swallow a little more air just as I swallow that relief. The approaching runner is darkly dressed, as well.

There are other runners on this trail, then. It’s not just me and the man behind – who is still progressing.

I pass a felled tree.

The air is becoming heavier, as though the pressure from a storm. It crackles almost infinitesimally with an electric energy. A surge. I feel that I’m in a cage. Or a tunnel.

The oncoming runner approaches and I see him.

I see me.

I slow myself as I pass a felled tree. Repetitive, and mocking. It is the same tree. It has always been the same tree.

The version of me approaches, but does not slow. His face is a hideous mask of terror, and his pale visage is smeared with blood. Blood and grime.

The panic inside me swells, but I also feel that it is somehow shared.

He does not speak. He does not acknowledge my presence, really. The terror has grasped him. As he passes the tree – that desolate site – I realize something fundamental, without knowing from exactly where it comes:

Something else is here. Something has twisted everything. That version of me – and it is me – has seen it.

But as I cross myself, the doppelganger is gone. He has become air. He was never there at all. Was he my future? Can the blood of the future be averted?

The panic is transmitted immediately to my feet. Discarding all aplomb, I pivot and rush backward. The other version of me was still a distance away, but I head toward him.

There were three of us. Why three?

I am closing the distance, now, to the version of me that had come from nowhere, but cannot be anything other than a twisted crease in my past.

Where did the blood come from? I have to tell him. I have to be a warning – stop! There is something ahead! I can’t explain it, but you have to listen. You have to turn around.

He sees me. I know he does. But I am becoming insubstantial. There is no pain, but it as though that vacuum pressure of this place, the leaden air itself, is consuming me. Or perhaps I am going to atrophy and wither into the mud. Air or earth: I don’t know. I never existed.

--

Was it a ghost? The strange air? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Why did it – he – me – look so terrified? What had happened to him? To me?

I turn around, and try to keep my breathing under control as I head back.

This entire trail seems to pulse with something. Something best forgotten, maybe. The grey sky undulates, as though something incomprehensible is shivering in anticipation and tasting everything below it.