Free Runner

The sun loomed over vine-covered bricks that huddled on an abandoned roof corner like a bird’s nest on a rocky ledge. Its rays teased the darkness of the alleyway below, flirting illumination at the shadowed passage, kissing the mossy walls that have now become Jim’s prison.

Laying on his side on soggy asphalt, Jim grabbed his head and strained his eyes to tighten his blurred vision. How long have I been here, he thought. A stinging in the creases of the sunburned skin outlining his squinting visage replied, all day.

Jim looked up to the mist above the buildings, illumined by the setting sun which was now out of sight behind the brick structures surrounding him, and peered at the rolling, invading, orange fog drowning him in shadow. He scanned the alley as he propped himself up with sore, languid arms. Bruised and tender, his palms sunk into the weed covered dirt sprouting out between the cracks in the asphalt.

The air hinted mildew and excrement. Searching for the source, he discovered a rusted dumpster. Ruptured, its black, shiny plastic insides spilled out of its sides like aged roadkill. The tenants of the building had stored their trash in this box long after they had the means to empty it, and it now lived on, housing rats and roaches and God knew what else.

A pair of eyes revealed themselves in a bag resting on the heap. Adrenaline nipped sharply at Jim’s heart, and a closer look brought into focus the fur and fluffy black and white tail of a raccoon. His fear subsided, only to flood his chest again as he focused on another set of eyes floating beyond it.

Jim stood.

“What—” he croaked, taking a step forward, his vision centered on the figure’s bright blue eyes as its outline drew itself in the fog.

“Hello?” Jim ordered, as if this creature, piercing Jim with its gaze would be soothed into parley by assertive gentility. Fog flowed from its dark mouth in harmony with the depressing of its chest. It then gritted its teeth, lowering itself into a sprinter’s take-off pose.

“Who—” Jim started to ask, and right then, the monster leapt forward and in two bounds approached the dumpster with quickening steps. Jim turned and started running. As he looked back, he saw the monster gliding over the dumpster with its hands slapping the lid, and he turned forward desperately scanning the wall for a way up. He skipped two steps up the wall and gripped a red gridiron covering a window which mocked him with unreachable freedom, and he started his ascent.

His motions were natural. I’ve done this before, he thought. His body, however, felt sluggish and achy. Every muscle he used to launch up or leap out and clasp a ledge or cleft stressed, but held, like the mast of an old sailboat, burdened by use, and hardened with the moisture from a dozen sailors’ sweat. His hand reached the roof, and the brick he held liberated, leaving him hanging there like an unzipped jacket angling weakly on a hanger’s groove. As his eyes tracked the sinking brick they met, once again, with the piercing stare of the monster, so he quickly dug his toes into a mortar line between some bricks, reaffirmed his grip, and jump-slid onto the roof, his fear tricking him into thinking his ankles had already been grasped as he pulled his feet over the edge. He spent no time confirming the progress of his pursuer and sprinted across the rooftop, hopping over unused machines encased in aluminum housing units, sliding with seasoned agility under rusted air ducts. He approached an iron door and with full speed and force slammed into it. The sound of slapping iron echoed throughout the staircase, sneering at him from within as he laid flat against the locked door, and he crumpled down to the ground like a crash dummy.

Searching through his headache, he discovered his pursuer halfway across the rooftop, fog pumping from its mouth, routing the summit like a steam train. He found his strength and sprang up, scanning for an exit, but found none and ran out onto the roof’s eaves and peered below. His eyes locked onto an industrial bin, squinting to see its contents: Empty, red, cardboard boxes. The height of the drop daunted him, so he looked back at his hunter for inspiration. He frighteningly turned back towards the bin, taking a deep breath, and jumped, aiming directly for the center of the bin. He jumped up, not out, so as to position himself mid-air over his target and let gravity do the work. He knew not to jump at his target, but to fall onto it, preventing an overshot. Somehow, he knew the technique.

The initial g-force in his abdomen caused him to gasp, so he quickly inhaled but started screaming, circling his arms and kicking his legs like a swimmer, desperately clawing for control, navigating the air with a breast-stroke. After a few stories, his eyes welled up as the air rushed up all around him, faster and faster, the wind swiping tears from his eyes. He slammed into the bin dead-center and sent boxes flying up into the air like a meteor strike would shatter dirt. In the center of the crater, Jim stirred and tasted styrofoam: the boxes were filled with it. He exhaled in relief and looked up towards the roof. He saw his monster grinning at him through the falling packaging peanuts, like gazing up at the looming sun through falling snow. What is he waiting for, he thought. What is he grinning at, he wondered.

Jim snapped out of it and hurried out of the bin, searching for a direction, and followed a line of construction cones into the street. He knew the thing was not behind him but he couldn’t stop thinking about the way it stared at him from the rooftop. It seemed anxious, like it was waiting for something. It seemed, he thought, almost human.

He slowed to a jog when a loud crash invaded his senses. It had caught him, he thought. He feared he was done for, hugging his head, surrendering to his knees. After a few seconds he heard tapping. Tapping, he thought, no, running! His head shot back to catch a glimpse of the figure’s head bobbing like a fruit in the wind, fists swinging like an angry, dicing chef.

Like a mouse carrying stolen cheese, Jim took off down the street, searching for a hole, searching for some cover. He thought he heard another crash echoing in the distance. What is happening? he thought.

The sun lazed low past the horizon. Jim couldn’t see it through the fog, he could sense it. He smelled the night coming like the beast was upwind. He felt the air thicken as fog approached from the sea: a blanket rushing to tuck him in. He heard the monster behind him, its breath pumping from its chest, its feet slapping the concrete. It sounded like more than one pair, now. Had the monster multiplied? he thought. Would he be chased interminably, forced into fatigue by a beast and his progeny?

Then he heard their voices: a whole family, like barking seals. In fact, they are seals, he thought, he must be at the piers. The slaps he heard were the ice cold, green waves striking the dock walls. He heard seagulls and a bell far off across the water where a fishing boat, the crew his potential saviors, were just out of reach. If only they knew that he needed help, that soon after, he wouldn’t have the energy to struggle, and he would lose his life here, on the dock, but a few waves away from having a future. He thought of all the captives he had heard about on the news, girls and boys who were taken from their lives. Some runaways, and some equally unlucky, were taken to a faraway place to be used or abused, often hidden in the basement of the average person’s neighbor. He thought about those kids, shutting off their minds, gazing at the walls, wishing they were clear like cleaned glass, that someone on the other side would peer in, curiously, to see their low-life acquaintance, and the dark reds and murky grays that poisoned his soul, that found other ways to penetrate the souls of the poor prisoners around them: Neighbors people never knew they had, and whose screams of pain, whimpers of hopelessness, they never knew they had heard faintly, muffled by mere drywall. If only they heard. Instead, the captives and their captor the only audience of this broken symphony heard hymns of sorrow in an average hall on an average street, which might as well have been in outer space where sound waves don’t travel.

Jim traveled over the dock, his feet slamming against wooden planks. Softened by moisture, the planks gave his steps extra bounce and speed, and he hoped they wouldn’t do the same for his pursuers. He didn’t feel tired; he ran as though he could run forever. His stamina was impressive and it gave him comfort. He thought he might be able to run until some day he had found some police, or maybe a priest.

He quickened his stride and ran at near full speed. In the distance, the end of the dock took its closed, rectangular shape. No, he thought, it’ll catch me, it’ll kill me! If he hadn’t been surrounded by fog, he could map out a route, eye out in the distance the most difficult path, the one with the most obstacles just to slow it down.

Then, a huge red flash blinked in the distance. Praying for something in that direction, Jim blindly leapt from the pier and soared through the air with his eyes focused on an unfamiliar shape rocking below him. His feet and hands slammed on the deck of an anchored boat, and he rolled and used his momentum to run two steps to jump off of it to the next.

He had found the marina, and could leap from boat to boat until he came to another pier. He quickened over the next boat, and the next. One had a cabin on the deck in front of him, and as he landed he got through half of his roll before slamming into it, knocking the wind out of him. He got up, inhaling as hard and deep as he could to gain back his breath, stepping back and putting one foot against the boat’s guardrail, and pushed off towards the cabin wall. He ran two steps up and gripped the top edge with both hands, pulling himself to its roof.

He stood to catch his breath, and listened to the air behind him, hearing the monster traverse the boat park: it had taken the same route. How did it know where to go, Jim wondered, how can I outrun this beast if he knows where I am without seeing me?

Up until this point, his fears had been quieted by his adrenaline, but they now bubbled up to the surface, weighing down on his intestines. Every time the beast would step across a boat to jump, his heart would palpitate; every thud that resonated on the beast’s landing would pull his intestines down, lower and lower. With the steps he would grab his chest and the crashes, his belly.

Jim’s primal instinct crept up on him. Run, said the voice in his mind. With every thud and boom of the landing, it said run! He took a few steps towards the sidewall of the cabin, backwards. He strode a couple of steps to the edge and leapt from it, but slipped slightly, floating down to the dock which now came into focus. He started sinking towards the water and stretched out. His forearms slammed onto it, and his hands slid to the corner of the wood, forcing splinters into his palms and fingers. The pain from his left hand was too much to bear and it dropped to his side. Once again he was left dangling from one arm, like chum for his pursuer to jump up over the water and snatch him from the hook. He let out a scream as every movement of his hanging shifted the splinters in his fingertips. He put up his other hand and lifted one leg to the dock edge, rolling onto his back, tears streaming down his temples into his hair.

A gargling yell coming from the boats forced his eyes wide open, and he looked in its direction. He heard another thud and it motivated him to get up and start running. He glided into the empty street, and a big red light blinked many yards above him on the “Visitors Welcome” sign over the road.

Jim jogged down the street grasping at the splinters in his hands. His blood made gripping the splinters like pulling blackheads with moist fingers. Behind him, he faintly heard the steps of the beast’s stride, and it seemed to have slowed its pace. Was it fatigued, he wondered. In no horror movie that he had seen did the antagonist stop to take a rest unless it were planning to materialize around the corner or in a shadow behind the hero when he himself stopped to rest. Why was this monster slowing down, he thought, was it getting tired? He wondered as he flinched from the sensation of accidentally pushing the splinters deeper into his skin as he attempted to wrestle them out.

Jim quickened his pace, and as he gained speed, he heard the sounds of sprinting footsteps echo around the street. It sounded like many pairs of feet now. Had the beast truly multiplied, he questioned, and the thought terrorized him. He stopped to get a better listen, but the steps didn’t get louder.

“What’s going on,” he yelled, “what is this?”

As he continued running, the sounds of the footsteps finally did get louder and were joined by yells and whistles. These noises are the sounds of the demons which haunt me, he thought, and with each few yards he strafed, the steps and the hollow undertones of the beasts became more pronounced. His adrenaline was kicking in and as he ran, the howling turned into roaring, sending fear up and down his back and shoulders. He helplessly imagined the monsters gripping his back and forcing him down. He expected at any moment the beasts to snarl at him from an inch behind his ear, the warmth from their breath soothing and consoling him into their arms, his casket.

Jim felt his end sweeping up to him with the wind that teased him as he ran. He felt the years slipping away, his memories turning to dust, scattered by death’s breath and lost in its darkness. What memories had he of today, he thought. How had he ended up in that alley with the dumpster? What unlucky turn had he made in his life that warranted this suffering? He realized he had no memory of the past day, week, month, year. Am I dead, he wondered, is this real? Just then, the howling and stepping reached a high decibel, and Jim learned of their true source.

“People.” he said.

People! Some dressed in jackets and windbreakers to brave the cold weather, and some less prepared, huddling next to each other, hiding from the cold wind behind cars and against the buildings on the street. How long had they stood here, he thought, what were they cheering for?

With his mouth and eyes wide open, he stumbled to the nearest person and extended his bloodied hands out to her, crying for assistance.

“Help me,” he pleaded, “they’re after me, they’ll kill me!”

The lady eyed his hands and studied his terror-stricken face. Jim’s hands got a foot away from her overcoat before she finally stopped clapping and with a horrified expression ran a few steps and screamed. The people around them also quit cheering and instead stared at him in disgust.

“Please,” he groaned, “help me!”

He buried his face in his hands and wept, kneeling on the asphalt. His tears mixed with the blood on his hands and as he inched his face away, strings of sticky, dirty crimson stretched from it like hot, melted cheese from a bitten pizza. Women covered the eyes of their children and told them not to look. Men grimaced and a couple of them—their stomachs already uneasy from hot dogs and beer—brought their hands to their mouths and gagged.

The silence that now surrounded Jim was broken by the rumbling of running footsteps. He looked back. It had multiplied, he thought, arising to his feet, motioning to the few people who still stood near him.

“Get away,” he yelled, “run!”

He ran to a red scaffold constructed on the side of the nearest building. The people didn’t run, they just stood there watching him scale the scaffold with puzzled looks on their faces.

Jim hurried up the scaffold as it shook against the building, and paused when he felt a shifting in its stability: He was feeling the steps of the beasts as they stomped onto it. He looked up and started to climb the bars that framed the structure, swinging up one bar and catching the next with his legs, hooking and swinging up each bar and sometimes springing up a whole level like a monkey. Up and up he swung and climbed, and finally reached the roof of the building, ten stories high.

The rooftop was littered with large, constructed platforms, jungle gym bars, and stair structures that led seemingly to nowhere. These areas were sectioned off by flimsy walls made from collapsible aluminum frames, and plastic sheets speckled with cutouts. The pathway was zoned off with a red flag preceding its entrance, and the sounds of grunts and footsteps crept up behind him so Jim bolted towards it.

He flew past the flag and soared up a flight of steps leading to a platform. He had no room at the top to gain speed so he jumped off with both feet at the edge to clear a large gap, and caught a railing on the other side which lined another platform. He hopped over the railing and turned to continue.

Here, a set of monkey bars spaced several feet apart and ten feet above the roof continued the course. Jim inspected his hands and saw that though they still had a few splinters in them, the blood was now dried, so he looked up at the bars with intensity and focus.

He hopped up and grabbed the first rung with both hands. Each rung was too far apart to swing to normally, so he used his momentum to launch from one rung to the next. After two executions he realized that this drained him, so to improve efficiency he swung up and in mid-air hooked the back of his knees onto the next rung. This prevented a loss of his kinetic energy and allowed him to swing right side up and catch the next rung with his hands and repeat the process like he was doing upside-down backflips. He did this across a number of bars to get to the end and caught a glimpse of his chaser jumping to grasp the bars at the beginning of the section behind him.

Jim soared down the next stairwell a few steps at a time, side-flipping the last five and landing in a roll. As he sprung up he saw more frames blocking his way, each with a shape in its center just large enough to jump through. He gained momentum for a few steps and flew through each shape, tucking his legs. The last frame had a window that was too high to clear by tucking, so he soared through it like superman and curled up into a ball as his hands slapped the floor, rolling and sliding for a few feet across the gravel and eyeing his next obstacle: It was a wall leading up to a corner, with another shorter wall placed before it, preventing him from running through. He sprinted and scaled the short wall and rounded the corner, noticing the sounds of steps on the other side of the divider behind him.

He ran forward and scaled a staircase, and at the top saw numerous platforms that were angled towards each other and distanced like alternating stepping stones. He knelt down due to fatigue, doubting he could get to the end. He spent a few seconds catching his breath, and looked back over the dividers to see the monsters, traversing the obstacles like professional obstacle course runners. Grunting and snarling and staring right at him, Jim questioned whether they were even monsters at all. With bodies shifting, blurry shadows and transparent faces that only showed eyes and teeth, could Jim really trust what he saw? Was he just imagining them with faces twisted with bloodlust? If he let them catch him, would they really harm him?

He looked closely at the leader whom he first met in the alleyway. As he contemplated its validity as a monster, it stared right back through him and let out a shrill cry. High pitched and gargling, the sound infected Jim’s mind, and he no longer cared if it was real or not.

His fear and adrenaline steered his focus, and he nimbly hopped along the stepping platforms. The last two platforms were considerably further apart, and his legs began to give out as he cleared them. Struggling and whimpering, Jim had nearly exhausted all the strength in his legs.

He examined his next obstacle: Chains which hung, one after another, in a row in front of him. Far below, walls sectioned out the area, so he couldn’t just slide down below and run across, he would have to swing along the chains to advance.

Jim struggled trying to move through the obstacle and when he finally got to the last chain he slipped, sliding down a few feet. The cold iron burned and stung his sore hands, and when he looked back he saw that the ghoul was right behind him. With what was left of his energy he jumped onto the platform and started to run, but his legs gave out and he stumbled onto his hands and knees. He moved on all fours and behind him his chaser had landed on the platform, quickly closing the gap between them.

As they ran, a shape at the end of the path came into view. It was large and rectangular, and a red light blinked at one of its corners. In the distance, Jim heard static as the rectangular shape became clear, and he realized it had a sign posted at its center. The static got louder, loud enough that he could finally discern what it was.

Cheering.

Suddenly, a man’s voice boomed over a loudspeaker. “...and now, ladies and gentlemen, Jim and Will have finished the final course of the National Freerunner’s Championship and are racing to the zip line! It looks like Jim is still in the lead!”

“Well that’s no surprise,” a second voice started, “I mean he was the only one to pass the first leg of the course without having to reset on any of the sections. It put him minutes ahead of everyone else!”

Jim listened to the voices in shock as he ran towards the zip line. The word on the sign finally came into focus, reading “Finish”. His memory began flashing in his mind, memories of winning preliminaries and getting on a plane to fly to the finals. The announcers’ voices sounded familiar to him, because he had met them. The faces of some of the people in the crowd in the street blinked into his thoughts, because he had known them. He trained for months for the trials and the competition. He remembered winning, race after race, a week of competition to get to the finals.

He turned back to look at the monster that followed him. Its body was almost a transparent shade of black. Its face looked horrific and ghoulish, with blood dripping from its eyes and mouth. Why am I seeing this, he thought. As he stared, it opened its mouth and screamed, and it sounded like tires screeching. It made his adrenaline shoot back into his legs, propelling him to the finish line. He jumped through it and grabbed the zip line, looking back at the roof as he zipped away towards the ground. The ghoul stood hunched over with its hands on its knees, with clouds of fog pumping from its mouth.

As Jim got closer to ground level, the crowd got louder, and the announcers started yelling over the speaker.

“And that’s it! Jim has officially won the 2009 National Freerunner’s Championship!”

“What an amazing day he’s had!” the other announcer chimed in. “First, he flawlessly conquers the most difficult ropes course in freerunning—”

“And now has just crossed the finish first ahead of the other runners by inches!"

Jim reached the ground and rolled to a stop on his hands and knees. There were people cheering all around him, and the announcers stood next to him, trying to hand him a microphone. They had started to ask him questions as their voices went silent, lips still moving as their necks and chins started to disappear. Shadows were cast on their faces and their heads cocked to one side. The spotlights that lit the streets and the event shut off, and everything became enshrouded. Jim looked around him at the people in the crowd, none of whom were clapping. They stood with their backs to him, each person looking away, silent and still, and Jim looked up to the roof at the finish line and saw all the ghouls standing there, staring at him against a foggy, moonlit backdrop. Suddenly, someone in the crowd stepped backwards in his direction, and Jim looked at her and trembled, just as another to his side did the same thing. One after another, each member of the crowd stepped backwards in his direction without stopping. Jim crouched down, buried his head in his hands and started screaming.

“Get away from me, it isn’t real!!”

Outside of Jim’s mind, the announcers were staring at him in confusion. One of them turned and motioned to the paramedics who were on site in case immediate medical attention was needed. Around Jim, the crowd was slowly backing away with a few people covering their ears, disturbed by his yelling. Across the lot, the competitors stood atop the building staring at the scene with puzzled expressions. High above them, the moon shined bright over a crystal clear sky, illuminating everything the spotlights couldn’t, as Jim’s cries echoed throughout the neighborhood.

* * *

A few years later, on the night of Halloween, 2013, Jim lay quietly in his bed in the psych ward at La Cuna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, California. The lights were off and the moon shined its light through the window, painting his floor with its creeping moonlight. He was staring at the wall blankly when movement brought his eyes to the floor. A shadow on the moonlight had appeared, just as a constant, light tapping sounded at the window. His eyes expanded and he turned his head slowly towards the glass. Standing there on the fire escape was a dark figure with its arms to its sides, somehow devoid of any illumination. The figure stayed still as a statue, but the tapping continued. Jim studied its near transparent body and the clouds of fog that pumped out from the front of its head, flowing through the glass as if no window existed. It stared at Jim with bright blue eyes, blood welling up and spilling out from them. Jim opened his mouth slowly and pulled his blanket over it, stopping at his nose, his eyes frozen and locked onto the night terror. The ghoul slammed its hand against the window, and Jim flinched but continued to watch, unmoved. It struck the window again, and again, over and over with shorter and shorter intervals with the sounds of glass cracking, and the figure started shrieking. The sounds of the glass shattering and the ghoul’s piercing shrills made all the hair on Jim’s body stand, driving him mad.

He began to laugh. Memories started to rise up within him. The ghoul stood there, wailing and banging at the window, and Jim just lay there cackling to himself, thinking about a time, long ago, about the day that he won the National Freerunner’s Championship.