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THE RUNNER

  By Greg Wilburn

  Copyright 2014 Greg Wilburn

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  The recurring image is definite, but it retains a fluidity that trespasses the boundaries of my mind. It pervades my senses, and I remain immobilized in the uncertainty of its validity.

  But before I get into the developing nature of its universal, let me give myself the beginning and the instigation of the everlasting horror beneath my trembling eyelids.

  She began as a blur, rushing past as she wailed my name in utter desolation. I could smell her though, her tinge, her sweetly-lilaced and white-shrouded dress that clawed at the biting chill in the air. The blur rushed by in its lamentation—a runner of sorts—but the gripping fear that forced my head to follow its trajectory still squirms in my brain as the evolution takes place continually before me.

  I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself (he tends to do that in his hindsight). Let me start with the place and time, the only fixated fixtures that I can compass off of. I see the permanence of the back lot set aside behind the main apartment building. It’s cracked blackness houses the yellow-speckled speed bumps that line the way like forgotten corpses. Beside them are the defining white lines that create the boundaries of the world, trapping the incident in a box-like encasement, set against five invisibly glass walls (he means left, right, forward, behind, and above. He’s always been obsessed with the above one for some reason; it appeals to him when he tries to drag his gaze away from her in the grotesque development of her movements in clarity and seeks some center in the blank sky above. A pity, really, a pity).

  Let me start with the walls. There are five, clear walls that seem inaccessible to sensory perception. They’re blank and indifferent (he says blank, but they’re all too detailed as scenery in a good production always is) to the unfolding existence of her, latching onto each other to create the inescapable cell of ponderance (he gets philosophical at times in his quite simplistic gestures). The one to my left is a shacked down tin garage where all the cars sit. They all have their individual serial numbers on their butts, and they form a nicely neat row in their barred cells. The green and red and blue and silver hues are depressed, almost as if the inmates are witnessing the tragedy before them (but they can’t understand. He just wishes they could so he would feel less alone in his hell). Above them, a few lonesome rooftops scrape the sky and sit, perched as onlookers to the scene.

  To the right is the large apartment building that crashes into the black sky. It’s most peculiar because it’s covered in spackled skin flakes, which create rough and clawed grooves that are most unpleasant to encounter. They look like skin too, with their slightly pinkened hues that make me (especially him) want to vomit. But that wouldn’t help because the secret windows hewn all throughout the sides jeer at me, but not at her (he makes them sound as unreliable and biased as possible; they wouldn’t be ideal as witnesses in the court); it’s not fair at all. I did nothing, and some permanent feeling that grows most powerful in the final revolutions tells me that she’s guilty, the one most deserving of jeers. That aside, the windows are framed with sticky metals all too close to doubts that orbit close to home. How could they doubt me, the only one who’s really innocent, the only one most guiltless of crime (so he would have himself believe)?

  More to the point, the slated rooftop rests atop them and patiently shifts its thousands eyes in the direction of her, admiring her vigor. It’s all too creepy, especially with its obsessive look at her developments through the repeating trials. Nonetheless, above it lies the broken sky, broken and crumbling slowly, revealing a darker darkness beneath.

  The wall before me isn’t too desirable either. It merely opens up onto a small street with nothing too particular on it (he says. As far as he goes, he doesn’t make notice of much these days). A car or two, a few overloaded trashbins leaking clear fluids, a flamingo-cat lawning about on top of some back porch steps, a crack in the middle of the street with a beetle hibernating inside, a burnt sneaker that smells of ruined youth, and a few trashed straws slurping at the sewage flowing through them. But nothing too noticeable of merit, so that’s all I can really say about it. And yes, above it all, a blank sky that is all to pagan because of its missing stars (he can be quite religious too. So annoying).

  The wall behind is unseen, but I can assume its contents (that’s what he thinks. One can never truly know unless the unseen is found seen. No one can trust such a wild card guess. He’s no detective either, and he was never the best deductive reasoner) to be most similar to the wall before me. Probably just another street leading on into an uninteresting nowhere that houses a few broken down fences worn because of the recent termite infestation that Ms. Houghes won’t stop railing about, a hawk-iguana hovering over an unfinished cheeseburger, a bike missing a chain and a front wheel, a tree overloaded with lemons too high to pick, and a flickering porch light with only an hour of life left (I told you he was never a great guesser of any sort. Assumptions never got him anywhere except to disappointment anyway). At least that’s what I know I can hope to see if I were to spin around. But I can’t. She’s there, passing by my line of sight from my front and dragging my head as she flees past me on the right, screaming my name in bloody murder.

  The business about the walls is most interesting because they’re simply props, well not props, but more closely existent of walls in a nursery that a child has poorly painted over. They exist, but it’s not too hard to see past the illusion into the fake emptiness beneath the flecked pictures. Yet, in that same manner, a parent must indulge the fantasy on the part of the child and let it go (he can be quite considerate and understanding sometimes, even on his own account towards himself). I can notice their almost obvious fantasy only now, when the final clarities dull again and the dream repeats cyclically. I can see them now that I’ve seen her.

  Now that I know the ever circling nightmare I’m trapped in, I can confidently say that the walls are simply delusions, meant to envelop the true focal point of the occurring horror, which is she (at least he’d like to think that he can claim delusion. But I, the creator of this particular universe, am the only one who can truly know the level of delusiveness and the true amount of reality present in that nightmare). I’d like to know her name at some point, and if I can ever get to her after breaking my fixed role in the course of this universe, I’ll ask.

  But how can I get to the core of her significance without telling of her, and how the blur became her? Excuse me. I tend to leap to the end before the beginning even starts. As I said, she began as a blur.

  The first encounter was the worst. I walked in the small cage of space in an elevated level of fear, as if I wasn’t aware of a horrible crime that was occurring right next to me. Vomit rose in my throat and I felt some piss slide down my right leg. I raised my hand to my face in defense as the mix-colored blur flew by me with its screech of death, dragging my attention with it. I couldn’t make out what it let loose into the air with what I can now call her voice, but it struck sensitive cords of familiarity within me and made knives chop at the nervousness in my spine. My eyes and body turned as they followed the blur rushing past. It seemed to stop abruptly and stand staring at me for just an instant, and as I began to open my mouth to utter some sort of muffled dribble, all went black.

  I know now—all too well, in fact—that it should be over then(he really knows nothing. Sometimes his ignorance knows no bounds. Honestly). But no, it wasn’t. All t
oo suddenly, the repetitions began. I think I’m at the 9,373,215th one now (his guess is actually pretty close), but it becomes so much harder to tell when a circle goes on into forever.

  What I find peculiar about the cyclical nature of my nightmare (at least he hopes it’s one. It really is, at least for a large measure, a reality) is that I’m aware of it. I think I’d be content if my memory would loop too, making me an unknowingly fearful party that could never understand the ever-developing nature of my purgatory (he can’t claim a heaven or hell yet; at least, not for another 456, 239 rotations by my count. Hopefully he can figure out that I’m behind this before then. Probably not).

  As I said, the repetitions began. Although my surroundings remained the exact same as before, it was she that changed. Her shape, her form, her eyes, her chest, and her everything started to become slightly clearer with that encounter. True, she was still a blur as before, but thinking about it now, I noticed a slight concreteness in a few of her pixels, or what I