The Runner Read online

would call her “fragments” (he seems to think he has a definition for her. I think he’s trying to act a lot smarter than he actually is. As I told you, he’s not a detective, or professor at that). I still couldn’t make out anything too particular, but my heightened sense of observation due to the fear I felt at the demon (it’s not nice to call her that, especially now that he knows her) gave me some awareness. As in the first encounter, once I opened my mouth to reply to the haunting figure before me, all went black.

  Repeat. I won’t bore me with the unseemly details. I will tell me this, though. It wasn’t until the seventh or fifteenth rotation that I saw them: her eyes. I remember, and can see clearly in my current rotation, the damning grey of her irises. In the newfound clarity given by the developing progression of her evolution, the fear grew. I can say with all sincerity now that no comfort is within her proximity. I can only respond more horrified and fearfully to the hate and anger and venom that comes from her (she might not be all that bad, I assure you).

  Even though each time her eyes come first, the clarity that reconstitutes her fragments into a more whole monster (he can be quite the rude prude sometimes) starts at the feet. The blurry haze that drags my face with her passage to my right is slowly cleared, and the initial whooshing and sliding of her presence begins to sound like frantic footsteps in search of a kill.

  It’s not until about the fortieth of forty-sixth repetition that I can see her halfway. I can say at that point that her lower half is pretty clear. She has on some sort of shoes made of metal shards. In their clarity, they make orange sparks as she grinds across the pavement, as if she wants to set fire to the walls around us. The polished metal glistens in some invisible moonlight, and it only makes me sicker because they make it all too easy to see the contaminated blood leaking out of the soles. I bet the metal shards cut into her and tear her seared flesh (she might be a nice girl after all, and I think she’s quite beautiful at that); it would make sense as to why she wails in suffering each time. And in those rotations, I can see her legs and her dress too.

  Her legs are poorly shaven, and patches of thick hair are only too obvious against her porcelain skin. That’s not even the worst of it; Her skin is twisted and gnarled, as if it was burned up, placed back onto her, and then aged with time. Her mangled legs are contorted in two opposite angles that make her run in such a grotesque manner that one can’t help but hate her (he uses strong words when he’s scared of what he can’t handle). I should say that I want to pity her, but I can’t. Mostly because that’s just not how it works. One can’t pity a beast for being a beast. They have to hate it and kill it, ridding its existence of pollutants that would only infect the other. And the same goes for her. No two ways about it. I have to hate her, and I have to kill her. Maybe in one rotation, hopefully sooner than never, I can kill her and rid myself of this. But before her demise, I need to at least ask her name; I have to give a name to the monster I must defeat.

  The lower part of her dress is torn and moth-eaten, and is covered in films of blood. Whose blood? I wonder. Either way, it shimmers in the invisible moon above and implies the freshness of her kill (She’s not so bad, I think. Maybe she was forced to do it or simply defending herself. People never seem to try to understand the fears they have anyway. They attack senselessly, and justify themselves in slaying someone in cold blood. Hopefully he won’t be one of those. His tends to use hollow words, and they mean nothing anyway. He’s always been like that). It only gets worse from there.

  Before I go on, I need to tell me of what this whole ordeal does to me. As the fragments composite themselves into a concrete being, I become all the more a wreck. Nothing changes in my outward gestures of defense, but it’s the inside that deteriorates. Like I said beforehand, my awareness only increases through the rotations of this universal hell (I see he’s finally come to a decision on where he’s headed. It seems he can be given over as his time in this continues), and I can’t escape the damages of what this does to me.

  The gripping fear turns to a torture that pains my body so far that it feels as though I’ve shattered. In this breaking, the tools of destruction grow worse each time. With the coming of the seventieth and seventy-first rotations, the knives on my sensory pathways and spine turn to serrated swords. My stomach becomes a lead ball that rips through my intestines and shatters the bones in my foot. My brain is bashed with a hammer eight times, and the rushing blood boils under my skin. I think it’s the awareness that does this (ignorance is bliss, as they say).

  Everything, with clarity, declines into the depths of fear and torture. Around the 145th rotation, I’m up to her neck in reconstruction. She has a flat chest for the most part, but some tumoral protrusions are lumped across her torso. They’re all leaking something green-yellow, and the fluid is soaking into her all-too-white dress. Her arms are hairless, but there are gashes in them that show the contractions of her muscles. They display the blood sliding over them, still flowing beneath the skin, glistening as the muscles in her movements slide back and forth. The slurping and gurgling sound they make intensifies each time she rushes past.

  There are bloody streaks soaked into the white fabric, mixing with the green-yellow in an all too poisonous concoction. And her nails on the ends of her hands are chipped and bleeding. They’re painted a slick black that captures the silent moon and shines a bitter light (finally, he attempts a compliment, if one could call it that. He’ll have to try harder if he hopes to get anywhere).

  By this time, there are dull knives eating away at my nerves, plucking them painfully as they slowly cut through. The lead ball has turned into some sort of spiked oblong blob that tears through my sides and snaps my femurs on the way down. My brain is torn by a cat of nine-tails; the bone and rock chips slowly rip away at my sanity, but my increasing awareness remains intact (he exaggerates too much. He cann’t truly understand the pain this will bring).

  I’ve passed through another rotation, number 9,373,216th to be exact (As I said, he’s close, but not exact), and surprisingly enough I’ve reached the peak of my circular transition. I see her clearly, in her whole form. The fragments of nightmare have requisitioned together, and the complete her rushes by and stands before me. Her face, the most gruesome feature of her, is all too horrid.

  She has thin lips that are bleeding blood into her mouth. Although the red seeps into her gums, they can’t veil the sickly orange her teeth have become or hide the holes bored into them. They’re like kitchen knives; like the ones Jaclyn gave me for our anniversary. She always knew how much I liked to cook. Despite their connection, her mouth is putrid and swarming with souls, and it’s most disturbing to behold (he seems to be describing some sort of dental condition more than anything horrible). Her face is split, and I can see the pulsating veins and interior flesh breathing beneath the surface. It spurts out bloody fluid, and the squeeping noise is all too much to bear (he has sharp ears, all right). She has sown on eyebrows. By that, I mean that they are literal sewing. Not very well done either. The two overlapping skin flaps are still open in some spots, and pus is bubbling over the edges. There are a few white hairs on her head, and they dangle loosely in front of the hole in her face where he nose should be.

  She has a sharp face, and the distinctly triangular shape of it highlights the horribleness of her demonic condition (she’s more girl than demon. That’s how I made her). But despite all of the horror of her putrid condition, her eyes are healthily clear. Which makes them all the more horrible. Her grey eyes of hate and malice are sharpened forceps that reach past my exterior, deep into my interior, scraping at the crust of my soul. Her eyes are the claws of her power, digging and inching towards my essence, ready to consume it. And in my paralyzed state, I’m helpless to dispel her advance.

  Or what could be her advance. At that point, she seems to edge closer swiftly, but before she can claim me for her consumption, all goes black and the repetition begins again. But at this pinnacle of the circle, I start back at the beginning of
her introduction as my runner, a blur of fear that wails past and prepares for my death. But only I know. My awareness hasn’t fled me, but rather, it remains all the more concrete and clear. I see the blur pass by, ignorant to my stationary role, but I can still see her hateful existence clear as day.

  And still, although I have a grasp of her true existence and intentions, I’m caught in the feeling of the unknown as the blur rushes by and begins to develop before me with each passing revolution. I think it’s the hope that she could be different this time, or maybe that I can finally escape (it’s more likely he feels it’s the escape, the selfish bastard. When will he learn) her and be free of the perpetual damnation I undergo. That’s probably why I allow this feeling to take hold with vigor, and allow her the chance to become a new her, and not the demon I’ve come to fear.

  As time passes, and more revolutions take place, I extract my previous experiences and happenings as a seemingly outside body and impress them upon myself, mostly in the vain chance that I can be rid of my unending pain and fear, to finally be free. And I tell me,