It starts with a gun shot.
Your arms are pumping, your lungs burning, your knees and feet and legs pulsing with the beat of the unforgiving pavement below. It is not about victory, nor about competition, but rather an unspoken desire seeded deep within your soul. Your eyes see nothing but fire and the crowd from which you emerge is a tidal wave and you are at the tip of its wake. The air screams past your ears, a high pitched squeal. The wind cuts your face. For a brief moment, you are truly and undeniably alive. Each step pushes you further than you've ever been before, your body at and exceeding its limits. Each breath you take rips you raw, providing increasingly diminishing returns. You are running out of time, out of energy, out of will. Maybe you should have exercised more. As the riot continues to rage, the mob passes over your collapsed body and soon you are consumed by the overflowing rage, stomping and stampeding blindly over you. When the time has passed, the morning crews will be cleaning overturned garbage cans, broken glass and your blood from the ground.
Labels: flash fiction