by Tess Lake
I felt Adams rub himself past my feet. No moms were watching, so I slipped him a buttered pancake under the table. He ate it in silence, which was a relief.
Just as breakfast was finishing up, everything vanished and we found ourselves sitting on nothing out on an open plain.
I looked around to see my shocked cousins, mom and aunts trying to keep it together. Jack, Ollie and Will clearly couldn’t see it. They were making miming actions of eating off plates and drinking from invisible glasses. The past had come back with such force that it had wiped out everything except them. We sat there trying to make light conversation in the middle of nothing, sitting on nothing.
Aunt Cass appeared wearing her wetsuit top, a pair of long wetsuit-type pants and bright white sneakers. She was also wearing a bright yellow bandanna on her head which had I’M OLD, GET OUT OF MY WAY! printed on it.
“Harlow, can I have a word?” she asked, presumably from outside the door.
I nodded and made my way carefully over there, only bumping my knee on something once. I followed her away from the cabin, feeling gravel crunch under my feet but seeing only dirt.
Aunt Cass stopped and turned to me.
“So, how’s it going between you and Jack?”
This was definitely not what I was expecting.
“It’s… going, I guess. We’ll probably have another date.”
“Yes, but do you like him?”
“I suppose so. Yes, actually, I do like him.”
I glanced back at Jack, who was sitting in his full Roman gladiator uniform on an invisible chair, eating from an invisible table.
“He looks like he’s crouched over an invisible toilet,” Aunt Cass said. “So there could be a future there?”
What was going on? Usually only our mothers dug into our love lives. Aunt Cass either told us our boyfriends were idiots or encouraged us to sneak out to live our lives.
“I don’t know! How am I supposed to know these things?”
“A girl always knows,” Aunt Cass said. “Almost from the first moment.”
The past vanished, the cabin reappearing. Aunt Cass walked inside and started filling her plate. I hurried after her, shaking my head and wondering why she was so interested.
We finished breakfast and the boys and moms went back to their respective cabins to make their final preparations. Molly and Luce were already wearing their shorts and branded wetsuit tops, so they were good to go. I changed into my sport clothes and when I returned to the main room, Aunt Cass was handing out plastic ziplock packets of little orange tablets and glucose gel.
“What is this, exactly?” Molly asked.
“It’s not drugs, if that’s what you’re wondering. It’s glucose,” Aunt Cass said. We stuffed them in our pockets.
We left everything at the cabin. There was no way to carry a phone on what was sure to be a long and wet mud run.
It was still early but the day was feeling warm. The past few days it had been hot in the afternoons and that meant a storm would be due soon.
We made our way to the staging area. There were probably around three hundred people gathered. Some of them were serious hardcore athletes wearing professional gear. Others, like Jack, Will and Ollie, had dressed up in costumes. There was another set of Roman gladiators who Team Gladiator went over to talk to. There was a group of girls who were dressed like vampires, three old men who had painted themselves blue from head to toe like Smurfs, and another group of guys and girls who were dressed like jockeys and were carrying toy horses.
We filed past the registration table, where they gave us our numbers and wrote them on our foreheads in marker. There would be photographers at various locations around the course and we could use the numbers later to look up photos of us.
“Don’t worry, you’ll probably wash it off,” the girl behind the counter said.
The day was warm and beautiful, which is good considering we were going to be sloshing around in mud. Molly and Luce were both getting a bit nervous, stepping from foot to foot and looking around. I thought I would be too, but actually, being surrounded by my family made me calm.
I took the time to look over the leader board erected next to the stage. The real hardcore athletes who had been running the Gold Mud Run since day one were now quite a distance around the island. Some of them had found clues and extra tokens that gave them points. A team called the Mud Demons was in first place, closely followed by a team called New York Mud.
I was glad the moms hadn’t been so insane as to enter us in the full race. We were running the standard sixteen-mile or so course with obstacles and would probably finish quite late in the afternoon. Today was the final day, so all the teams that had been running and exploring would finish their run today and be back here for the winner announcement at seven tonight.
It wasn’t long before Marika appeared on the stage. Today she was dressed like a classic grandma in a plain gray dress. Her hair was white and curled and she was wearing a little hat and a pair of those grandma glasses they always seem to have. She shuffled her way up to the microphone like the weight of the world was on her shoulders.
“Good morning, Gold Mud Run competitors,” she said in a creaky voice.
What had happened to her?
Marika smiled at the crowd, and then in one move she grabbed her dress and ripped it off, along with the white wig and glasses, and threw them into the crowd. Underneath she was wearing full camouflage gear and she’d dyed her hair bright pink. The crowd went wild, and we screamed along with them.
“Get ready, mud runners. Today you will conquer obstacles and you will do it together. Help your fellow mudders. Pull them, push them, look after each other. You will be pushed to your very limits, but together you can do it. Now let’s start the countdown. Ten, nine…”
The entire crowd joined in counting down. We were down to three when I felt someone touch me on the arm. It was Carter Wilkins.
“I need to talk to you urgently,” he said. I could barely hear him over the noise.
“Sorry, I can’t,” I yelled.
We hit zero and the crowd took off. I had absolutely no desire to be pulled into whatever Carter had to say to me. I was full of energy, probably from the carbohydrates, but I was feeling good and I wanted to enjoy myself. I shook him off and ran with my family.
At first it was a long jog down a dirt path with fields around us. The hardcore athletes had taken off like crazy and were already far ahead of us. The moms were talking up a storm and actually leading the way, calling back to stir us up and saying we were being beaten by the older generation.
Molly and Luce gave back as good as they got but mostly concentrated on breathing and jogging. The moms might have the lead at the moment but I was sure the advantage of youth would kick in at some point.
Will fell back to run beside Luce, and Ollie did the same with Molly. Jack jogged along next to me. It was really nice, actually. I wouldn’t have ever said that going for a long run that was going to be heading into some very muddy obstacles would be a very good date, but it was kinda nice to be together and not talk and not be interrupted by the past suddenly appearing.
Soon we reached the very first obstacle. It was a series of walls, about eight feet tall and angled towards us in a long row. There was a giant sign beside it. Printed on it in big letters was: Are you strong enough to climb this wall?
The only way to get over the wall was to be helped up by somebody and then in return, you had to help them up. The moms headed for one together. Aunt Freya and Mom lifted Aunt Ro up and she pulled herself over. Then Aunt Freya went over and reached back to help Mom up.
They were so quick going over the wall you would think they’d actually practiced this move.
It was our turn next. Me and Molly helped Luce up but it definitely wasn’t as smooth as the moms. Luce struggled to pull herself up and we had to push quite hard until she got her weight over and promptly slipped over the other side. She disappeared, landing with a thud.
“You’re supposed to help us over,” Molly said. She turned to me. “You next.”
I stepped into her laced hands and up I went. I managed to balance on the wall and reached back to help her up. I nearly went over trying to get Molly up but we struggled and both managed to get over.
The moms had already taken off and were jogging away. Team Gladiator was waiting for us, standing with Aunt Cass, who had her hands on her hips.
“You three! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” she said.
We took off again down another wide dirt road. As we ran, the road changed from hard dirt to damp earth. Puddles started to appear. We were about to hit the mud.
I was still concentrating on my breathing and feeling my legs protesting when the past intervened and suddenly I was running through a forest. I could hardly see anything, but Jack was right beside me, so I reached out and touched him on the shoulder. I think he looked at me, but I can’t be sure because a tree was in the way. For maybe a minute I jogged along with my hand on Jack’s shoulder, using him to guide me until the present reasserted itself. I took my hand off Jack, who looked sideways at me with a smile.
Okay, so maybe there are some slight advantages to this otherwise very annoying Slip witch power.
My legs were burning by the time we reached the next obstacle. It was called Darkest Fears and involved climbing into a tube that went down into the water and mud. Upon coming out the other side, you ended up in a muddy open ditch that had metal cage mesh across the top of it.
Runners were up to their ears in water, lying on their backs and pulling themselves along the mesh until they reached the other side.
Water, mud, darkness and a cage so you couldn’t escape. Darkest Fears.
As we arrived, the moms were already coming out of the tubes and going into the water. They were hooting and yelling, calling to us to hurry up.
“I can’t believe they’re beating us,” Molly said, gasping.
“Get in there! We can’t let them win!” Aunt Cass yelled. With that she crawled into the tube of mud and slid down to splash into the water at the bottom.
I looked down the tube and felt a squirt of cold anxiety in my stomach. A confined space, water, darkness and a cage. So much fun.
I took two deep breaths and then crawled into the tunnel. As soon as I was in, I slipped in the mud and slid down to the bottom to splash into the water, completely soaking myself. The water was cold, but not unbearable, and I managed to pull myself along until I came out the other end of the tube and into the water. This was the final day of the mud run, so it was debatable whether the water was only water now. One of the pieces of advice for doing a mud run is that sometimes toilets are far and few between. So… people pretty much pee themselves. Also, from the smell of it, I’m pretty sure there was a lot of manure around this area thanks to the wild horses.
With my heart pounding in my ears I turned over on my back and grasped the mesh with my fingers. I pulled myself along, the “water” lapping against my face. Three breaths, four breaths, five breaths and I was out the other side. I crawled into churned mud to find Jack the Gladiator covered in mud from head to toe, holding out his hand. I took it and he pulled me up out of the slop.
“Thanks, Gluteus,” I said and smiled at him. I saw Jack glance down at my body before he turned away to continue jogging. I looked down and saw that the wetsuit was now doused in mud and water it had stuck to me, forming some very shapely curves! Molly and Luce were the same, suddenly looking a lot more buxom than usual.
I don’t know if the moms planned this but if so… brava, ladies.
We continued jogging on, the moms a constant distance ahead of us.
The day became a blur of mud, ice, electrocution and running, oh Goddess, the running.
We conquered Frankenstein’s Monster, getting shocked by thousands of volts. At some point volunteers gave us bananas and water and we gulped down our glucose tablets and gel.
The pain in my legs faded away as did the searing agony in my lungs. I’ve never been much of a runner, but making it out to the calm place past the edge of the pain made me suddenly understand why people did it.
I only saw a few flickers of the past during the day – some horses appearing and vanishing, men shuffling along the side of the road, trees appearing in the distance. Aunt Cass had been right – if I was busy, the past left me alone.
We passed a large sign with a map on it and I was quite surprised to find that we were nearly at the end. The group had long since stopped talking, choosing to grunt instead as we trudged our way through mud and completed the obstacles.
Aunt Cass was doing incredibly well. She was the first into the obstacles and the first to call out to us to keep on going.
Eventually we reached the Terror Tower, the obstacle they were constructing when Holly and her dad’s bones were found. You entered the bottom and climbed up inside it, going from platform to platform, until eventually you got to the top. There you jumped off the platform and landed in a deep pool of water. I nearly backed out of that one, but seeing Aunt Cass climbing in, I knew I had to do it. I’d never live it down otherwise.
The moms, as usual, were well ahead of us and completed the obstacle by the time we got to the tower. We climbed to the top as a group. When we emerged out on the platform, Aunt Cass yelled and jumped off the top, plunging down into the water. She came up a few seconds later, swam over to the edge and pulled herself out. Will and Ollie and then Molly and Luce went next and soon it was only Jack and I at the top with people’s gathering behind us.
“Ladies first?” Jack said.
“Gentlemen first,” I replied.
Jack grinned at me and stepped towards the edge. But before he could jump, he suddenly turned and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. We were both wet and muddy and it took me completely by surprise.
I didn’t have a chance to say anything before Jack jumped off the tower and into the pool below.
I stepped to the edge and looked down, seeing Jack swimming across the edge of the pool. My heart was thudding some mixture of fear and, I don’t know, maybe happiness or joy. He’d gotten away with a sneaky kiss and I’d absolutely loved it!
I looked down to see Holly standing by the side of the mud pit looking up at me. She waved and I waved back. Then I jumped off and plunged into the water.
One moment I was underwater, the next on the edge and then I was back out on the bank again, standing up.
I looked around but Holly was gone. Not far away, though, I saw the skinny pirate from this morning who had taken me to where the treasure had been buried and where he’d been killed. He was beckoning at me again quite urgently. I don’t know if it was the exhaustion or maybe me plunging into water over and over but I called out to him.
“Don’t worry! I’ll find your bones and give you a proper burial, I promise.”
The pirate frowned at me and then smiled before crossing his arms and disappearing.
A moment later Molly and Luce were at my side.
“Quiet down with the witch stuff,” Molly said.
“Okay, sure,” I said, laughing for some reason.
We took off again, slopping through mud and across a huge stretch of gravel. By now we’d used up all of our glucose tablets and were relying on the half bananas the volunteers handed out for energy. Team Gladiator were slightly ahead of us, walking along in silence, when Aunt Cass pulled me, Molly and Luce together. She produced a silver hip flask.
“I’m not going to lose to your mothers. Let’s drink this,” she said and took a swig.
“Is that a potion?” Molly asked.
“What you think it is?” Aunt Cass said and shook the flask at her.
“Okay, fine,” Molly said and took a drink. She passed it to Luce, who gulped down a mouthful, and then to me.
“Is this cheating?” I said.
“If they win we’re never going to live it down,” Aunt Cass said.
There was only one more obstacle before the final finish line: a gigantic curved wall.
The idea was to run up it at high speed and then people at the top would grab your hands to help you up. It was either that or try to build a sort of human pyramid to get up there.
For some reason I started laughing as we passed Team Gladiator and began to catch up to the moms. Molly and Luce and Cass were running around the side of the course trying to avoid the mud, but I went straight through it, sloshing my feet and jumping up and down. Some part of my mind whispered that I was delirious, and I found this incredibly funny too.
We soon caught the moms as they hit the final obstacle. I hadn’t realized it, but Team Gladiator had caught up to us as well.
Aunt Cass ran for the wall as Mom did. They both got halfway up before slipping and falling flat on their faces, sliding down into the mud. They had to turn around and come back, letting someone else have a try. Aunt Freya and Aunt Ro each tried to get up but they couldn’t make it.
Despite my delirium, I realized we had to work together to get over this final obstacle. When it came time for my turn, I grabbed Molly and Luce made them run up to the wall with me. We formed a very wobbly pyramid with me at the top. I reached for the top edge and got my fingers onto it.
There were other competitors up the top and some of them reached down, grabbing onto my wetsuit and hauling me up. Unfortunately, they pulled too quickly and Molly’s hand caught in the band of my shorts…
Up with my wetsuit and down went my shorts, revealing my bottom to the entire world!
I heard people laughing and cheering but soon I was up on top of the wall and pulling my clothes back into place. I was so deliriously happy I didn’t care what I’d showed the world.
I turned around and helped Luce up and then Molly. Soon the moms were there and the boys and Aunt Cass. We worked together to get everyone up the wall, Aunt Freya coming up last.