‘Just breath. Just breath,’ the runner thinks.
A crackle. A crisp crackle of dried something; wheat maybe. Are they stones? Listen. Do you hear it? Can you hear the crackling? It is the sound of stones. It’s the sound of when shoes crack stones under the strain of running away. It’s the strains that come when a mind screams, ‘Please run away. Help me stones to run away’. But they don’t.
Don’t cry, run. Don’t cry, just run. What would you be willing to give up for a run if what you ran from was the end? What would you give up, a treat? A child? The silence? Run. Just run. And when you can’t run anymore, just run. Get away. Run.
The runner stops. His breath has fallen behind him and now he must stop to catch it. He leans over and catches his breath. From above he is just a dot, a speck of human-ness in a field where real life exists. That grass around him isn’t leaned over for breath. No, it blows. It sways. The air above him isn’t still. It is highlighted by a red haze that dances and moves and creeps closer. It plans. It schemes. It approaches.
The runner hears their scheme and stands up. Terror washes white across the runners face. But it’s too late. The ground around the runner has grown tired of his laziness and it goes away. The horizon is first to go out of sight. Next is the field from the furthest forward. Soon the earth is tired of this runner’s lack of running so it to goes away too.
And all that is left is the runner and the darkness; the hallow darkness; the scary darkness; the home in which all dark things live.
It’s coming. From the darkest part of darkness it approaches like the mustangs. Its hooves trample the world beneath its darkness and the heat withdraws in fear of it. It is like death. In its majesty and feel, it is like death. In its shape and curves, it is like death. In its eyes and its soul, it is like death. But it isn’t. Instead it glows and it feels and what it feels makes it red; always glowing red; always seeing red. It is like death.
The breathing runner breaths no more because soon again he is running. The earth approves. The sky approves. And each of them return with his action. There is darkness no more. Running. Running. Running. And then free.
The runner is free now, no one chasing him, nothing to think about but the next run. There it is. There it was. And now there’s another. He is free. Running is the freedom. To stop brings death. No, it brings something like death. Running is freedom. Not running is like death. He must keep running and running. When he is tired he must keep running. When all hope is lost, he must keep running.
‘I can’t keep running,’ he thought. ‘There’s a factory up ahead. I can’t keep running and there’s a factory up ahead.’
The runner plans his escape from this endless run. He figures that the fence that protects the factory from the nothing that surrounds it, will also protect him from his demons. He plans his escape.
He jumps. He grabs the links between his hands and he climbs. He struggles. The links tear the flesh from his hand and he whimpers. Blood pours down upon the ground and into the earth it retreats. Moving up is not forward and with great judgment the earth doesn’t approve.
Darkness returns. And with it the sound of a stampede trembles in. And the Reaper, the Red Reaper that’s all like death but not, all like fury but not, approaches. With sickle in hand it prepares, it aims but when the runner throws himself forward over the fence it goes away.
The runner, crawling forward, keeps away the darkness. Leaving a trail of blood he stays the darkness. But between his bloody victory and the wall he stops. Darkness returns. New deaths return. But this time it is death, little mini deaths all lined up to him. All shouting, ‘Cry. Cry! Why won’t you cry?’ These little deaths move in.
The runner shakes them off. He battles them off and spots a ground level window. So with his bloody stump, his mangled stump, he breaks the glass, shakes off the grips of death and wiggles through.
‘The lights,’ he thinks. ‘Rules: Always keep moving. Never stop moving and always find the light,’ he thinks. The runner follows the rules and the darkness of the factory becomes light.
The runner rounds the space in circles. He follows the rule of never stop running. He can’t stop running because when he stops running, it is death, or something like death. But he’s tired. He’s so tired and the last thing he wants is to keep running so he stops. It reappears.
Inside now they all come. One, the Red Reaper; and two all of the little deaths that follow. The runner runs. The Red Reaper goes away, but the mini deaths remain.
‘There are stairs,’ he thinks. ‘If I can’t move forward, then I will move up.’
The mini deaths follow him to the stairs but only he moves up. Ascending, he remembers the rules: never stop moving forward, even when it’s up. ‘But I’m so tired,’ he thinks. ‘So bloody tired. Why must I keep running if I’m so tired?’ But he runs. He ascends. He breaks through the door and then he stops.
‘Rule one, turn on the light. Rule two, never stop running.’
The runner starts his pace and with no space chases his own tail in a circle. It works. He keeps the darkness away. But he realizes that he can’t circle forever so he stares at the windows. Through them is a press, a smelting press. And to it is a catwalk. So instead of chasing his own tail he breaks through the window and throws himself onto the catwalk.
Shards of glass penetrate his face. They cleanse it by letting out all that was bad inside of him. And as the badness drips down his face, he remembers the rules and again he keeps running.
But this time there is nowhere to run. Looking up from the catwalk there are the Reaper’s mini deaths. And down the other way are more. He remembers the rule to never stop running so he turns and climbs into the press. And as soon as the press gets its first taste of the warm human flesh on its lips, it shuts on. Up the plate moves and the runner is safe.
The press is steamed at its luck and lets the runner know. As the press goes through its long cycle that will bring it back down, the runner crawls, then crouches, and then stands on the plate. The press is steamed.
Before he gets out, the runner stops. Just outside the press waits more of the mini deaths. So the runner must turn around toward the part of the press that faces nothing.
The runner crouches. Taking a second he sees a horizontal pole that extends out towards a window. So on his knees with no place to go, he grabs hold of the outer lip of the flat press and pulls himself there.
“Escaped,” the press says with steam coming out of its mouth.
‘I can’t stop running,’ he thinks. So before the press can lift him back up he throws himself off of the plate onto the horizontal pole that points his way to freedom.
‘Never stop running,’ he thinks and then shimmies his way across.
At the end of the pole is a pulley on a track. And on that pulley are the building’s long chains that wait for him. At the end of the pole the runner throws his hand out.
“Got it,” he gasps. And with one hand that’s much closer to freedom, he lets his trapped hand go and again he is on the move. He’s rolling forward. When the rollers on the track meet their end they are close enough away that he can latch his feet around the chain in front of him and then let go.
Upside down he can see where he’s going. The window up ahead frames his freedom. And there is nothing that could stop it but luck; horrible luck; death like luck.
Panting. Breathing. And then silence.
The runner hangs upside down swaying in the silence. He grabs onto the next chain which allows him right side up. The new chain rolls across its track and stops outside the window; three feet outside the window. Freedom. Silence. That which is like death.
Terror returns to the runner’s face. Utter terror. The heart beat churns yet there is no relief. The sky scorns and then takes its retreat. The earth moans in its replete. It is darkness that returns, and with it is the silence.
Hanging in this dark room the runner feels like death is approaching; but he’s wrong. It is like death that approaches
. It holds its sickle in front of the runner and it is like death but not.
The runner looks down and desperately reaches his toes hoping that in the darkness the ground will appear. It doesn’t.
When the Red Reaper lifts its sickle to the runner’s chest the runner doesn’t hear his own whimper. There is silence. His deathly screams remain a mystery to him. And it is the Reaper that collects it.
That which is like death pulls its sickle away and steps back. It doesn’t step far back, and when it steps forward it swings. It cuts. The legs of the runner fall off. And like his breath, the runner cannot catch them.
The runner screams horrifically and looks down for his legs. They’re not there. All he sees are stumps. “Ahhh!” he screams. But there is no use, that which is like death has occurred.
Allowing the darkness to consume him he lets go. And pleased to see him moving again the earth returns. The two meet each other with a thud.
“Uhhh!” he coughs with a jolt.
Opening his eyes again, things are different. The red no long permeates the air. The surrounding night sky is no less normal than any other night. And the runner is back in the driver’s seat.
The runner fights to recognize where he is. He is in a driver’s seat. His passenger seat is bare and he can see a white light approaching.
‘What is that light,’ he wonders. But as soon as the light is close enough to recognize, all there is time left for is the crash. The cars crash. There is no more silence.
* * * * *
Enjoy this spiritual adventure excerpt from:
Excerpt: The First Day After Life
Chapter 1
Tian looked up at the sky to find a clear night. He loved these nights in Los Angeles. To him it meant that the city had recently been cleansed. The smog that perpetually covered the city wasn’t necessarily the residents’ fault. It, like many of the city’s problems, was a matter of geography.
Los Angeles sat in a valley surrounded by hills and mountains. During the winter the winds blew in at downward angle over the Hollywood hills. These diving winds whisked away the state regulated smog from L.A.’s million plus cars.
But during the summer the San Andreas wind changed direction. During the summer the winds traveled down southern California closer to the ground. So eventually when it reached L.A.’s Hollywood hills, the winds had no choice but to roll up the northern hillside. Once it reached the most expensive hilltop homes, the winds would shoot off over L.A. creating an impenetrable canopy.
During the summer, the same million cars releasing state regulated amounts of smog had a different result on the city of angels. Instead of being blown away, the smog lifted up to the wind canopy and then was rolled like dough in flour. The smog then built up and thickened into the brownish haze that got so dark that it hid the Hollywood sign from less than a quarter mile away.
But as Tian looked up at the stars he couldn’t remember the windy day that proceeded this clear night. There was no summer rain that could explain why he could see every star and constellation as if it were drawn on a map.
‘It must be the mountain air,’ he thought. Tian had taken a trip from L.A. to the Azusa Mountains to relive one of his fondest memories. Just eight years earlier Tian was a movie director. And during a night that showed his mettle, he had lead his crew through their own fatigue, and their fear of what could be lurking in the dark, to these woods to shot the crux of his film. It was the scene where the hero of the story seduced his love interest, getting in body what he couldn’t get in mind.
Tian had often thought about returning to this spot in the darkness of night with only the hollow sound of the wind surrounding him. But now, as he sat under the trees amongst the pine needles and cones, there was no mistaking that something was definitely wrong.
He had recognized the spot where he had parked his motorcycle so he knew that the location was correct. The uphill climb to the spot made his legs burn like it had eight years before so he assumed that that too had to be the same. But it was the camp ground at the end of the path that made him wonder. The camp ground was non distinct and hence unfamiliar, but Tian figured that this too had to be correct because it, like before, was the only one there.
‘No, there’s something missing,’ he thought. ‘It’s the people.’ Tian thought about the 15 cast and crew members that had volunteered a month of their life to work on his epic.
There was the production manager who had recently taken a course at a community college and wanted to practice what he had learned. He was the most delightful born-again Christian that you could imagine. And he, being a forward thinking middle-aged father, wanted to also get experience for those that might make up a new family business.
To that end the production manger recruited his 19 year old son as first assistant director, his nephew as an assistant cameraman, his daughter as an on again – off again costume assistant, and their church family friend as a grip. Together, the rest of the crew referred to them as the ‘God Squad’ and they liked it.
The director of photography was a woman with long, bright red hair and black nails. She was a recent transplant from the New York punk scene with eyebrow and nose piercings, pale skin and a ‘get it done’ attitude. She saw life in a much more spiritual way than religious. In fact, she mistrusted the God Squad at first. But as a whole, the family was so sweet, and so kind that by the end, not even she could imagine a better group to work with.
The last of the large personalities was the lead actress who acted opposite Tian. Tian had cast her over a TV star because although both actresses had the same general look, Tian didn’t want to have to pretend to be in love. As the lead actor, director and producer he wanted one less thing on his plate. With the love in place then he could focus more on the directing and lines. It wasn’t until after the production started that Tian learned that she was a devout Scientologist.
These were all of the beliefs that made up the crew. It wasn’t surprising to Tian that everyone was so diverse because Tian thought all beliefs held a shared wisdom. And it was that shared wisdom that he had written his movie around. The movie talked about faith and about a higher power. The movie was about a love triangle between a woman who lived on the other side of death, a psychic, and the living woman whom the psychic loved. It was about how the world after life interacted with the living. And it was about the idea that even when the universe brings you to your lowest point, it is working to create your greatest good.
But Tian had made that movie a long time ago. Stories like that were no longer true for him. Major undertakings like making a movie were no longer possible for the man that Tian had become in the interim. Los Angeles was rightly referred to as the city of dreams. But what no one ever talked about was what happens when the dreamer woke up.
Tian had woken up staring at the stars. Looking up he realized that real life didn’t look much different from the dream. He got up from where he lay, looked around the woods and instead of going back to the street, walked away from everything that he knew.
The woods were not hard to navigate tonight. The moon was surprisingly bright. ‘It’s bright enough to drive by,’ Tian thought. What also made it easy were the branches of pine needles above. Not only were the needles not thick enough to block out the moonlight, but over the decades the needles had carpeted the ground preventing anything denser from growing.
Tian took stock of what he had with him. It wasn’t much. Other than the crotch length leathers he wore as a motorcycle jacket, he had nothing to protect him if the night turned cold. He remembered that he always kept an energy bar in his jacket pocket but he knew that once that was eaten he would have to survive on what he found.
Tian knew from experience that hunger would be the first thing that he felt. But he was sure that it wouldn’t be the thing that would eventually get him. Unfortunately Tian never carried water when he rode his cycle. And although his car always had at least two bottles in it at all times, they would be of no use to him now.
After walking for a while, Tian stopped and stood perfectly still. ‘There is too much rustling to be just me,’ he thought. If there was one thing that Tian could never get used to, it was the idea that the woods were God’s country; And God let wild animals live in his country. Tian ran down the list of possibilities: ‘Coyote, wolf, bear, deer and survivalists’. None of them were good options, but if he had to choose one, he thought it best to be a deer.
Tian remained still. He hoped that he would hear the rustling again. Continued movement would mean that it was a random animal walking through the woods. If the rustling matched his, it meant that he was being stocked; on his first day, within his first hour, he was being stocked.
He listened again and continued to hear nothing. There was no wind, there was no traffic. He couldn’t even hear the sound of his own breath. It was like he had gone deaf. And as the loneliness started to seep in he took another step forward hearing only the sound of his steps bounce back.
‘What is better,’ he asked himself, ‘the loneliness of being alone or the fear that came with knowing that you’re not?’ Tian choose the latter and as soon as he did he heard the rustling again.
This time he was ready to analyze it. It was coming from ahead of him so it wasn’t an animal. If a deer had seen him it would be moving away. If it was a predator it would have waited for him to come to it. No, this person saw him and wasn’t willing to wait for his approach. It was coming to meet him.
Tian was prepared for this. He was in part wondering what had taken so long. The last time this happened he had met someone almost immediately. ‘The circumstances are different this time,’ he figured. ‘The last time was in a dream within a dream. This time it’s in real life.’
Still, this wasn’t how anyone else described it either. He had woken up alone in the dark, where as he was hoping to find his father standing next to him in the light. ‘No, something is missing,’ he concluded. And now he didn’t know what to expect.
Samurai Zombie Hunter Page 20