I’ve started running.
As a person who considers themselves unfit for the trials of a stairwell–let alone actual exercise–the meek slouch of my aching shoulders had leant me forward as I collapsed into the embrace of a thicket, the wet leaflitter therein feeling somewhat cooling against my side.
Of cardio, I am an amateur, and for far too long have I put off clearing my lungs by getting out into nature.
It’s not as though I hate activity: I like watching tennis, for example. It’s more that there is a disconnection between myself and the outdoors, a vast expanse of unknowing, the fear of self that work and my loungeroom have kept me well blanketed against.
It began with a text message.
Tuesday afternoon and a day off with little to do had led me to the lounge-stuck lethargy of a movie marathon of vague colours and cookie cuttered ice-cream.
*Tick, tick* the buzz of an unexpected message rang from the counter.
Surely it was nothing, I though in daydream. Scams, ads, electoral intrusions into my day off that could be deleted when effort was more forthcoming.
*Tick, tick* it buzzed again, *tick, tick* three messages delivered in triplicate.
Clambering from the comfort of my blankets, I stumbled over towards the bench, kicking at the unsorted washing I had left on the floor as an incentive to clean it up later.
Why should my day be disturbed so urgently? Three messages in under a minute. No one needed me enough for that.
Reaching the phone, I flicked against its glass screen and punched in the code of 1,1,1,1. Three messages, a fourth in my time spent unlocking, all from the same number, all bearing the same sentence.
START RUNNING.
Was this encouragement?
There are, of course, times when running should take precedence before thought. A person in a bomb disposal suite, for example, they could be seen to be fleeing down an alleyway, and in those moments, you should absolutely join in.
But from a text message?
Who’s this? I replied, the sting of numbers that comprised of their identity meaning nothing to me outside of their capitalised suggestion.
Coffee shop, remember? We’re friends.
START RUNNING.
It returned, the unblinking eyes of a friend, the still scared table where she had sharpened a butter knife against while waiting for an order of plain boiling water with something that screamed.
I work in Balendup strand, we’re used to the odd sorts that come in-and-out each day: wool caps in summer with an artist’s temperament, milk that is borrowed from a ghost’s insecurities and other such impossible requests.
This person was different though. They were engaged, interested in me far more than my role as a barista. They wanted to see what I thought, what was behind my face. Shuddering I remembered the snake-like smile and thought about the promise that I had made her.
A festival. A meeting with her leader? Images of song circles and unwashed musk fluttered through my imagination, but something that she had said became a little lump in the back of my subconscious.
‘Bring a knife and some good running shoes.’
Two more messages urging me to run, and the movement of tension made me feel as if I was suddenly being watched.
Slowly, turning around, I saw two hands holding onto the edge of my verandah and I suddenly felt more alone than I had ever felt in company. Laboriously a figure with tangled robe and muddy running shoes, rose over the wall and tumbled down onto the tiles below. They stood, pointing a knife at me and marching forward with an obvious enough intention.
‘Point taken.’
Barrelling from the kitchen, I lurched into the hallway that led to my front deck and collided against a second figure that had just climbed in through an open window. Force overcoming object, the second person was knocked windlessly into my linen cupboard and something primal allowed me to slam the door closed and to kick a door stop underneath. Panicked and still moving without the input of ration, I made from my house as quickly as I was capable and knew that I would immediately be out of breath.
*Tick tick* my phone buzzed again *tick tick* it continued as I struggled up the road, destination still as yet undecided.
‘Summer is a-coming in,’ a voice sang from somewhere in the empty street, trees draping the roadway and the otherwise quiet afternoon seeming peaceful and almost trouble free.
‘Gently sing cuckoo,’ two more voices chorused as more and more robed figures appeared from behind bushes, or from seemingly unoccupied air. They sang with revelry, a celebratory gleefulness that more suited a wedding than the backstreets of Balendup.
I jogged towards my car but cursed as I had forgotten my keys. Step by methodical step, the figures walked towards me, untroubled by urgency or bearing an inclination to run. As one they sung, ‘Summer is a-coming in, gently sing cuckoo,’ and in turn they withdrew a knife from within the folds of their robes, hooded faces and all to wide smiles chanting, grinning, gnashing with pearl white teeth.
Reaching in through my car’s window, I released the parking brake, letting the slope of the hill take my car carelessly away along the gutter. It was a short hill, but picking up enough speed to be an inconvenience and several of the chanters were caused to jump out of the way as my corolla bumbled towards them.
I ran as heartily as my weak-breathed lungs would allow. Tripping down the embankment and pushing off towards a fire trail, I wondered if it would have been safer to head into town rather than it was to become immediately lost in a state forest, but something about the forest felt familiar.
I had always lived near the forest. Two bushwalking mad parents had become tired of the bustle of Sydney and had decided to move away from the city. Rural but large enough to be called charming, Balendup was comfortable in its definition of townlyness, and that same sense of adventure had always called out to me. But alas, the bus stopped so close by, the convenience of a car making life all the sedentary.
Ducking some branches, I turned off the trail and wheezed as dregs of my enthusiasm began to turn fallow. The singing was more distant now, a chorus of almost bird song rustling among the gum and eucalypts.
I jogged, I shuffled, I fell.
Laying in the thicket and regaining my breath, that familiar voice called out from somewhere all to nearby.
‘Baristaaa, you’re laaate.’
Why was I awkward enough to agree to a mad-eyed customer? The very first day I had started my boss warned me not to make friends. “They’ll invite you to poetry slams.” she had said during the induction, “jazz nights, weird fondue parties, never say yes. Your job is to make them coffee, not enable their artistic insanities.”
While she was uniquely unfriendly as a colleague and as small business owner, my boss was correct in this instance.
The voices had surrounded me as I lay in the thicket. Closer and closer the sing-song melody encircled where I lay and dread began to overbubble onto the gas burner.
A stick snapped and my legs surged into motion, glinting steel stabbing at the bush as I charged out into the dense forest at a gallop. I felt one with motion as I ran. Aching joints pumping and pounding against the ground, breath a rasping rhythm. In the soft afternoon light, the world became a single note, and each leaf was visible, each swaying branch a movement of single creation. I was thoughtless, a determination and purpose of direction. Run, my brain repeated like a metronome, run my heart thumped with rhythm in each step.
But the runner’s high can only last for so long.
A clearing then came into view and at its centre a single maypole stood ominously.
Faltering, I struggled forward and could only limp, step after step, a stich in my side making each breath shallow. The robed figures fell from the edges of the clearing like hounds, they skipped across the grass urgently now, the fear of an escaping prey driving them forward.
I reached the pole and clung to it without hope for survival. Weakly, hopelessly I prayed for a miracle to interlude.
They stopped, the circle dropped their run in sullen dismay and one by one they turned to leave the clearing.
‘Drat!’ a familiar voice yelled as one of the figures hurled their knife at the ground, just narrowly missing their own foot as the blade bit deeply into the earth.
‘The light of the sun keeper was supposed to turn us unto ashes! Barista, you were too quick, no fair.’
The customer from the other day appeared childish in her oversized robes, she stomped at the ground and began pacing as I took large gulps of air, unable to understand what had just happened.
‘Ok, fine. You win. Happy?’ she continued, failing her arms and ignoring her compatriots as they sulkily ambled away, ‘Father Nyall said you’d be an easy sacrifice, darn and drat it. I thought we were friends?’
Clearly working through a tantrum, I stood behind the maypole in an effort to get anything between myself and the madwoman.
‘Could you try again?’ I asked.
‘No, we have to wait until the next festival of the sun. But if you are volunteering?’ That familiar smile cracked all too wide across the customer’s face. She stepped down upon the knife handle protruding from the ground, forcing it fully into the dirt. She turned, looking at me once more before walking off back into the forest.
‘Be seeing you then.’
It has been said that to start something new it is only through an honest incentive that a person can excel. So now, whenever I feel low, I think of those two words, and I remember the importance of maintaining cardio.
Start running…
J. McCray
2023
Sunday Short Stories 