Telemachus Rising Read online

  The sheets were cold and rumpled from sitting all day. It was winter, so everything was cold, but it was hard to believe this was the same bed that would be so warm and hard to leave in the morning. I wasn't tired, though. It was going to be another late night. I had a solid thirteen miles ahead of me and freshly tied shoes.

  It seemed crazy to most people, myself included, that I had gotten in the habit of running after midnight. I knew it wasn't really safe, but I didn't really care. Something about being out there every night made me feel invincible. Once I started a run, I was spoiling for a fight. I had fantasies about one of the drunk idiots who'd yell “Run Forrest!” taking a swing at me. God, it'd be so good. I'd fight anybody after a ten mile run. Even so, I shouldn't have been running so late. My chosen time of night aside, some people thought my mileage was extreme. I guess it was. I never thought to question it though. Like every good Quentin Cassidy wannabe, I'd made the decision to run a long time ago, and there was no use dredging up all the old arguments every time it rained or I had to run late at night. When people asked why I did it, I told them I liked to race. The truth is, running had become a major part of my identity. By the time I was getting up from that bed to go outside, running felt like one of the few things I could hang on to. I can see now, that was a dangerous place to be.

  Trotting down the back stairs, I was wearing running tights, shorts, sweatpants, a thermal shirt, a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, two pairs of socks, stretchy gloves, and a knit hat. Even with all those layers, the wind could cut right through if I didn't overlap them the right way. Wind chill is a killer in Michigan – literally. I dropped out the back door and into the alley behind my apartment building. There was a six foot fence that shielded it from the worst of the wind and snow, but there was a small gap that I always squeezed through where it met the wall. Somebody was parked back there where they weren't supposed to be. I had to fight an urge to key their car. I guess they weren't hurting anyone.

  I slipped through the gap and into the parking lot. There was a hidden trough on the inside lip of one of the car ports where I stashed my keys. I didn't like thinking about what else was hiding in there, so I tried not to waste any time worrying about it. The parking lot was totally iced over, but there was a thin snow pack that kept it from getting too slippery. I picked my way across to the sidewalk that would carry me to the trail head.

  Sidewalk is terrible to run on. It's too hard. I hate it. Asphalt is actually much softer. You never think about the relative densities of things like that, or how elastic something like concrete is. Hard materials just seem...hard. But even structural steel compresses. Steel! When they build a skyscraper, the supports actually shrink several inches under the load. The engineers have to account for it beforehand. There's some kind of formula. Anyway, the snow was a small blessing because it padded the concrete sidewalk. At least it seemed like a blessing at the time.

  My muscles were still sore from that morning's run. Just from a scheduling standpoint, it's tough cramming one hundred miles into a week. There's no way to do it without going out twice a day. It's rough. You're always sore, and you eat and sleep like a bear. Act like one too, half the time. I was peaking at this hundred miles a week, and all the signs of over training were rearing their heads. I managed to get my legs moving, though, and my form smoothed out pretty quickly. One convenient side effect of all that running is muscle memory. I swear to god I've fallen asleep mid stride.

  The trail started about a mile and a half away, which made the trip there an easy warm up. Then it would be a quick five miles into the woods, a turnaround, and the psychological downhill all the way home. Gliding along the sidewalk, I hit an intersection and went right across without breaking stride. Runner's Karma. See, mankind was made to run long distances. It figured in our evolution, the ability to run game into the ground. They think being able to run small animals down gave human beings the extra amount of protein they needed to grow big fat brains. My theory was that when people ran long distances the way they were meant to, the cosmos would align and the runners would fit into the universe like high precision gears. That was why I never had to stop or slow down at intersections. Another weird side effect of Runner's Karma had to do with turning street lights off when you ran under them. I'm not quite sure how that part figured in, but it was definitely a related phenomenon. Street lights didn't always turn off when I ran by, but there was more than one night I knocked out three or four in a row.

  The opening mile and a half flew by, and I was past streetlights and intersections before I knew it. The trail started in an unlikely place. It was right by all these businesses, and the entrance was in what looked like an abandoned parking lot. Even so, you'd go from pavement to heavy woods in about fifteen feet. Seriously. One turn in, and you might as well be in the upper peninsula. The trail itself went more miles through the woods than I'd ever run, although I'd walked most of it one summer afternoon a year or two earlier. There weren't many leaves left on the trees in the winter, but the branches still formed a canopy over the path.

  I broke the tree line at a decent pace. The snow on the ground gave off a faint purple glow where it wasn't blocked out by the mass of black tree trunks and dead brush. There was a thin moon out, but it wasn't doing much to light my way. I watched it hanging there in the sky ahead of me, tree branches zipping along in front of it. We were alone out there, me and the moon. I thought about that every time I went out for a late night run. The idea that it was a huge silvery rock floating out there in space was a fascination of mine. I was jealous future generations might get to make casual trips back and forth someday, but I never would. But that's not where my moon obsession ended. The other thing that always got me was that I was looking up at the same moon a previous generation had walked on, the same moon people had been running under since the ancient Greeks. Could Greek runners in Sparta have imagined that some day, thousands of years in the future, young people half a world away would call themselves Spartans and run under the same moon? That kind of thing never occurred to me when I glanced up at the sun. Only the moon. The moon made me feel connected to the past, especially those runners, those messengers. Even though their motives were different, they did the same thing I was doing. They felt the same burn in their muscles, the same bite in their lungs. At night they looked up and thought about the same moon, and right then, in those moments, the only things that separated us were time and footwear.

  There's a saying, that a run only truly begins once you forget you're running. My run was well on its way. If you aren't a runner, it might be difficult to imagine how anyone could forget they were running. For one thing, you stop noticing the vertical bounce of your stride. Part of that is a matter of efficiency. You really do bounce around less when you have good form. All the same, the ride starts to feel pretty smooth after a while. That's another thing. You don't notice your body a whole lot, especially your feet. Don't get me wrong, you can still feel them. It's not like they're numb. You definitely notice them if you take a funny step or if the ground is uneven. But for the most part, you start to work like a machine. When something goes wrong, your body tells you, like the indicator lights on a car's dashboard. Breathing rhythm starting to get difficult - reduce pace. That's something people don't think much about either, breathing rhythm. When you're running, you automatically match an in/out breath pattern to your steps. It puts you in a kind of trance after a while. I never understood people who listen to music when they're running. It ruins your rhythm. Totally spoils the atmosphere. Anyone who runs out of things to think about on a run isn't doing enough living.

  My thoughts drifted. First it was the woods, then the moon. I don't know how or when it started, but she crept into my thoughts. Over the monotony of the snow and trees, I could see her like she was right in front of me. There she was, inches away. Sideways. Long dark hair spilling down over her cheek, spread between us on my ridiculous couch bed. Soft pink lips and eyes that never seemed to blink. She looked so delicate laying there. Bre
akable. She had bony elbows and hips that flared out from a narrow waist. I can remember my arm draped gently around her, how hot her body felt when I pulled her toward me. I kissed her like I was hungry, and god did she kiss me back. I'd never wanted anything so badly in my life.

  I didn't even see the trees, the trail, not that there was much to see. The woods around me were dark, and the winding path was...less dark. I was on auto pilot, hypnotized by the repetition of my surroundings, operating somewhere between fully awake and dozing on the run. I was on the very edge of awareness, with something warm and inviting just out of reach. Out of reach like the smell of her perfume. I could almost bring it back if I tried hard enough.

  I dissolved into that moment. That moment where she's kissing me back and I touch her cheek. Her breath comes hot, and I can feel it on my face. My fingers trail down her throat and the edge of my thumb traces her collar bone. I kiss down along her jaw and the curve of her neck. She tilts her head away and there's a quick catch in her breath. I take her bicep in my hand and push her shoulder down to the bed. Her hair spreads out like silk, and I can't stop myself from lacing my fingers through it. Her chest is heaving when our lips meet again, and I have to touch that, too. The layers of fabric are frustratingly thick, but I can't get enough of her. She wraps a leg around me, trapping one of mine. My hand goes to her hip as she starts to grind them against me. I never want to stop kissing this girl. There's a strip of exposed skin where her shirt has started to ride up, and I can't let it go to waste. She's so soft, so impossibly soft.

  I turn my attention back to her neck so I can shift my weight off her. My hand drifts from the curve above her hip to the inside of her thigh. Her legs part and my fingers touch the burning hot denim between them. She has trouble working the buckle of my belt without looking. We both laugh a little when I have to help her get it undone, but we never stop kissing. Even now, all this time later, I can still hear what she said next like the words just left her lips. But the scent of her perfume, the familiar, warm, intoxicating smell she left on my pillows and in my bed is gone forever. Lost.

  A sound on the trail ahead caught my full attention. Sometimes when I was running, I'd get tunnel vision. I wouldn't see or hear anything but whatever I was focusing on. I'd run right by old friends without evening noticing them on the sidewalk. It could be embarrassing. Once, a few weeks earlier, I'd almost run right into a couple of deer in those woods. I noticed them at the last second and skidded to a stop on the ice. They froze for a instant and then took off through the trees. It would've been funny if the whole thing hadn't caught me so completely off guard. Then again, it wouldn't have happened at all if I had seen them sooner. After that surprise encounter, I took noises on the trail late at night pretty seriously.

  I kept my eyes peeled and aimed toward the sound without slowing down. There was a straightaway about a hundred meters down. If there was something ahead of me on the trail, I'd be able to see it. I'd forgotten that the straight section of the path began with a set of rolling hills. They weren't easy to manage with the snow we'd gotten. The trail didn't look like it had seen much use lately, and there were snow drifts in some places.

  I was looking up from one of those drifts when I caught my first glimpse of him. I knew it was a runner right away, even though I only saw the back of a neck and a hat way off in the distance. By the time I crested the next little hill, he was out of sight. That was not going to stop me. I didn't know what he was doing on my turf, but I was going to find out. I accelerated instictively and my form smoothed out as I followed the path deeper into the woods after him. Who was this tourist? I had been out there every single night and I'd never so much as caught wind of anyone else. Now here was this guy taking off ahead of me. What the hell was that about? No way was he holding that pace.

  It was a good quarter mile before I started to catch up with him, and by then the trail was weaving in and out of the trees so much I was only barely making contact. Whoever this asshole was, he was sure moving. I was starting to reel him in, though. I'd make contact for a good couple of seconds before he could make it to the next bend. Maybe I was just better with tangents. The back of this guy's neck was the only thing in the world that mattered. Without even realizing it, I'd gone into race mode. By Ricky Rack, I love to run...I was moving. My nice easy thirteen mile pace snuck up to a solid 5:30 mile – nothing impressive for a 5k, but respectable for a marathon, which is what this was turning into.

  He must've heard me closing in, because out of no where, he took off like it was the gun lap. I couldn't believe it. I'd lost him again. That was too much. I was not going down that easily. I threw myself down the trail like it really was a race. It was time to end it once and for all. There was no way – CRACK! FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

  It didn't happen in slow motion. I didn't see it coming. It came out of fucking nowhere. While I was busy chasing some figment of my imagination, which is what that son of a bitch had to be, I'd completely overshot my turn around point. I had been hauling ass along some piece of trail I might have never even walked before, let alone run. At night. In the snow. The fact that I had just gone over a bridge didn't register. More importantly, I had failed to notice the sharp left hand turn on the other end. So there I was, flying down the far side of this bridge when I plowed headlong off the edge of the trail. Instead of landing on the solid foundation of the path, my heel cut through several extra inches of drifted snow until my leg locked. When my foot hit the ground at that speed with a locked knee? It turns my stomach thinking about what the hyper extension must've looked like. I don't know how far my knee folded in the wrong direction, but it would've made one hell of a video for the internet.

  As soon as I heard that pop echo through my body, as soon as I hit the ground, before I finished tumbling and slid to a stop at the bottom of the hill that supported the trail, I knew I had torn my ACL. I was fucked. Proper fucked. My knee throbbed. As a bonus, I'd bitten my tongue while going ass over teakettle down the hill. I just laid there in the snow. I didn't even move. I felt sick. Angry. Pissed off at my shitty luck and my bad judgment and the unfuckingfair series of events that landed me, crippled, in a snow drift in the woods in the middle of the goddamn night. I let out one long, pitiful sob. I felt so fucking sorry for myself. But that's where it ended. In ten seconds, my sweat felt like ice water. That was when I realized I was about to have bigger problems than a torn ligament.

  I had set out to run a familiar route, so I hadn't worn my watch. I couldn't estimate time for the life of me, but I could identify pace per mile within a couple seconds. However far I had actually traveled, I knew I was more than six and a half miles from home. It may have only taken about forty five minutes to get there at a run, but it would be at least a two hour walk, even if I hadn't wrecked my knee. My layers of clothing were enough to keep me warm while I was moving, but I wasn't cranking out all that body heat just laying there. My clothes were starting to feel wet and sticky. And cold. The tumble down the hill let snow in everywhere. Up my sleeves, into my shoes. My hat had come off altogether.

  I took a deep breath and gathered my nerves. What fucking luck. I began to stand up, and pain shot through my bad knee when I tried to bend it. This was going to take some work. I got into push up position and bent my good leg up toward my chest. With all my weight on it, I struggled to bring myself upright. I was gasping from the effort, the pain, and the sprint that led to the fall in the first place. I straightened my bad knee as much as I could and eased that foot a few inches forward. It hurt, but it held my weight. I hopped forward onto my good leg again to repeat the process. It was tougher going, now that I'd reached the incline. I hopped forward again, but the sole of my running shoe slipped in the snow, shock loading and hyper extending my bad knee for the second time.

  I hit the ground with a yell, but the new wave of pain was just a modest encore of the initial injury. God I was fucked. When I got my breath back, I started to claw my way up the hill. Progress was grinding. I could only push with o
ne leg, and I seemed to slip back six inches for every foot I gained. I had to dig into the snow and buried brush with my fingers every time I repositioned my good leg. It was exhausting and agonizing on my knee. I found my hat about halfway up the slope. It was full of snow and made my ears feel colder when I put it on.

  It must've taken me a full ten minutes to claw my way back up that hill. At least that's what it seemed like. I know I was shivering when I collapsed at the top. I couldn't help it. I looked down the trail to see if anyone was in sight, if anyone could have heard me yell. Nobody. There was a walkway cut through the snow, but no way to know if anyone had used it in the past fifteen minutes or the past twenty four hours. I was alone, completely alone, in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night. I felt so defeated. I was broken. This wasn't some little muscle strain that would get better on its own. No, my knee was never going to be the same after this. An injury like this was going to require surgery and months of rehabilitation. I wouldn't be able to walk for a while. I might never run again, at least not like I had. That's when the second wave of misery hit. All those months and years of cumulative training. Literally thousands of miles of blood and sweat. Down the drain. Completely wasted. Stronger, faster than I'd ever been in my entire life, and I wouldn't even get to run a race. I might never get to run a race again. Not seriously. Where did that leave me? I raged inside. Fit as I'd ever been, and I would have to spend the next year, helpless, watching myself decay. The pain of the injury was nothing compared to the pain of that realization. Maybe freezing to death would be the better option.