Good morning all and welcome to Friday. I don’t know about you but I have had a pretty good week this week. It has been productive and things have generally just sort of rolled along quietly. It was really quite nice. So shall we round out the week with our Friday writing prompt? I think so. Timers set and let’s get to it.
I kind of like this one. I think I might have crammed a lot of extra information in at the end because I wanted to kind of remember the mental set up. I think when i write this out I’d stretch it out and add in the deaths one at a time as she is running. And then wind up with why she decided to run again. But I do like this one and feel like i will circle back to it. Always a good way to end the week.
Friday, October 21st: She finished her warm up stretches.
She finished her warm up stretches. Her body felt loose and limber. It was a familiar sensation , but one she hadn’t felt in a long time. Once she ran every morning. She rolled out of bed, went to the bathroom, tied up her hair and splashed a little water on her face before pulling on her running clothes.
It had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember. Once she ran for fun. Then, when her family realized she was good enough, she began training, real training. She was the youngest and only girl. There were four boys ahead of her; Curtis who went on to professional weight lifting, Toby who was an Olympic wrestler, Andre who played Lacrosse and Gavin who played professional football. She was a good five years younger than Gavin and until they discovered her talent with running she had been much of a disappointment to the family. She was the cheerleader, the one who held up the signs at their games and matches, encouraging them.
Once she started her training that stopped. There wasn’t time to glue glitter to poster board or sit in the bleachers. There wasn’t really time for much of anything, really.
There was school and there was training. That was her world. And even then her family viewed school as a necessary requirement to be gotten out of the way. Training was the thing. She had to be faster, better, stronger. Anything else was unacceptable.
And then things started to fall apart.
She tried to push that out of her head as she walked towards the door. Uncertain of herself after so long, she did her stretching indoors. Once she reached the street she would do a few more light stretches and then begin her first run in more than five years.
She left her apartment and took the stairs down instead of the elevator to keep her muscles limber. Had it really been five years? She counted in her head. No, it was six, closer to seven really if she counted them up. A part of her wondered what Curtis and Andre were doing right now. She hadn’t spoken to them since the last funeral. She reached the pavement and stretched a little bit more. There was no one around to watch her, to see, to judge.
She began to run, a slow jog, nothing like the punishing paces of the past. As she ran she found the memories shaking loose.
Toby’s death from drug use came first. It caused not only death but disgrace Andre spinning out of control with his own, less performance enhancing drugs. Her father trying to get him stable and then finally giving up and letting him go. Her father and Gavin dying together in that horrible accident taking out both of them and several of his teammates.
The day of their death had been the last day she ran.
Ten til Midnight 