A Long Walk

The man fell out of his bed, again. This time he rolled all the way under the window somehow. He picked himself up from the floor and started shuffling out of his room. He could already hear his father shifting in his creaky bed. He always expects food in about twenty minutes. No matter the hour he was up. Before he would yell, the man moved toward the kitchen and took eggs out of the refrigerator. Better to be safe. He doesn’t need his father being loud and the neighbors complaining, again. He breaks the eggs onto the hot pan and rips the bacon strips out of their wrapper. He also makes tea on the side. When all of it’s done he looks at the time. 9:36. Barely late. 

“I'M HUNGRY!” The man speeds out of the kitchen with the whole tray of food. He stops at the stairs and carefully treks them. He thought about the many stairs he walked every day to reach upstairs. There were eighty flights of stairs, and it felt easy and normal to walk so many times each day. He thought he was good at walking. As weird as it felt to say, he thought it was the only thing he was good at doing. 

“RIGHT NOW!” The man climbed faster and opened his father's door. Immediately he was hit by a cloud of dust. His father's room was a baby blue. The walls, his blankets, everything was the same color. It was also empty. No shelves, posters, or pictures. The only thing in the room was the television that rested on the end of his father's bed. That was the only thing he did. Watch sports. 

“Took you long enough.” His father remarked. His father snatched the tray out of his son's hands and took a bite of the bacon. Louds smacks of chewing enveloped the desolate room. “Not as bad as yesterday. Still dry.” He took a sip of the tea. His son blocked out the noise his father made because something lit his eyes. Out of the closet, something bright shined out in all blue. Something red. The man knew his father wouldn’t notice him while he was eating. He moved toward the closet and moved the door aside. It was a pair of shoes. Regular red running shoes. He looked back at his father. He was still eating the food like a bear. These are not his. It couldn’t be his mother's either. She was skinny even when she left. Why were these things in his father's closet? This thought was interrupted by the crashing of a plate. The man turned around to see his father resting comfortably. 

“Turn on the T.V.” The man did as he was told and ran out of the room before his father could say another word.

The man felt something he had never felt before. Holding the shoes in his hands just felt… right. He kept them with him and brought them into his room. He placed them on the bed. Just mesmerized. It contrasted his room, navy blue with a brown desk in the right corner. The beautiful red shone against all the monochrome in his room. He felt like these shoes were different. Different than his entire life. Then he had an idea. Quickly, he got a paper and string out of his desk. He sowed the string around the corners of the paper. Then he wrote his idea on it. He went to his closet and picked out clothes for exercising. Putting the shoes on, he could feel the change in his body already. He felt primed. He felt ready. Then he hung the paper across his neck and left for his front door. Before he opened the door, he shouted upstairs. “Dad, I’m going for a very long walk!” The man waited for an answer, but nothing came. The man opened the door and started his jog. 

About three weeks have passed since he left his home behind. He had been jogging all that time. Not a single stop in between. The only thing he even slowed down for was food and water. Even that was done while running. He would loop around the establishments as the food was being prepared, then he would sprint away. 

No cramps yet. He could feel little pains in his body. A little creak in his body here and there but there wasn’t anything that stopped him from walking. From completing his goal. But as he continued to walk, weird things started to happen. People started to trip him over. Out of nowhere. They would walk in front of him, stick their legs out, and he would fall over. Every time he got up, they would just walk away. He tried to talk to one one of them but all they did was stare at him, and continue walking away. He never tried again. That would be a waste of time. But he was starting to wonder, why are they doing this?

Now six weeks have passed. The man continued to walk. The people started to swear at him. They called him a loser, a fake, a nobody. They would yell at him across the streets. People would trip him over and push him. They would yell at him to give up. To stop. He just wanted them to shut up. He wanted to fight back, for them to get out of his way. Why are they doing these things? Why are they saying these things? Why are they wasting their time and breath just to break him? He was tempted to do something, but he thought better of it. All this running and cramping frustrated him but cleared his mind and rationalized his choices. He believed they wanted a reaction. They didn’t like what he was doing. They didn't like what was written on that paper across his neck. Realizing this, he didn’t care either way. They were not going to get in his way.

Four months have passed and this run has become a living hell. His body was stabbing itself. He experienced a charley horse every day. His throat felt like it was rusting, and his head pooled with sweat. The people were equally as ferocious. On every steep hill, they threw trash at his thin legs and yelled at him that he was useless. On every long road, people would ride bikes past him and spit on him. Some people would steal the water and food he had so little of. They all hated that he wasn’t stopping. They hated that piece of paper across his neck. Despite them all, the man continued to trek. Despite them all, he would finish this goal. The only goal he ever set in his life.

After all that, a year passed. This final week had been a quiet one. It had no yelling, no trash, and no tripping. The silence was deafening. He was starting to lose hope, nothing was pushing him forward. Until a bright light shone through the hill a few meters in front of him. It was blinding to look at and he could only imagine what was beyond it. He couldn’t believe it. The ending was right there! Just a hill away. He ran. Despite how much it killed him to even walk faster than four miles per hour, he ran. After so long, he crossed that final hill and saw something amazing.

He saw nothing.

He saw absolutely nothing.

Beyond that final hill was a black void of nothing. He looked into it and saw nothing. He turned his head and heard nothing. He bent down next to it and didn’t smell anything. He breathed thoroughly through his nose and mouth and lay down by the void. He took the paper off his neck and threw it into the void. He cried to sleep hoping that he roll over as he slept.

The paper said, “I’m walking the farthest ever walked.”