Ribbon Frayed

Evan sat on the edge of his bed, the desk lamp casting a weak yellow pool. Across from him, the medals hung in a crooked line.

Ribbons dulled. Silver discs fractured with light. Once he had polished them, proud.

Now they looked less like trophies than parts — stamped plates, cold as coins cut from a press. He reached for one — a track medal, second place at state. Ribbon frayed.

Metal icy. He turned it in his hand, listening to the scrape against his nails. A sound like teeth on glass. Like a gear slipping its catch. A token of being almost good enough.

“Second,” he muttered. “Always second.”

On his desk lay the rejection letter — We appreciate your interest, but we’ve chosen another candidate. Always chosen. Never him. He crushed the medal until its edges pressed half-moons into his skin. The bite was glacial first, then hot — a spark struck from steel.

Promise. That was the leash. You’ve got so much promise, Evan. A word people used when they wanted you to stand still while everyone else surged forward.

He grabbed a pen, scrawled two words on the back of the letter — No more. He pinned it beneath the medals. Black words glaring against their pallid shine, like stenciled warnings sprayed on factory walls.

His phone buzzed. He scrolled past hollow advice until one headline stopped him — NO MORE SECOND PLACE. Second place is death in slow motion. First isn’t given. It’s stolen.

The words seared into him. Not a headline anymore. A verdict hammered into his chest.

Cold, too. Iron stenciled on a factory wall.

By 3:17 a.m., he couldn’t lie still. Hoodie.

Sneakers. Medal pocketed — cold against his thigh. A shard of frost.

The streets were empty, washed pale beneath the lamps. But the quiet shifted as he walked. Each lamp hummed like a motor winding up. His footsteps clicked against the pavement — not echoes, but gears locking into place.

Overhead, wires whined thin and cold, belts pulling tight across a winter ceiling. The block stretched long, houses rising like iron hulls. Windows blinked with phantom dials, their glass ticking with unseen gauges.

Shadows moved stiff and mechanical, piston-driven, shuddering in rhythm. The night shed its skin. No longer night at all, but a factory floor — endless, metallic, cold-breathed.

The house appeared at the end of the block — the boy’s house, the one who had beaten him. Curtains drawn. Lights out.

Silence.

He tightened his grip. The medal’s edges carved crescents into his skin. He opened his fist. Blood streaked its face. Red caught in silver grooves. It gleamed dully in the dark — not alive, not dead, just forged. The blood steamed. The medal stayed freezing.

Refused the warmth of flesh.

First isn’t given. It’s stolen. The line branded him. Thrummed with his pulse.

He pressed the rejection letter to the pole at the corner. Smeared No more across its back in jagged strokes. The words bled dark as oil.

With a sharp snap, he drove the medal through the paper. Metal bit wood like teeth.

The hum of the lamps swelled, a low chant rising from the machine. Curtains stirred, a latch clicked open. Faces hid in shadow. The street held still, listening.

He turned the corner, blood dripping steady down his wrist. The pavement stretched ahead, white-lit in stripes beneath the lamps.

Lane two waited for him. He sank into the crouch. Hands trembling on the line. The night held its breath.

Lane two waited. Painted chalk, bright under the humming lamps. The street seemed longer now, stretching into a tunnel of light and shadow, infinite. The hum thickened, gears gnashing in rhythm with his breath.

Evan set his hands flat against the line.

His nails scraped the pavement — sparks of sound that felt like signal. The air smelled of metal filings, acrid, like breath drawn from a lathe.

He heard a voice — not outside, not inside, but through the lamps, wired down into him. Second place is death. First is forged.

The air hissed. The lamps above flared white, as though struck by a welder’s torch.

He pushed forward. Feet hit pavement, each step locked in with the world’s machinery- piston-fire, iron pulse. Houses blurred, windows wide and watching.

Curtains peeled back to reveal faces without faces, their eyes the red glow of furnace doors. Each gaze hammered him forward.

The medal bounced in his pocket, heavy as a pulley weight. It beat time against his thigh, colder with each stride, until he could feel it tugging him down — no, not down, forward. Guiding him.

Ahead, the street narrowed to a finish line drawn across the dark. Not paint. Not chalk.

A glowing seam in the world itself, sparking at its edges. Behind it, the night was not night. It churned like molten ore, alive, waiting to be poured into a new mold.

Evan drove himself harder, chest splitting with fire, blood dripping from his clenched palm like oil cast on the track. The faces in the windows began to chant, their mouths opening in clicks and whirs. No more. No more. No more.

The medal burned now, though still cold against his skin — a contradiction, a paradox made metal. He ripped it free as he neared the line, the edge biting deeper into his palm.

The seam glowed brighter. The hum grew deafening.

One last step.

He hurled the medal forward.

It crossed the line first.

The seam cracked wide, splitting the night with a shriek like steel torn from its bolts.

Light roared up, not warm but blistering-cold, an arc of electricity flaring across the block.

Evan staggered into it.

The world dissolved into gears.

The light swallowed him. For a heartbeat, he felt weightless — like when you crest a hill too fast in a car, stomach hanging in air. Then the weight returned, crushing, as though a press came down on his chest.

He gasped. The world had no air. Only steam.

The ground under his hands was not asphalt anymore. Ribbed steel plates rattled beneath his palms. His breath came in bursts of white mist, vanishing into air that stank of oil and ozone.

The track had become a conveyor line, stretching endless in both directions. Lamps towered overhead, swinging from iron rafters that disappeared into haze. Their light was the color of sparks dying on metal.

The chant still pulsed, but it no longer belonged to voices in windows. It came from the walls themselves, from gears meshing somewhere out of sight, from chains dragging across pulleys. The machine spoke.

No more second. No more second.

Evan staggered upright. His sneakers squealed against the steel plates. He tried to steady himself, but the floor lurched, carrying him forward. He realized then it wasn’t a track. It was a belt. And it was moving him.

He looked down. The medal was still in his hand, embedded in his skin, half-fused where blood had cooled to a black solder. He tried to drop it, but his fist refused. His bones locked around the metal like a clamp.

Up ahead, the line shimmered again. But this time it wasn’t a seam of light. It was a gate — two pillars of riveted steel, crowned by a gear turning slow and steady, teeth grinding sparks.

Through the gate, he saw them- the runners.

A dozen figures, crouched in lanes, all frozen in the stance he knew by heart — knees coiled, fingers brushing the line. Their bodies were not flesh, but alloy. Limbs like rods, joints hissing with steam, eyes blank gauges ticking red. Each chest bore a number, etched deep. He caught a glimpse- 1, 2, 3… stretching higher.

Lane two was empty. Waiting.

The belt carried him closer.

The machine whispered again, now in rhythm with the turning gear- Second place is death. First is forged.

His body trembled, not with fear but with something else — a recognition. A fit. As though all this had been waiting for him, the way a mold waits for molten metal to be poured.

The gate loomed. The belt drove him faster. He dug his heels in, but the floor dragged him on, chains rattling beneath.

And the moment he crossed, the runners stirred. Their heads snapped toward him, metal faces blank, eyes glowing. They rose in perfect unison, the sound of pistons locking into place.

Lane two sighed open, steam hissing across its border.

The medal in his hand flared cold as dry ice, then searing. His knees bent. His fingers brushed the line.

And in that crouch, with the machine’s breath in his ears, Evan knew he would run forever.