Killer Run

It was the same morning jog Lindsey Schwartz took daily. Two miles from her house to Marshall Park. It was a piece of cake for her, although she didn’t eat them herself. Even with the greenest slice of key lime or banana cream staring her in the face at Shari’s bakery, they were invisible to her, as her goal to double her mileage made the scrumptious snacks moot. 

November 2, 2022 was going to be that day. The sky dropped as much water as any other day in southwest Washington, yet not an umbrella in sight. The ability to withstand the rain was a source of pride for the locals. The only people to be caught dead in the area with umbrellas were tourists. Besides, Lindsey liked the way the rain fell down her face, as a shower was one of the only places she felt safe. 

Her running had another purpose. She needed cardio practice in case Steve Graham ever came back to town. A ladykiller with a penchant for pickup trucks, women still flocked to him for his nonchalant demeanor. He never needed to impress anyone, which Lindsey ate up. She was never one for the brash types. However, she saw a side of him none of the other lucky–or unlucky–ladies ever did. Before it was too late, he found himself behind bars.

“He’s gone now,” she remembered. “I just gotta keep going. Go past Willards way and then I can turn around in another mile.”

Still, Graham couldn’t exit her consciousness. They spent four years together, longer than any of his other previous relationships. The pair traveled from the Grand Canyon to the jungles of Vietnam, each trip giving her sparks of magic so long as he held her in his thick, shaggy arms. When he was contracted for construction in Oregon, that’s when she discovered the eyeballs in the lockbox. 

The scent of Frankincense arced into her nostrils when she crossed into the trail past Herschel Road, which went from a cul-de-sac into the woods. A figure standing at 6’1”hopped onto the trail. She ran into it, which knocked her to the concrete and almost hit her head, had her elbows not caught her fall. An orange jumpsuit gleamed underneath a navy blue raincoat while rectangular glasses reflected her face back to her. 

“Steve?” Lindsey asked. “You…you shouldn’t be here. You’re supposed to be in prison.”

He was barely incarcerated for a year at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center. 

“I just really missed you, baby,” he said. “The new guard wasn’t too smart and gave me an opportunity, so I took it.”

Lindsey also took the opportunity to slam her foot into his shin and leapt to her feet. Her year of daily cardio was tested. 

“Help!!!” she screamed. Like a bear, her ex-boyfriend followed suit ready to catch its prey. More memories appeared to her in the frenzy of adrenaline. 

“If you could live anywhere, where do you think you’d go?” Lindsey asked Steve two years prior. 

“Somewhere up north, as far up the state as we can go, with a nice big house on a lake. Somewhere quiet with no neighbors. You know what I mean?” he said. 

“Why no neighbors?” she said. 

“Well, privacy. I hate hearing the neighbors next door blasting their music,” he said. 

“Yet you blast yours. Think of how they feel. Maybe they’re trying to drown yours out because it’s so loud,” she said.

“Hey, you gotta agree with me that AC/DC is a hell of a lot better than Celine Dion, don’t you think?” he said. 

“I mean I can’t argue with that. I just think it’s a little hypocritical how nobody else can blast music, but you can.” she said.

“Some days I just wanna go over there and break the stereo over their heads. Tired of hearing that garbage,” he said. 

“Somebody help!!!” she yelled as she ran into the neighborhood. Neighbors dialed their landlines with no guarantee the authorities would arrive in time. On that road, no one dared go outside unless they wanted to be piledriven. He ran with the force of a freight train trying to outrun a hurricane. 

For Lindsey, the nearest police station wasn’t for another mile. It was rare that police patrolled the primarily upper middle class neighborhood she ran in. Her legs rushed the pavement at the pace of a rabbit. 

A glimmer of hope appeared in the form of a mailman on a delivery run. 

“Please stop him!” Lindsey pleaded as she ran past the tall bifocaled man in the shorts a third of the way up his thighs. He might as well try, as the most action he saw for the past year was almost hitting someone zipping their bike across the street along his route. 

“Stop it right there!” he shouted as he jumped in front of the perpetrator. Steve kept the same speed as he bulldozed the mailman like he was a wooden branch. The blow alone cracked four ribs and put him out of work for two weeks. 

The pair were about to cross an intersection with cars coming from the south. Her options were either get hit by metal or by flesh and bone. The former was worth it to her. A blue Chevy breezed her backside while she ran across the street, as the wind of 4,000 pounds of steel whipped behind her shirt. Lindsey reached the yellow line of the curb after five more paces. It felt like a finish line, as Steve’s punishment for losing the race was a red Kenworth semi truck that flung his body 10 feet away. 

Lindsey couldn’t stand any longer as her breath waned. She remembered a similar feeling when she attended his court trial where the judge sentenced him to life without parole for the murder of three women in town, each with their eyeballs removed post mortem. 

Little did he know the day he found his freedom, his eyeballs were found by his feet on the pavement while a pileup of three cars formed in his wake.