Shadows of the Marathon

Shadows of the Marathon

Clara stood in the midst of more than three hundred other participants, somewhere in the middle of all them, swallowing the impulse to pace the area. Even if she did let it take control, though, there wasn’t any space for her to even shuffle her feet, much less pace. On the foggy October morning, there shouldn’t have been this many people crowded at the starting line of the track, but it was the annual marathon that took place every autumn, and many had been inspired to join. 

Clara was used to running — she’d been doing it more than half of her life — so something like running the twenty six miles felt almost natural to her, even though her parents would much rather if it didn’t. They wanted her to marry a man that met their standards and have a successful job in the corporate business, an adequate goal that Clara was begrudgingly working towards. Her one and only dream was to become a professional runner and one day maybe compete in the Olympics. Clara had been told it was an impossible dream, not only by her parents, but it had been implied by her boyfriend, Ethan, as well. It always felt like a punch to the gut whenever someone mentioned something about it. 

Clara squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again to find that everyone was already in a stance, getting ready to run, so she positioned herself in a similar way, biting her lip as the cold air chilled her to the bone and a dark shadow cast over her and the other runners. She was grateful that she had at least worn sweatpants for this, because goosebumps were already beginning to form on the parts of her arms that were exposed from her top that had sleeves which went up three quarters, leaving a patch of skin bare. 

“Are you ready, ladies and gents? Participants and bystanders? Because the annual autumn marathon will begin very shortly!” announced a man with a megaphone sitting up high on a seat that required a ladder to get up to. Clara’s heart thumped and thrashed in her chest; no matter how many times she began a race, she could never fend off the nervous thoughts squirming in the back of her mind. 

“Three, two, one…! GO!” 

The whistle blew and Clara propelled her legs forward, her steady breaths visible in the cold. Her feet rhythmically hit the pavement, one step after the other, the misty air settling around her like a cloak. The ground was red, with white painted lines indicating the lanes, but for the amount of people, the lines were beginning to blur into each other, just one large track where they all ran. 

As Clara pushed on, she vaguely heard someone speak after a lapse of time, telling them they had finished the first mile. As more people had began to get tired, they had slowed even as Clara kept a steady pace, so she had singled herself out, keeping her breaths even and normal. Clouds drifted above, one particularly large one looming in the grayish sky and the fog thickened, making a tiny part in Clara’s mind to become uneasy. She tossed the thought out of the window and focused on the running, pacing herself, remembering all the times she had trained and done things that had been much more difficult than this. And with those memories came images of Ethan’s face, back when the love had been fresh. But they’d run it dry now and all that was left were empty promises and staying together only because they had no one else. 

It took all of Clara’s mental power to shove all thoughts of Ethan out of her mind, to shove every bad thought out of her mind and just think of something that made her happy. Except she couldn’t. All that surfaced were splintered memories of how it used to be, and voices she recognised but had mixed feelings towards. Her family, her mother, her father, her sister. Clara swallowed back bile, but convinced herself it was only because of the growing fog. 

Now that she was thinking about it, it was kind of strange, especially since the weather forecasts today had told everyone the sky would be clear and sunny but not humid. 

Silence. It was all Clara could hear — the screaming of the crowds no longer wafted through the air, the sounds of footsteps padding along the track no longer set the balanced rhythm for her, the people who were beginning to pant no longer ticked her off. Silence. It was like that for another few moments, but Clara ran on, telling herself over and over again that it was probably all in her head. 

That managed to work…until she began hearing voices. It started out slowly as faint echoes that penetrated the bubble of stillness she had found herself wrapped in, and although it was eventually escalating into a shout storm of voices, Clara could clearly make out one line that repeated over and over. 

“Good girls don’t act like this Clara. You’ll ruin the family name.” 

She was sitting at the dinner table now, transported into another universe, fidgeting with her fingers and blonde hair framing her face like a curtain again. A hollow hole opened and split apart her stomach as her mother’s narrowed eyes punctured her lungs and Clara couldn’t breathe for a moment. She looked away, trying to find a space she could breathe without the suffocating expectations polluting the air. 

It took great effort, but Clara detached herself from the memory, squinting as figures started to take shape in the fog. Her family. 

Taking a sharp turn, she left them behind, but had to check behind her after another minute of plain running. She was panting now — not a good sign, but it was probably because of the flashback. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t supposed to get stuck in her memories: she was supposed to run the marathon and win. 

Nothing was changing though. If anything, the fog was growing denser and the place was becoming thick with more and more shadows and Clara was tripping over herself trying to get herself out. What happened? Why was she suddenly isolated and all alone now? Her heartbeat sped up, thumping and thrashing against her chest, and she couldn’t even remember what mile she was on now? Was it five? Six? Seven? Everything was fading into a blur of motion and Clara had no choice or power in it, no matter how hard she pushed on. 

Clara’s gaze flicked to the side, coming in contact with a cluster of trees growing taller by the second. It was as though the crowd had morphed into thick, large pine trees. In the midst of all the shades of green bleeding into each other, another figure developed and stalked towards her, steps slow and monotone like a zombie. His features began to appear as well, and Clara stifled a gasp as she recognized it. It looked just like Ethan, and now he was right beside her, matching her pace as whispers filled her mind. 

“You can’t do this on your own Clara. You’re too weak.”

His footsteps faded but the lines kept repeating like a broken record, filling into the cracks of Clara’s mind. 

Clara still ran, even though her body felt like tearing itself apart. She didn’t even know how it was happening; she was running normally, like she always was, but this track, her family, Ethan…everything was making her weary and distracted, tired and battered. Clara shivered, her whole body trembling. She had lost count of what mile she was on a long time ago, as everything was slowly fading away. Every step felt heavier as though the ground was becoming quicksand, as though it was pulling her under and the fog was wrapping her up in a tight nightmare, with the voices surrounding her like a world wind and she just wanted to break free but she couldn’t. 

Clara ran deeper, pushing her hardest, begging herself to find a way out of this mess, out of the forest she had somehow now found herself in. Words and snippets of conversations were still surrounding her, and she felt like she was losing her mind, she felt like her brain was spinning out of control, everything was slipping out of her fingers like trying to carry water in your hands. Clara lost her sense of direction, Ethan’s voice echoing in her brain, louder than the rest this time. 

“You can’t escape me.”

“It won’t work like that.”

“I have better things to do than sit here listening to you ramble on about that.” Ethan stood up and left and Clara tripped over herself again, only now feeling that hot tears were streaming down her face, her eyes all bloodshot and puffy. She looked down, feeling the ground shift beneath her, and when dreaded realization smacked her straight in the face, she wanted to fall flat on her face. Except it felt like she was stuck running, her feet unable to pause, to skid to a stop, which only made her desire to slam her face into a brick wall even stronger. 

She looked around, only to find it desolate: the whole place, the track. She had been running in circles, stuck in a loop, and she would stay like that forever. 

Clara recalled what she had been denying all this time: she had never left Ethan. All those times she thought she was ecaping by running, it had only triggered the storm further. She had tried — and failed — to escape Ethan, her family, but she had only ended up in a cycle of control that had gripped her and tied her neck in a tight not, strangling her and drawing her into the life of despair. And then it hit her.

She wasn’t running a marathon — at least not anymore. It was like she was watching her life through metaphors, images of herself trapped in a box flooded her like an avalanche. She was handcuffed, the keys tossed away and she could only save herself by finding the answer inside of her. But it felt like she would never find it, not with all the problems distracting her from finding the real thing. 

Everything escalated, higher, higher, higher, and even when Clara thought it couldn’t get any worse — it did. More voices, more voices, everything erupted into flames into ashes and Clara couldn’t stop sprinting, even as her legs felt like jelly and were about to fall off. She couldn’t stop. 

The voices whispered her deepest fears, ones she didn’t even know she possessed.

 “You’ll never leave. You belong to us now.”

“Never leave.”

“Never leave.”

Clara broke down.

She stopped running. She fell to the floor on her knees, panting and breathing, eyes blurry with tears that were still yet to be shed. 

It was over.

It was all over. 

She was at the starting line once more, except it was just her. 

Two choices. Either continue down the shadowy path or break free. Clara shuddered at the thought of going back into the nightmare, but breaking free would mean a lot of things. Breaking up with Ethan. Explaining things to her family that would probably only end in arguments. Keeping herself steady and calm and just focusing on her passion. 

It seemed doable, but could she really do it? 

Can I really do it? The question rang in her mind, replaying, and each time, she never had an answer. 

Until Clara took a shaky breath, a deep one, lifted her head and stood up on quivering legs. Her hair had come out of the ponytail, now spilling in long locks down her back. She tucked a loose strand behind her ear, took another deep breath. 

Clara broke free.