The Edge

They got it wrong. The Earth was flat all along. And moments after sinking into her overworn running shoes and stretching her calves like a cat shaking off sleep, Lori had the proof. 

It’s not that she was a maniac who liked running. The Morning Run was a longtime nemesis, the Moriarty to her Holmes. It proved rather unfortunate that this daily medieval torture provided the only cure to her abstinence. Three months. No boyfriend; dumped. Tear-soaked pillow cases and far too many empty Ben & Jerry’s pints. Real Housewives, ten pounds of extra breakup weight. Worst of all: no sex. And to the people who say you don’t need sex to feel something, to those indefatigable stoics who may or may not enjoy golf, to the ones who get a little jolt from a good’ole scented candle: shut the fuck up. 

It was by complete accident that Lori learned the ancient art of getting off in the most unusual way possible ( if you know, you know). Thirty-seven minutes deep into her mother’s insistence that she run off some steam, dry her tears, and maybe eat a banana afterwards, Lori– drenched in enough salt to give the Mali empire a run for its money– felt that familiar tug into sin. A trickle of sweat skated the valley of her shoulder blades and this time she sensed every inch of surface it covered. Left right left right left right and her legs, charmed by repetition into numbness, suddenly condensed at the apex of her thighs like the point of a V. She broke into a sprint, propelled on an endorphin wave rolling her up that hill only the weird marathon guy could run without severe angina. And there it was, that spot, and that anticipated ripple and that shudder that left a wet streak at the corner of her eye and oh that rush separating dermis from epidermis and filling the space with sweet, slick… and… and… !!!

Could it be? From running? 

From that point on Lori never missed a morning alarm. Six am sharp and the running shoes were laced, the deodorant slapped on errantly, hair thrown into careless nestery. Her mother puzzled over the quick turnaround. Heartbroken, bed-ridden daughter turned excitable, morning-person with life-together tendencies seemingly overnight! Were medical professionals seeing similar cases? Perhaps, a wellness pandemic underway? But Lori was beyond well, returning red faced with satisfied rictus, borderline discordant in its intensity. 

The hours between runs grew shorter, spliced by an inconsolable itch for the tightness of athletic clothes, the pounding of feet on the pavement, and the thrusting of hips on verge of a euphoric sprint. Lori fantasized about smelly socks, shin splints, and blood blisters. She snorted musk cocaine-esque and god she loved ripping the underwear off her exhausted, beaten body when she was done. What began as a foray into emotional self-regulation steadily colonized Lori’s quotidian life from morning to night. Running, running, running. Miles and miles. Without end– but certainly, with finish. One finish, two finishes, three or four if blessed by the stroke of luck. 

Her knees began to pop, bruising green-yellow as the cap slipped in and out of place. Lori wiggled it around, desperate to seduce into obedience. Before long, Lori’s body grew hard, engorged. Her muscles lithe, but joints straining to sustain them. She taped the sinews of her back, wrapped her ankles in gossamer straps of gauze. The callouses on her feet expanded and coarsened like layers of drying papier-mache. For an extra kick, she would peel the dead skin and stab under the rubber with the tip of a nail clipper. The more she moaned, the more she moaned. 

Of course, through all of this, Lori had no inkling she was going too far, crossing some line or edge invisibly inscribed by common sense. It seemed to her that she could run forever, traverse Route 66, run on water like Jesus braving the Pacific, conquer Eurasia in a pair of Nike flyknits 3. Despite the increasing effort involved in stitching her ligaments together to form a half-functioning human body, there was none involved in summoning the running spirit seeded in filthy, divine, unfiltered sexual drive.

So, on the morning of her downfall– and I mean this literally– that intuitive, built-in, you’re-in-danger radar in Lori’s gut failed miserably. It may not have existed at all. She proceeded, tying her laces with practiced fingers, caressing the aglets as a finishing touch. She followed her usual path, starting slow with a sensual jog–no fun without foreplay. Her right achilles tendon twitched as her heel flattened the flesh of her shoe. Her hamstring whined, readily aching for punishment. 

She picked up speed and that was when it began. She smelled it first, like rotting fish on the bay shore. Carrion birds circling the beach, munching on the stink. Plumes of it invaded her nose and shot straight to her brain like a hit of formaldehyde. It made her dizzy and she blinked rapidly, road flickering in her field of vision. Then, she heard it. The sounds of asteroids zipping, colliding. A few crashed on her path and she stumbled in recoil. What was this, the end of the world? She breathed with resolve, knowing there were only two circumstances under which she would stop running and jeopardize her orgasmic reward: 1) she dropped dead, 2) an alien UFO abducted her and transported her to Mars, where she would indubitably continue running, albeit slower, under lighter gravitational conditions. 

Lori’s surroundings suggested the latter was underway. The neighborhood houses disappeared, the asphalt melted off– an unfamiliar environment with the exception of constant, amber horizon. The air thinned and sky oscillated between colors as if unsure of itself or parodying Aurora Borealis. All around Lori, waves began to crash but failed to reach her. The temperature of Lori’s body climbed steeply, sweat leaking from every pore. 

Lori checked her watch. The number six-thousand flashed in red letters. Six thousand hours? Or days? Or months? There was no way of knowing how long she’d been running. Lori’s legs refused to surrender. Her hair stood on end, the tension straining in her core. If she kept going, this would be the best one yet. Lori’s eyes glassed over, heart breaking through the notches in her ribs. Strips of atmosphere fell at her feet, detonating weightlessly and expelling streams of water like geysers flushing the Earth. It occurred to Lori that she was approaching a cliff. She would not stop now. She was so close. 

At the edge, the world pared off without warning. A premature period to a half-finished sentence. Lori saw this too late to dull the momentum of her oncoming climax. In her final step an onlooker would note that she hovered for a moment, as if clinging on to empty, unrealized hope. 

And just like that, Lori fell off the edge of the Earth. There was no epilogue. No sphericity to round out bitter failure like sugar from a spoon. Gravity did the trick. Lori did the rest, still running towards an aimless end, still drunk in hope the Earth would turn over on its belly and pull her back from the edge.