Running

In the last echoes of light, I run.

The steady pounding rhythm of my feet landing on the pavement does not match my laboured and erratic breathing. With each gasp of air I take, I breathe in white fire and it burns my throat and lungs. My tired muscles scream and beg for me to relent.

My only response is to run faster.

The wind whispers around me in a language long forgotten within the endless corridors of time. The thudding of my heartbeat drowns my ears and reverberates off the walls of my mind, driving out all other thought.

I can only think of the beats and my bleeding breath.

So I keep on running.

I run so I can forget.

---

David.

He came into the world seventy-eight seconds before me, and he left without me. That day he disappeared changed everything.

I started to run then.

David had the same dark hair and hazel eyes as me, but his eyes were speckled with tiny molten gold strips. He was like that; full of surprises and depth if you bothered the look. We mirrored each other in so many ways, except I was the outspoken and mischievous female twin. David was always the familiar presence by my side, and people would always joke that we must be joined at the hips.

He was my other half and I loved him. Love him.

---

Visions of David tear me up inside, and there are pieces of me on the ground. I leave them behind. I have to keep on running.

---

I remember that he was afraid of the dark and the shadows that shuffled about in our room at night. Mum wouldn’t let him leave the lights on; she said it wasted too much electricity. She regrets this now. Maybe if she did, he would still be here.

But we both know that that’s not true. Yet we both still think about it just the same.

I remember when he felt scared at night, he would turn to face me, and ask me in so soft a whisper that I had to strain my ears to be able to catch it.

“Tell me about something beautiful, sis.”

And I would tell him about the calm before the storm. About how the air hummed with electricity around you and how the clouds flew across the sky, meshing together to form vague and wild pictures. Then he would tell me about the raindrops. About how you never know the exact moment they start twirling to the ground.

And then we would tell each other about the moon. About how it glowed like someone had cut a wedge directly out of the night and allowed the light of heaven to beam through and illuminate the earth.

Oh David, how I miss you.

---

The silence of the night is shattered by my racing heart, shouting and screaming and beating through my ears.

Faster. Faster.

Beating. Bleeding.

---

I remember the day that David left without me.

It was at a birthday party held at the park, two blocks away from our house. We were eight. Dad dropped us off with the presents and we joined all our friends, eating and playing on the plastic equipment. And then it was over. I couldn’t see David anywhere. I thought he was playing hide and seek. He was always good at hiding.

Dad and the other parents searched all the roads nearby, asking people if they’d seen “…a little boy about this tall, dark hair and hazel eyes…”

I never saw David again.

The police were informed, but all they did was play us the security tape taken from a shop across the road and ask us if we knew the man that David was with.

No.

There he was, slightly pudgy in the screen on the monitor before me. The frame is forever burnt into my memory, even the black box with the time in the right hand corner.

16:36.

He doesn’t struggle. Just holds onto the man’s hand and follows. He never was one to complain.

Hours wandered past and days followed them. Two months later, I remember being woken up by shouts from downstairs. I had crept down the blackened hallway, and sat on the third step from the top. Light, accompanied by anguish, pooled into the hallway from the kitchen. In that solitary moment, I realised that David wasn’t coming back.

And my parents were slowly drowning in the memories.

So was I.

That night I went to bed and dreamt, with my eyes open.

---

I’ve never slept properly since.

Only sinking.

Deeper.

So I run.

I try to outrun the past.

---

Mum never moved on. She stayed, and dad left. She wanted to be here, just in case David comes home. After he left, all I could think about 16:36, rewinding over and over in my head. I wanted to ask that man why he took my shadow. But as the years flew by like a runaway kite, I didn’t want to think about him anymore.

I wanted everything to fade.

---

As the first rays of light pierce the heavy sheet of night, I run.

My thoughts again drift dangerously between the faint borderline separating the past and the present in my mind. But I force myself to think of my heartbeats and bleeding breath.

One day, I won’t need to run anymore.

One day, I will be able to stop and wait for the past to catch up, and pass me. I would stand there as the wind runs its fingers through my hair and smile peacefully at the horizon.

But until that day comes, I’ll keep on running.