Runners Up

“ughhfoo” ”ughhfoo”, he was panting. With heavy breaths, he was running. As fast as he could. He never was much of a runner, the idea exhausted him but he was running. In the dark of night, the hoots of owls were apparent. “At this hour” “At this place”, he thought to himself. “Why would the owls make the noise they do?” “Do they see me” “do they acknowledge me” “why’d they fly here” “animals are not sentient beings, their actions can’t be questioned or be mistaken for a divine sign”. That’s what he did. That’s what he always did. Contradicted himself.  Saying one thing, then another, never reaching a conclusion where he could agree with himself. This was a conflict he fought through his whole life and when it became unbearable, he decided to run. But to where and from what? “Pat!” he collided with an old lady, she fell on the road. He didn’t stop. Looking back he saw people helping her and cursing him but he didn’t stop nor did anyone try to make him. Somewhat similar to that other night. He didn’t stop even then. If he had, a man’s life would’ve been spared. Two years ago, he was running or jogging really fast would be more appropriate. It was merely his second day after he made a vow to become shapely. On the very first day he realised how boring it can be. All the while his mind tried to convince him to go back to his comfortable lifestyle. So to avoid it he carried his music with him the next day. With headphones on the loudest, he wasn’t even listening to his own thoughts and that was the intention. Outside noises were completely non-existent. It was like he wasn’t running on road but in a white plain. Nothing around, nothing for miles only the blinding whiteness all over. He hears a loud screech. Just then his world shatters. “Glass? Was that glass?” he asks himself wondering about the big thump he’d just heard. A horn blowing constantly, beeeeeeeeeeeeppppppp! And he’s back to his senses. He realised the world he’s in. He’s out of the park now, it never occurred to him that he was already on road. He looks back; at the back is his misfortune as he looks in horror at the bloody head of the driver who crashed into the traffic light. He goes to him, shakes his body, tries to help him but he’s already dead. There was glass all over the car’s hood. Here he wondered to himself, such is his fate. The place was so desolate he couldn’t find any help from anywhere. He cursed the moment he decided to bring an mp3 player instead of his phone. He then searched the body for a phone. He found one, immediately called 112. The emergency services arrived, cops arrived. He told them what he desperately wanted to believe himself. “So how’d it happen?”, constable Dogra asked. “I was out for my regular jog before dawn breaks and I found this person with his car collided with the traffic signal”, he replied. “So nothing else?” “No, nothing else sir”. “Seems like an accident, the driver must’ve fell asleep. During these hours it’s pretty common”. “Yes you are very right sir”, he said constantly doubting his own statement, wondering “is he dead because of me?”

He was running, this is what mattered. He was running now, not what happened two years ago, not what drove him to this madness but what he was doing and he was running now. “shunnnnn!” he hit a window. But he kept going. “The windows in my room are kinda stuck, their lock is rusty” “but not that it matters now”. He kept running. “Faster, faster, faster” “no no no, stomach cramps stomach cramps, “slower slower slower”. Can he die while running? From running too much? “Nah”, he thought “this isn’t how it ends” “I get to decide that. Atleast that decision’s mine”. This reminded him of the city-half marathon he ran last year. It was a charity event for an orphanage. “Is that all I’ve given to this world?” “I didn’t even complete that race”. Just then he saw a familiar face in front of him. She was picking up a nickel from the road. Just when she stood up and in the split second they saw each other, her eyes widened, she recognized him. “Lucky girl, found a nickel on road” but then it hit him. He remembered who she was. She was the girl he gave a ride a few months back. Now the whole night came flashing back to him. He was on the road to his way back home when he saw a girl waving hands at the passing cars. He didn’t want to stop for her. Afterall good samaritans are statistically more prone to being robbed. But he wasn’t moving at a lethal speed so she literally threw herself infront of his car. “You want to die here, girl?”, he screamed from the inside of his car. “Please, please, my brother, my brother” and pointed at a person seemingly collapsed nearby. He stopped his engine and came out to see what it was all about. This was now officially a disaster according to him. He left himself so vulnerable, anything can happen now. These two can very well threaten him and run away with his money and car or even worse sedate him and take him for selling his organs. He got closer to this person on the side of the road. The suspiciously trembling gentleman on the road was hardly breathing and shaking violently as if having a seizure. “Now what to do?”, he wondered. “As if I have a choice now”. He dragged him to his car and took the girl and her brother to the nearest hospital. On their way the girl explained how both their phone’s network was ineffectual. “Bloody Vodafone”, he mumbled. “What?”, she asked. “Oh nothing, nothing”. After a while the doctor told them it was an allergic reaction. “He could’ve died. You brought him here in time. He almost had a stroke”, the doc explained. “Oh yes. My brother’s allergic to peanuts and he bought a chocolate bar from a shop on our way. Gosh! I must’ve known, I’m so stupid”, the girl cried. “Yup, that you are dear” “what?”, she said again (he wondered if that’s all she knows of the English language). “Had I not been there at the right time, you’d have become the sole heir to your parents’ inheritance”. “No, we’ll still be rich. I’ll sue the chocolate company for not explicitly mentioning that they use nuts as an ingredient”, she said. (This girl certainly knows more, he wondered) “I feel like I should go now and leave you with your sinister plans” "what?", she said again and he left her at the hospital and rushed back to his car and headed straight for home (at moderate speed ofcourse).

“I saved that boy’s life that day. Must mean something” “nah, I guess. I didn’t do much” “she forced me to help her”. Now he forgot about his stomach ache and kept running with newfound vigour. Now his destination was close. He was getting there. He started without thinking about one but on his way he had made his mind about the river in the outskirts of the city. “Yup, that’s where I’ll die. With the countless fish I’ll lay myself to sleep as well”. The river had been at the centre of various controversies over the years. Many people used to commit suicide there during the early 80’s. Some say the spirit of old Maggi still lurks in the river in the form of a big angler fish. Maggi was allegedly thrown into the river by her elder sister over a petty feud. Presently the river was seeing many staged protests against out-city factories dumping toxic waste in it causing the fish to mutate. The river was a symbol of rampant pollution and widespread environmental neglect all over the city with big corporations completely shunning away from all responsibilities. “With my death maybe they’ll see how important conserving environment is”. Bereft of his logic, he continued running.

As his cynicism took over, came the time for him to recall every sinful deed he’d done in his life. “Nonsense, I can’t possibly remember each day of my life”. Then it hit him. How wrong had he been all his life. How carelessly he lived without giving a thought to the happiness of others. All mistakes he ever made, came hitting him like nails in his head. The time when he sneaked booze in his school dormitory or everytime when he smoked with his friends. Or how he kept hitting on women, getting into pointless relationships just for sport. Never caring about anyone’s feelings. Even after his marriage he almost cheated on his wife once. Or how he backstabbed most of his colleagues to get his way in the company he worked for. Everybody hated him. And all for what? Increment, bonus, bigger office? “Was that it? Is that why this illness is inflicted upon me? This is my retribution. I am a sinner.”, he thought to himself as he started to wonder about the beginning of this whole ordeal.

Last week he collapsed while mowing his lawn. The reports came back this afternoon. He was diagnosed with Thymoma, a malignant tumour in his thymus, a cancer. Just when he was returning from the hospital, utterly devastated, barely holding himself together, he snapped. His fingers weren’t steady on the wheel, one of his legs started shaking uncontrollably. Profusely sweating all over, he lost faith in his sight. Too many thoughts burst in his mind at once. He felt like his limbs are being pulled apart in different directions. His mind felt like paste. He started having trouble breathing, he felt suffocated. He opened the door of his car then just ran away from it all as fast as he could.

“We’ll start chemotherapy from next week”, he remembered the doctor’s words. “why? What’s the purpose of it all? With only few months left to live why should I waste my time in chemo? Even if it succeeds, how much time will I borrow from death? And how many people even survive? I’m not gonna fight this. I had it coming. I deserve this. I have nothing left to live for. My life is worthless. I’m just another disappointment. I couldn’t do anything with my life. In all these years I merely scrapped my way through the world. No one will remember me. No one would’ve remembered me anyway. I’ve always disappointed people. My family, my friends, anyone who ever made the mistake of depending on me. I have no place in the world. I deserve to die, alone. Away from anyone who can recognize my corpse. This is the penance for my self-centredness.”, as he was about to burst in tears in the middle of the road he tripped and fell, rather badly.

“Oh just great! A broken finger now. Now I’ll get a fiberglass cast just like my daughter” “well how does it matter, I’m about to die anyway”. “Wait! My daughter!”, now he couldn’t control his emotions anymore and started crying. The memories of his daughter evoked something from deep within him. Now he really wasn’t feeling like himself. “How will she feel?” “She’ll cry for sure but few years and she’ll understand”. “Her mother will help her around it”. “She’s so little. I remember how she first fell from her bicycle when I was teaching her how to ride. When she fell, it looked like a big ball of wool rolling on the road. I can’t forget her face when I left her to the school for the first time. All the kids were crying. I was crying. She wasn’t. When I left she waved her hand at me and I still can’t describe how it felt” “her fractured hand should heal by next week” “I need to take her to the doctor again. Oh I remember now, day after tomorrow I’m needed at her school for the parent’s meet”. “how? How gaawwwdd?” “how can I just turn my back on all this?” “how can I die now. My cancer will kill me for sure. Who’ll do these things then?” “if I go back home, what’ll I tell my family? That they won’t see me around after a few weeks” “it’ll cause such a chaos in the lives of everyone connected to me” “no I can’t go back” “I’ve ran so far. My river’s not too far now. What’s far is my life, my family and my daughter.”

He felt a spear go through his heart. Like he’d just been stabbed multiple times. There he was. In the night, on the road, tired from all the running, still undecided. The night turned red in his mind now. He was so frustrated and tired he couldn’t think straight. He felt being pulled. Standing on a thousand corpses, everyone he’d ever met, pulling him down with their bloody fingers, tearing his soul apart. He was unable to move, unable to see anything, helpless. A person trapped in his own mind. The victim of a cataclysm of his own making. A big blue ocean appeared suddenly in front of his eyes. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. The water was shining unlike anything in the mortal world. There was no end to this heart wrenching sight. The endless ocean. That’s what he wanted. That’s what he needed. An ocean to consume him and everything in him. All his troubles, all his anxiety, all his pain. “Let me go! Let me go”, he cried. “Going into it once and all my problems will be over.” But the dead didn’t leave him. He wasn’t going ahead or anywhere but down. Sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss. The sight of the ocean growing smaller and smaller with each of his cries and very soon vanished completely. One last harrowing scream and then into oblivion he saw nothing but darkness. By the time he came back to his senses, he felt all of his thoughts to be extinct. Everything just gone. Like he was hollow inside. No feelings, no pressure, no worries. A state of true serenity. “We can’t stop the inevitable I guess”, he thought and chose to be succumbed to the temptation of a few more days of pointless life and a few more days with his daughter and turned back. There, there returned the broken man. A man who couldn’t even decide to die. 

One night, Zhuangzi dreamed that he was a carefree butterfly, flying happily. After he woke up, he wondered how he could determine whether he was Zhuangzi who had just finished dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who had just started dreaming he was Zhuangzi. If asking oneself "Am I dreaming?" in a dream proves that one is, what does it prove in waking life?