EVERYTHING THEY ARE RUNNING FROM AND A FEW THINGS THEY ARE RUNNING TOWARDS — MATT KENDRICK
/From their childhoods they are running. From mothers that precision-cut boiled-egg soldiers, golden yolks running. Snotty noses running. Hot baths, soft towels, gas fires, Eskimo kisses all running. They graze their knees from falling running. From tears that don’t become them running. In the rain, against the wind, they practise running. Determined running. Thoughtless running. Not saying where they are going running. Let’s have an adventure running.
In the morning, they are running for the bus. They are running through the streets before they’ve ever been awake. They are running for an idea, for an echo of other men also running. Those men—steamboat seasick Gold Rush men, khaki gas mask men, big smoke businessmen, unaware they’re on a treadmill, thinking they’ve outrun them boys men.
Down the bottle men drink neat whisky, cheap vodka that makes them running men on neon dance floors that run and run, and drink the red sky shepherd’s warning of the dawn. Drink the dew, its possibilities, the taste of perfume, kisses, sweat, ecstasy, like an ocean when it rains, all the moments, all the touches, all the late-night conversations and arguments until they’re drunk on it and they come to that one sentence that stops them in their tracks.
And they sit. And look. Feel. Want. Cry. Fall. Breathe. Search. Wish. Dream. Wake. Eat. Think. Yell. Pause. Run.
They are running from the pain. Running from the girl. From the nights. From the drinks. From the bars, the bus. Back and back towards hot baths, soft towels, snotty noses, tears that don’t become them, wrapped in their mothers’ arms—There’s nothing like young love.
In the morning, they are hugging comfy duvets they previously ran from, hauling heavy bodies up and out and down, undressed, unwashed, towards golden yolks, precision-cut boiled-egg soldiers. Can’t face running. But slow running. Laboured running. Makes them feel better running. Can’t let that one small road bump stop them running. Into a fire and nothing can burn them running. Always running. Forever running.
Running until they run out of road.
Matt Kendrick is a writer based in the East Midlands, UK. His stories have been published in Bath Flash Fiction, Bending Genres, Craft Literary, Fictive Dream, FlashBack Fiction, Lunate, Splonk, and elsewhere. He has been listed in various writing competitions and won the Retreat West quarterly flash fiction contest in June 2020. Website: www.mattkendrick.co.uk | Twitter: @MkenWrites
