The Vertical Marathon by Lundy Burge
The Vertical Marathon
Copyright 2012 by Mechelle L. Blix
In the hall, the little girl lay dying.
The boy ran. He dared not stop, even though he didn’t really know what he was running from.
While he was running, he tripped over her, his hands sliding as they broke his fall against the floor.
She tilted her head towards him. She tried to raise herself, or at least prop herself up on her arm, but she was very, very weak.
He’d scrambled back up and was about to start running again, but he looked back. He saw she had very pale skin and ruby hair that stopped abruptly at the middle of her neck. He thought that she was eight or maybe nine. He was seventeen.
He looked past the girl. Nothing was coming.
The girl was lying halfway out a door. He grabbed her by the feet and began to drag her back into the room.
He didn’t know what else to do.
The little girl whimpered, “No.” A mew of a kitten over and over again. The boy thought it was from the discomfort of being dragged.
He felt sorry for her, but he didn’t know what else to do.
She kept mewing. He kept dragging. She weakly clawed at the tiles, trying to crawl away. He still kept dragging, until he saw the red stain on the floor.
Back in the hall, the boy was running again. The little girl was in his arms. He couldn’t remember how she got there.
He didn’t have enough time to put her down, though. He had to keep running. That was all he knew.
Run run run. Run or die. Run run run.
His legs were heavy. His chest hurt. But he didn’t stop. Bad things would happen if he stopped.
He looked down at the little girl. She looked up at him, her eyes still droopy. An angel woken up from a nap.
“Stop,” she whispered, or maybe her mouth just moved. “Please.”
The boy panicked. He shook his head.
And kept running
So many halls. Such long halls. Surely, they would have ended by now?
He didn’t question anything. He knew he’d find a door, an exit. Eventually.
Until then, he had to keep running. If he didn’t, then he’d be caught. He didn’t know what would catch him. He didn’t want to know. He just knew that if it did, he’d be sent back. Back to the room with all the sharp needles.
“Please stop.”
The boy didn’t stop. The girl was becoming nauseous, and her mind was melting and slipping into multicolored slop. She summoned all of her strength and pushed against him. It made him stumble, then stop.
He looked down at her. Her mouth barely moved, and he had to lean in very close to her mouth in order to hear her say, “Down.”
He was more than happy to oblige. Less baggage, less effort, and his legs were starting to tire.
He stooped to place her on the floor.
Somebody would find her. They’d help her. Even if they didn’t, how could it be any different than right now? It was apparent that he didn’t have a clue what to do.
Then he saw it. A shadow coming from around a corner.
He stood up, the little girl still in his arms, and made a break for the nearest door. Once inside the dark room, he pushed against door, taking care to close it as quickly as possible with as little noise as possible.
The girl’s stomach felt worse. She thought she would vomit and drown in it, too weak to turn her head sideways in the crook of the boy’s arm. She was more lightheaded, and her feet and hands began to go numb.
Tap tap ran alongside with the squeaking of arthritic wheels.
The boy didn’t breathe, and prayed that the girl didn’t, either.
The sounds faded out. The boy still didn’t move, but he looked.
There was only one light, a pale orange one, emitting from a small rectangle embedded into a light switch.
It shone through the little girl’s eyelids and made her head hurt more. She always hated that color.
The boy, thinking it was safe, reached over to the switch.
The entire room was illuminated, and he fought not to scream.
The little girl heard the boy’s heart thrashing wildly within his chest. She cracked open her eyes as far as she could in the bright light and swiveled them about to try and see why.
To the left was an industrial table, with cords and straps hanging from it like vines and two straight arms splayed so that it was a Space Age cross. To the right was an aquamarine counter, littered tidily with bits and pieces of steel: knives, clamps, picks, drills, and a very, very long row of silver hypodermic needles.
The boy wasn’t paralyzed. He was confused. He couldn’t go out. Someone was bound to be outside, waiting for him to come out so they could just drag him back in here. But he couldn’t bear to stay here, his mind short-circuiting from all the images the needles were inserting into him.
Run or stay. Fight or stand. He didn’t know which was worse.
The girl noticed the needles were a Lifesaver pack of drugs, filled with all colors of liquid. Blue, red, green, yellow, they were the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a painting somewhere.
There was one needle that was filled with a liquid that was clear except for an icy blue tint. Shining in the light like a cyan diamond, it was the one that caught the girl’s attention.
She had seen it before, many times. She had felt the liquid before, many times.
It was during those time before when she had felt like this. It had sliced through her blood like a laser and felt like the juice of a habenero.
But it made her feel better eventually.
“There,” she said, trying in vain to point, “There. Needle.”
The boy heard the word twitch violently, felt her squirm loud and clear.
He just stood there.
“Please,” her efforts were making her exhausted. Tunnel vision started setting in.
“Help me.”
He just stood there.
“Clear blue. Needle. Help.” Her voice was barely a whisper. She had started crying.
He just stood there and moved one of his arms, the one holding her head, to open the door.
Desperation took over. An overdose of adrenaline burst within her. Her legs kicked, and she fell, wincing as her head collided with the floor.
Darkness had nearly overcome her eyes. She put all her energy in to moving, crawling. She had to get to that needle. She tried to get her arms to moved, her legs to push, but they didn’t listen. Her limbs had abandoned her, leaving behind a tingling sensation.
She whimpered pathetically, tasting the salty tears that slid into her mouth.
She was blind now. Her mind wasn’t muddled, but felt nearly a mile away. And it was getting farther away. She waved good-bye as it faded out over the horizon.
Then, the fire erupted.
The girl was still too exhausted to walk. Her legs and arms were tingling, though, like she was in the middle of a sugar rush.
He was running as fast as ever. He knew there was a ground floor, with an exit. There had to be. But as he descended floor after floor, he only saw the same identical hallway, sporting the same identical doors.
He knew he’d go crazy before he got out. As long as he got out, he didn’t care.
Then he got down to the bottom of yet another, ordinary staircase and when he turned the corner, everything changed.
This hall was dim, not bleached by light like the others. The floor was padded by a worn Oriental rug, not bare like the others. The walls were teal and spiced in seemingly random spots by a painting of flowers or an empty vase on a fake wood shelf, not blank and cream-colored like the others.
The boy noticed, but didn’t even flinch as he continued to sprint for an exit.
The girl noticed, and her stomach turned to knots.
She tried not to think, to only concentrate on the boy and the sound of his bare feet slapping on the carpet.
Then she heard the howling. The cries were terrifying. She was strapped to a stretcher, being wheeled to her new room. She heard a loud creaking sound as a giant finally broke down his door their locked door after ramming himself into it over and over.
She opened her eyes. The hall was empty except for her and the boy carrying her.
The boy was breathing very heavily by now. They had gone down countless floors, and his adrenaline was starting to wear off. He had the panic, but not the buzz.
“I can walk now, I think.”
The boy looked down at her, the sweat melting his face. His face was blank, yet utterly revealing. She knew was he was thinking.
Why was he still carrying this girl?
She wasn’t hurt, oddly.
“Run, I mean. I can run.”
Both of their legs were burning. Neither of them said a word.
They didn’t mind. They knew they were close. They didn’t see anything, any change in the pattern of the posh hallways.