Track 4 - “Runaway”

… The protagonist leaves the subway station and walks under the orange sky until he reaches a tall, glassy building, where a gruesome crime has taken place. It becomes apparent that the man is a detective and that the story will follow a string of murders…

All my drafts ended there: that was all I could imagine back then as a child. Even now, I cannot think of what will happen next in the story. Yet I craved that darkness more than anything in the world. I think it was because I wanted to prepare myself for the real world, to reach maturity and ready myself to face the everyday tragedies of adulthood.

But I don’t think it ever prepared me. In fact, it may have had the opposite effect for me. I clothed myself in the blackness of the world, and now the funeral attire has permanently been bound to me. Even if I tear it all off me and I stand scrubbing away at my skin in the shower, my actions are useless: the bleakness has been entangled with my soul and it will always find me again and engulf me again.

I sometimes wonder if my life would be better if my mind could forget it all, but then I realize that I already have: it is my heart that remembers. The only cure is the complete replacement of my irregular heart.

Nowadays, when I am alone and free to act without judgment from the world and myself, I find myself watching and smiling at simpler things, such as an elderly man using a sock puppet to express his inner emotions to a child. But as I blink and turn away from the screen and the world of Make-Believe, I remember that I exist, that I am here and not there. The light and warmth emitted by others only provides a brief solace; my furnace has no fuel of its own. The darkness remains, and my smile fades with the light.

The damage is internal and cannot be solved through external means. I cannot save myself by watching others be saved. Once again, the only cure is the complete replacement of my irregular heart.

Yet to replace my heart is to lose myself. The boy who was named Noel must disappear for this darkness to be vanquished from within. But I don’t want to lose who I am. I don’t want to believe that I have to kill who I have been all this time. I don’t want to believe that this weathered heart does not deserve to continue beating. In the end, the only choice I have is to…

… No, hold that thought. I think I’ve gotten carried away today. It is getting noticeably cold. Before I open my eyes, I focus on the sensations that connect me to reality:

There is a kind of breeze that could be easily dealt with through the movement of one’s body. There are sounds of cars passing by that have become as familiar as the ticking of a clock. The light of the sun no longer passes through my eyelids, and I sit alone on a bench I had once shared with another.

When I open my eyes, I am reunited with a sandy track field under an evening sky. I remember that I came here today to run, not to reminisce. I get off the bench and walk to the line someone has weakly drawn onto the sand. As I take my position under a starless sky, a Ghost from my past takes his place next to me.

And as I begin my sprint, he begins his sprint also. Three seconds. Seven. Eleven. The Ghost passes the hundred meter line ahead of me and stops. But I do not stop. I continue running alongside the curvature of the track. My lungs are already on fire as I reach two hundred meters. But I do not stop. Two hundred becomes four hundred, and I am now jogging almost as if I am desperately swimming through troubled waters.

Where am I going? That doesn’t matter. What am I fighting against? What am I running away from? What am I trying to accomplish? None of these questions matter.

I am simply running away, disguising my escape as exercise.