Dark Space by Leonie Skye

Author:Leonie Skye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Anthology
ISBN: 9781941614228
Publisher: Elm Books Books
Published: 2017-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

Ars Kinetica

by Colin Stricklin

The woman in the forest has a large number 19 taped to her back. Her eyes are on the path ahead, and her mind is dodging stones and roots three steps ahead of her feet. She’s long-legged, dark-haired and dark-eyed, every part of her pitched to a focus. She’s running flat out in front of the pack. The leaders are just ahead.

Rock formations resolve themselves out of twilight. The forest and the runner are on top of a mountain, and the mountain is losing light in a hurry. The runner, number 19, glides along the trail. She lifts her knees and plants her feet, and the ground falls away a piece at a time, a deer’s stride and a raptor’s face.

Her lungs are burning.

My lungs are fine.

Her left quad threatens to cramp.

My leg feels great.

The cold air is a razor blade in her throat.

Just out for a Sunday stroll.

She grits her teeth and she keeps on pumping. There’s a bottleneck coming, a series of boulders hard up to a cliff face. There are 90-degree turns in there, the last tough obstacle, the crankshaft before the home stretch.

She vanishes into the crevice. It’s already night inside, ten degrees cooler and dark as an alleyway. But there are echoes too: the front runners coming out the other side.

The first turn screams up out of darkness. She jumps, plants her right foot on a wall, and pushes. The corner goes past and she still has her momentum. Her eyes are wide, staring into the shadows, straining to see the next bend before it’s on top of her. Jump, kick, around. She can hear the footsteps. She can smell blood, can picture the finish line and the stopwatch, wants this one so bad, so damned bad—

Corner.

Jump.

Kick.

But the last wall is slippery and a boulder slams against an elbow.

Falling.

She hits the ground hard, and the grit of the trail is like sandpaper. She curses through her teeth.

The elbow is a dull throb at her side.

My arm is fine.

Her left knee hurts worse than the arm.

My knee is perfect.

She does a quick push-up and stands. She growls, hops a little on the right leg, tests the left, and keeps on. She can see the light of the parking lot through the trees below, the finish line. She can still hear the footsteps from downhill. The light and the sound and the nearness of the end get her legs back to speed. She can still do this thing. The downhill is her strength; she can take the hairpins at a skid and make up ground. She’ll have to.

Her dark eyes are full from wanting it. Her pace is picking up again, though her stride is no longer fluid. She isn’t flowing and leaping now, but pounding down the mountain, her body protesting all the way.

The first switchback, taking it low, back hand trailing the dirt for balance, pebbles rolling beneath her shoes. Around and back out, a few steps at full speed, drop to the sliding crouch.

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