“Stopping” • by Jake Stein

 

…and yet, one goes on. One must. Even when the legs scream in pain. 

Or is that the howling of the wind? No matter. Push on, faster.

Bald sneakers smack hot pavement as a city flies past, a blur of heat and noise. Running through an intersection, through a red light, I ignore the honking and screech of tires, hearing only the slap-slap of shoes on concrete.

Now a furniture outlet store is coming up. Chairs displayed on the sidewalk. Alluring. Surely it wouldn’t be so terrible to stop and catch my breath, to sit here and finally rest…

But these legs refuse, at first, to wind down. It requires all of my willpower to relax the muscles and ease into a chair on the side of the road. This is foreign. I can’t recall the last time “sitting down” has occurred. It is… uncomfortable.

This was a mistake. One should never stop.

But now, as difficult as it was to sit, it seems infinitely harder to stand.

It must be admitted: a certain level of exhaustion has been reached. I’m stuck in the chair as headlights flash past, bursts of wind ruffling hair. Each car brings the air-crippling whoosh of an airport tarmac.

Suddenly there is a sense that more than just sweat is trickling down my face. The hand which now touches the head comes away smeared red.

“You’re hurt.”

Twisting in the chair, I notice: a woman jogging over. She looks familiar. Was she passed while running? No, more familiar than that.

I rasp: “Please, help me.”

The familiar woman pulls up a seat with a sale sign taped to its spine. “Where were you going in such a hurry?”

“I… I don’t know. I only know that one must keep going. Can’t you help me?” My mouth recognizes these words: Help me. The muscle memory is there. “You don’t understand. I never run out of places to go.”

“It’ll be all right,” she says. Her bangs whip in the wind. Bangs like someone…

Blood trickles over my lips, not tasting like anything. “Just give me a few more blocks…” Then again, maybe I wasn’t going the right way. What if I’ve been running the wrong direction?

So, I peer back down the street, the direction I traveled. And that’s when I see: myself.

Lying in the middle of the previous intersection. In a shiny red pool. And the woman, the same woman, kneeling next to the motionless body—my body—pulls out her phone. The light above her turns green, but the cars don’t go.

The croon of distant sirens.

“Happens to the best of us,” says the dream-version of this woman.

Eyes close, trying to make peace with what has been seen—a corpse, or one soon to be. It’s a lie, I tell myself, you’re still running, running like a battery, like the wind… But even batteries eventually run out of juice, and soon the wind will die down too. “Maybe there’s no way to win.”

“Maybe there is, just not for us,” she says, smiling, sad.

“Have you stopped too?”

“No, but…”

“You won’t stop.” For her benefit, for the benefit of the mirage of a person once known, I force a grin.

Now getting close, the sirens. I refuse to look back at my body again, sprawled on the baking cement…

“I hope you’re aware that I did love you,” the woman says. Or is that the wind’s voice?

Sitting in old, comfortable company, bleeding and watching the flashbulbs of passing cars, I ask the question: “Will I ever sit with you again, my dearest?”

“You know that’s not how it works.”

But I can barely hear her. I find myself utterly focused on a crack in the sidewalk infested with black ants. The bugs never stop moving. Little lines of them, twisting everywhere, unstopping.

Inspiring.

I tell the dream-woman, “You’ve got what it takes. You can stay in it, you can win.”

She laughs—actually laughs. The only person who ever made me feel complete, if briefly. “I can’t find a pulse. Stay with me.”

This is hilarious. “You think I’d ever leave you?” But even as the words are said, I realize what has already been done. Slowly my body sinks deeper into the chair on the sidewalk, deflating. A twisting trail of ants marches up a worn shoe, a stiff leg, as the wind dies.

The wind, and someone else.

§    §    §

Jake Stein lives in Portland, OR, where he concocts strange tales on his laptop and spends too much time at Powells Books. You can find him fumbling around twitter @jakewritesagain or on Bluesky @jakeiswriting.bsky.social