72 Seconds

Don't exactly know what genre to put this in... so, Fiction!

72 Seconds

“If a girl can run a lap around the track in seventy-two seconds, and a boy in sixty-two, then you’re all done running,” he said. I hid my glare. That’s stupid. I thought, though I didn’t say it. I hated stupid gender things. I would prove him wrong.

I felt alive, my body pulsing with a new, spiking energy I’d never felt before. My heart was thunder in my chest. Boom, boom, boom, CRACK! Lightning in his voice, “Go!"

I felt another wave of energy pumped through my body and my back leg jolted me forward. I push hard across the ground, my eyes straight ahead, my mind blocking out the exhaustion in my legs that begged to slow me down. But I, I was lightning. I could not be stopped, and I would burn through the clouds before you could even blink. I could never be slowed down.

My feet hit the ground in an endless pattern, one, two, one, two. I rounded the two-hundred mark. I was slowing down. Where’s my Lightning? I pushed myself harder, harder, harder. I punched the air with hands curled tightly into sweaty fists, harder, harder, harder.

Coach stood just a little away, “Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven!”

My foot didn’t hit the ground. It slowed, and then came to a stop. The whole world was frozen. My heart started beating again first. Slowly, the rest of the world speed up and adrenaline pushed me forward. Harder, harder, faster, faster. Soon, I was rounding the three-hundred mark. “Fifty-nine! Sixty! Hurry up!” More adrenaline!

I was running faster than a run, slower than a sprint. I could not speed up, I could not slow down. My body felt so heavy, as if I was running with the weight of the world on my shoulders, which I somewhat was. I was running with seventy-two seconds on my shoulders, and right then, that was my world.

I pushed, my chest screeching. Pushing, pushing pushing. My footsteps were thunder, each one loud and clear and excruciating, making my ears ring.

“Sixty-one!” One hundred meters. One hundred meters in ten seconds. Faster, faster, faster. I kept going, forcing myself to continue this endless cycle that gave me life but was slowly, slowly, killing me.

Finally, I was halfway there. “Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy!”

Five seconds. I needed five seconds but I wanted two. “Seventy-two!” I gritted my teeth and forced myself into a full out sprint. Seventy-five! My mind screamed as I stepped over the finish line. Two of the fastest boys finished in front of me. I finished third, and in seventy-five seconds. They didn’t finish in time, either.

I couldn’t breathe, even when I stopped. I was gasping. My eyes watered and the stadium lights shimmered in the pools of tears. My throat was clogged and felt strange as I panted.

My sore body could hardly function. I felt like I was going to collapse, and a war raged in my mind to keep from lying down. I took a shaky step forward, my legs like lead. I felt like a lump with limbs. I was just unwanted matter taking up space.

“Take a walk around the field,” he says. There were no eyes on me as I stumbled forward awkwardly. For the first time, I was happy to go unnoticed, unseen. Once everybody had walked a lap, we were done anyways. We didn’t have to keep running, and nobody mentioned why. Nobody won, though.

Seventy-five seconds. Four-hundred meters in seventy-five seconds. One lap around the tiny track took seventy-five seconds.

 

I know I can do better.

Reviews

[JayG's biggest fan]

ron mexico 4 life m8ty

(insert extra required characters here)

[GrandDystopia]

This is something quite refreshing in it's intensity and pacing. You had me on your every word from beginning to end, fair play to you. You have the short story worked out nicely!