A Run for Escape

A story about running.

My name is Peter, I live 200 m away from a railroad.

Ever since my father died, I've spent everyday by the train tracks, waiting for the train to pass by. I'd race it and try to pass it even just by an inch, but I can't.

My father was a great man. He also had a great love for trains. He owned two train stations and devoted his life to them and to his family. He was great, wealthy, kind, and smart, but he left us in chaos.

My family is one of the most blessed families you'll ever see. My father was great, my mother beautiful, my eldest brother following the footsteps of my father, my second brother an accomplished doctor, and me, a child prodigy. My father was proud of us but he's also the only thing keeping us together and so, when he was gone, we naturally fell apart.

My father's been gone two months and after his funeral a man moved in to our house, one who's apparently been in an affair with mother for two years, one who wants to whisk her away together with all our wealth. This commenced the chaos, this began the race for the money.

Everyone in the family wanted it for themselves, everyone but me. Mother wanted it to start a new family, one that didn't include us. My eldest brother wanted the two train stations for himself and wanted to start a third. My second brother wanted to liquefy our properties and start a hospital. And I just wanted to escape.

No one talked inside the house. The only conversations that existed was between them and their lawyers. They all had one, they came to the house and brought papers in briefcases. Everyone was constantly on heir phones, talking in whispers. Everyone in there just became ghosts.

Our house started to become the school, a place where I didn't belong, a place of detached strangers. I was a prodigy, very smart, very different, very special, and schools never like those of my kind. I was isolated. I made everyone feel inferior, both the students and teachers, so they pretended I didn't exist. That's what my family is doing now.

Everyone around me seemed like ghosts. Everything seemed detached. I've lost connection to the world I live in. Everything became a blur. But that's all wrong because actually, I was the ghost, I was the blur. I was getting deleted from the world. I've stopped everything, I've stopped living.

Since the time I'd stopped living, I've started running. Running until my legs gave out, running beside the trains, eventually being left behind. Running because it made me real. While I ran, the world changed, it disappeared, it became immaterial and untouchable, it became a blur, it seemed real, I belonged. So I kept running and I'm running now. I heard the train coming, felt the tracks rattling, and when it was there, I dashed.  

I've been running with it for five seconds, those were the moments I was happiest, my whole body burned and I was alive. By the seventh, I realized that I've passed the train, just by the fewest centimeters, but still, I've passed it. This was the first time it's happened but even though, I knew what I wanted to do, I knew it in my heart and mind, so I jumped and started running on the tracks. Within seconds I was gone, gone to the place where I belonged, where I existed, where I was real. I've run, I've escaped and now, I'm free.