You Run and Run and Run
I marked it at about Thursday, when everyone started running. I'm marking this from the time I heard the low thunder of thousands of feet, big and small, which was early morning, Thursday. This is, of course, a posthumous marking. Posthumous meaning both that the pairing of the thunderous rumble and the thousands of feet pounding the pavement was a match made well after the actual event and that I was also dead and gone by the time this observation manifested itself.
Let me explain.
It's not like I had much time to make more of an impression than "Oh, thunder" before the mob came rumbling over the hill, down the street like a flash flood, only in sneakers. And like a flash flood, I was swept along for a little ways, detritus on a sea of sweaty people, arms a-pumping, some of them shrugging with their faces and occasionally their shoulders, trying, in some small way, to apologize and let me know that ordinarily they'd try to find a way to get me to safety, but that there wasn't much they could do in the circumstances.
My arm first bent the wrong way when it caught against some guy's iPod in an armband, and he viciously shook me, before my shoulder gave way with a sickening pop, and he let up, apparently thinking my slack touch was no longer any threat to his music player, but he continued to drag my arm forward, awkwardly, as he got a burst of adrenaline at thinking he stopped an attempted mugging. Eventually, I slid off into the crowd again, and from that point on, sinking into the horde of runners, I could think only of wooly socks. White ones, with a couple of red racing stripes along the top.
A couple of minutes into this reverie I realized this was my soul floating, not above my body, looking down on the events and things that occurred at my passing, but floating in and amongst scores of legs: hairy ones, shaved ones, thin ones, mottled ones, lycra-covered one, and almost all incredibly sweaty ones. At this point, I panicked. Or what was left of me panicked. I'm not sure of the proper pronoun to use in this sort of situation. I've decided, since then, to simply use 'I,' and gloss over any philosophical questions that might arise from a dead person and what remains using the I pronoun in such a continuous sort of way from life right on into death.
A soul panicking, let me tell you, is not a pretty thing. So I panicked, flailing this way and that, which didn't help at all, and didn't get anywhere. It was only once the crowd went by... hours or minutes or it might have been days, that I broke free, floated, sort of, upwards, and looked down on my body, bent and broken from the crazy rubber sole-shod centipede that thundered down the hills and out of sight, towards some unseen finish line. And it was only then, when my floating became a little more settled... less... frazzled, that I was able to start thinking more clearly and putting a proper set of words to the events that happened.
disclaimer:
Once again, a couple of plugs for Fenway Fiction and where you might plunk down some cash to buy it. Of course, you're more than welcome to plunk your butt down and read a bit of it, first, and then plunk down the moolah... we don't want to rush you or anything.
Again, we're gonna plug Booklovers' Gourmet, in Webster, Massachusetts, who had some problems with Verizon this past week or so, so you should go buy the book there and ring up Verizon and tell them they stink, and should treat their customers better. And also again, Tatnuck Bookseller in Worcester, MA is an excellent bookstore, and you can get a good meal there, too. Or if you're into a field trip to historic Concord, MA, you should stop in at The Concord Bookshop.
If you want to meet some of the other authors of Fenway Fiction, check the Rounder Books website for info on readings and book signings. Alas, no signings by the founder as of yet, unless you pop round their place in Santa Clara, CA. Which, umm, is not encouraged. At least without calling first.
So please, buy our book. Support your local independent bookstore. Or us, via the Amazon.com links to the side, there.
Thanks.
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