Running Club
Rusty Dagon
aug 2020
You’ve been in this apartment for so long, every day is starting to run together. Hell, it’s been so long they’ve started their own running club. In a few days they’ll have enough runners to challenge the weeks to a race. The days don’t stand a chance—the weeks are much better endurance runners.
Even if you aren’t a due-paying member, the Running Club bequeaths many gifts. They grant facial hair, elongated fingernails, and what seems to be an untraceable amount of time staring at the mirror questioning whether you’ve brushed your teeth that day. Are your teeth yellow? What did they look like yesterday? When was yesterday? Sans gift receipt, all you can do is smile your ambiguous dental situation and wave as the Running Club passes you.
Don’t let their niceties fool you. They take their running very seriously. There is no chit chat about how your cat is doing or asking about the weather. Every run is perfect. Every moment is as equal as the last. That level of peak athleticism takes a certain attention that only a non-sentient unchanging construct can handle. My goodness are they in shape. Their chiseled abs and bulging biceps only appear to get larger and stronger with every soldier added to their ranks. Like some sort of Seussian horror story, they do laps around your dwelling like your fractious nephews or some sort of tumultuous tempest.
You try to collect yourself.
In this kind of seemingly permanent situation you need to feel grounded. Thwump, you beach your whale of a body onto your sectional synthetic polyfiber couch. The luxury lounger. The spaceship. Whatever you choose to call this steed, you ride it with pleasure. Saddled up, you pullover a snuggle object. Whether that is a childhood blankie turned string or a stuffed animal that used to sing, there is no embarrassment in quarantine.
You and your television cosplay The Creation of Adam. The TV remote hand flutters in front of the Visio’s sensor, so close to the touch of God. With one false move forward, you could fall on the hard wood floor, jeopardizing the entire sequence that is “getting comfortable.” Journeying through your own 21st century odyssey, you see the screen shift shades of darkness. A bold red “N” opens the pearly white gates of the Kingdom of Content. You see your friends: Rachel, Joey, Ross, Monica, Chandler and Phoebe. They’re all here! In the Running Club era, time is not kept in days, but in episodes. Weeks are seasons.And well, years are series. Every Thanksgiving special, Christmas two-parter, and occasional baby shower feels like your own. Oh my god, baby shower! How could you have forgotten Phoebe’s baby shower! You write a note on your iThing that you must get Phoebe a card when you go to the pharmacy. Oh wait, you can’t go. You can’t remember the last time you’ve left your house.
“What a horrible time to be laid off.” You rub your index and pointer in an oscillatory pattern on your temples. Nobody wants to learn they’re expendable. Nobody wants to miss a bill payment. Nobody wants to lose track of their days. Accounting is boring anyway, you reassure yourself. It’s not like you spent years of your life in general ledgers just to become some sort of ledger general who’ll order ledgers around with general disdain. Well at least you were fired right before tax season. Oh my goodness, tax season! You forgot to file your taxes!
In a panic, you leap out of your cozy dwelling. Sprinting across the room, you’ve excited them. You have inadvertently joined the Running Club. As you’re chased through your apartment, you search for your W-2, 1099-INT and your social security number. Why the hell don’t you have your social security memorized? You have your Netflix password memorized! How could you have forgotten to file your taxes? March was like yesterday? You are an adult for Christ’s sake, you scream, garbed in a frowning oversized t-shirt and an equally depressing pair of sweatpants.
You try to collect yourself.
Disheveled yet slightly calmer, you go to the IRS’s website. Phew. The IRS has allowed an extension until July 15th.
A victory! Sure small, but a victory nonetheless. You are an isolation icon, a quarantine conqueror! You feel energized, you think of all of the possible productive passions you could put into action. Maybe you could start on that pile of New York Best Sellers that sit atop your Craigslist bookshelf collecting dust. Maybe you could bake bread! If the French can do it, you can too! Maybe you could go for a run! Then, you think of the Running Club. Their athletic, lean bodies could alarm a clock, making the thought of a run sprint out of your mind. The Running Club reminds you of where you belong. They tell you to relax, and go back to what you know. Melting back into your couch cocoon, your happy hibernation, you awaken your television.
“Nice relaxing Animal Planet,” so you think.
“BREAKING NEWS,” a revolving banner is chased by the subheading “The penguins have begun auctioning off remaining glaciers.”
Upon being interviewed, the emperor of the penguins (his name is Sean) sighs and says, “It’s all we could do. We can’t afford to pay the Running Club. Might as well liquidate.”
“Are you concerned about rising rent…”
You switch the channel to something a little more constructive.
A smooth, velveteen voice sashays into your living room. “Welcome to ‘How They Make It’ with me: Howie Maykit.”
“Today on ‘How They Make It’ we are exploring the wonderful world of clocks. Don’t you want to learn about clocks and shit.” You laugh at the unexpected profanity. Howie Maykit isn’t usually this… saucy.
Howie approaches the blank wall of what appears to be a beautiful (and naked) traditional 19th century bungalow. He then opens a can of pitch-black paint and mixes it.
“You want to apply an even coat on the entire wall.” You really have no clue what this has to do with clocks but who are you to question an expert.
You watch as the dark shade of black conquers the barren wooden landscape of the bungalow. There is a certain serenity to watching the blackness overtake an unedited plane. You watch as Howie plays God, creating Space among time.
“After applying a layer, you grab your most comfortable chair and wait.” On his personal seventh day, he pulls up a classic plastic lawn chair and casually watches his universe age.
After an appropriately long TV time lapse, Howie gets up, stretches, nods at his even coat of paint and is immediately stabbed by a mysterious figure. As Howie’s corpse crumbles, a carbon copy of himself collects an adequate amount of blood and looks at the camera.
Without missing a beat, his voice comforts, “After harvesting the blood of someone who waits for paint to dry, you then make the clock battery.” Although you are shocked by his homi-suicide, who are you to question an expert. The shot then transitions to the inside of a factory.
“Now, we must take the blood and mix it around the shell of a baby tortoise.” He pours the blood into the premature shell.
As Howie begins demonstrating how to plug up the holes of the shell, that’s when you see it. In the background of the shot, on what seems to be a vat of melted hourglasses is a logo. A new, yet familiar group: RUNNING CLUB CORP.
You switch the channel. It appears to be a re-run of the 1960 Rome Olympics.
If the static on the TV was any fizzier, you would find it on the rim of your Dr. Pepper. Young men in old athletic gear shake hands on a dirt track as they look excited to move faster than each other for five-ish minutes. They race an unknown distance, they all align their feet in little triangles looking like a fleet of jet engines about to take off from a runway.
“BANG,” a starting pistol sends them off.
You attempt to count every individual step they take. It is an impossible feat. Your heart races as you see the runners on the interior of the track catch up quickly to those along the outside.
Among the fast footsteps, you think about the training that goes into being a professional athlete. Even in the 60s, you imagine the difficulty. The waking up early. Defying time.
Isn’t that what runners do anyway?
Defy time.
Every race, they simply see who can move their legs and optimize the amount of time it takes for one of them to orbit a track. Their legs spin and spin like the hands of a clock, begging you to sit and forget. It is a whirlpool. It is a hypnotism. Entranced, you melt like an ice cube to asphalt. Accepting your fate, you let go.
The race.
With a now visible finish line, you’ve become reinvested in their feat of human accomplishment.
The two leading the pack are neck and neck. Their bodies move together like two synchronized watches. Even with the fuzz on the screen, you can feel their effort, feel their raw human spirit. But… out of the corner of the television you see an unforgettable figure, or should you say figures.
In straight horror, you sit there on your couch as the entire Running Club sprints across the track. In a matter of seconds, their presence pierces through the frontrunners as if they were motionless.
Surprised of the new participants, the other runners give up and look visually distraught. They all accept their fate, give up and sit in eight different La-Z-Boy recliners. How’d they even get those on the track?
As if winning the race wasn’t the victory, they continue to sprint outside of the stadium and onto the streets of Rome. They sprinted across the Atlantic Ocean like Jesus owed them a favor, sprinted past the Statue of Liberty, and then sprinted into your apartment building.
Without knocking, the Running Club lets themselves in. A miniature hurricane, they run circles around the place throwing papers, books, your tax forms. Overwhelmingly chaotic.
Running out of things to trash, all their faces look towards you. Like a shark circling its prey, the Running Club has you surrounded. Coiling around you they lick their lips, bare their fangs and squint their slit eyes. They’re screaming at you, forcing you to remember your anxieties. In your kitchen, a tired Howie Maykit sells clocks to the penguins for their last bag of ice out of your freezer. During that transaction, your Friends sit around your dining space, celebrating Phoebe’s baby shower without you. Your card remains unopened. In the bathroom, you find a weeping tortoise begging for privacy as he flushes his son’s remains down the porcelain toilet. Begging for mercy from the gods who have damned you to this hell, you are glued to your sofa. You are tormented with timeless, endless pain. Each second is as infinitesimally, excruciatingly horrible as any second of your mortal life. Your screams translate to static. The television remains on. The camera is on you. Closing your eyes, you try to imagine a different future.