She had been running for years, anywhere her feet would go she followed. She allowed them to be the brains, these legs. Everyone had something to say about how they have never been still. The last man she promised to marry said they would run her into trouble one day and she laughed. It was funny then. Months later when she took her promise back because all she saw were red flags, he screamed at her and threw her running shoes out the window into the street. She followed them and never gave him another thought. Until today.
Until she lost a bet at a bar she shouldn’t have been in with people she shouldn’t be talking to, definitely not betting against.
Run to the next checkpoint before the timer goes off, The man she lost to told her. Make it to the finish line and win.
“And If I don’t?”
He smiled at her in a way that wasn’t a smile at all and said nothing.
“Put her with the others”, he said to some over her shoulder.
The others. Six checkpoints ago her questions were answered as limbs started to explode into red mists when the beeping sounds attached to the people became erratic. Something she could only acknowledge with a cursory glance. Later she would be shocked, now she had to keep moving. Everywhere ached but she had been here before, more times than she could count. She let her feet do what they have always done, moving past the final checkpoint back to where started, silencing the beeping sounds from her feet and the entire, very shocked bar
“What do I Win?”
.
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