The Runner

As I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t believe how much I had changed since I started running. I would have to start again soon. My once-full cheeks had hollowed out, sockets in my face. The veins in my eyes were thick and ropy and made blinking feel like rubbing sandpaper over them. Put simply, I looked wretched. My skeleton fingers clutched desperately at the dingy and frankly disgusting gas station sink. I struggled to keep those maddened eyes open. God, my skin was terrible, all dry and flaky and covered in blackheads. Not even the world’s biggest pore strip would be able to get all those suckers out.
The baby fat had been all but flayed away over the course of a week now. As I lifted my shirt to observe the state of my damage, my arms trembled, tiny creases near the elbows marking my chubby childhood. Amazing how they had stayed and the fat had not.
I would once have killed for a figure like the one I was sporting in the bathroom. Loose skin pooled at the base of my belly, in the process of inching back up to hug the abdominal muscles that were even more slowly becoming defined. My ribs stuck out in harsh definition by contrast, almost daring to be flattened out with the rest of me. Even after lowering my shirt again, I could see them, tenting the thin fabric of my singlet. I would have to pick up the pace again soon. I had already lingered too long.
I turned the tap all the way to the fullest force, only a dribble of filthy liquid gracing my quivering fingertips. Regardless, I touched them to my tongue first, then my face. The drops exploded against the dry surface of my tongue like miniature fireworks and for just a tiny moment, I allowed myself to bask in the luxury of having something, anything to drink. In a further moment of weakness, I stuck my entire face under the tap, mouth suckling at the metal like a pathetic newborn. Half of what little met my lips dribbled down over my chin, drip, drip, dripping back into the drain. Wasted, like me, like my body.
A distant howl sounded behind me, startling me from my water-drunk stupor. The distant taste of dirt and metal resounded in the back of my throat. My abused stomach gurgled in protest of so much so fast. I lifted the pack I had left with, now heavier than me, and went to work filling that single, crucial bottle with what I could salvage from the faucet, now nothing more than a sporadic dribble. I had almost completely run out of time. It had caught up.
I shoved the bottle back into the pack, slinging it onto my back as I snuck out of the bathroom, heavy door almost knocking me over on its swift return to the frame. I began to run again. It won’t catch me, not ever.