An elderly woman sitting on a rocking chair opens a thick book and says, "This deary, is how I met the love of my life." She starts rocking and begins to read.
Feet pounding, I could slowly feel the weight of home's problems lift off my back. This feeling was the reason I ran every day. It felt as if I just kept running, all my problems would float out of my life and I would be free.
Running. It's my hobby, my past time, the only escape from the hell that is my life. It was the routine I needed when everything else fell apart.
As always, my mind wandered as my body pushed on. I knew the route so well that I often closed my eyes as I ran. Today, I thought about what my life would be like after school ended, after leaving my past behind me.
As I came up to the first curve, I opened my eyes. My eyes caught something unexpected. Within the shadows of both the approaching night and the tall trees overhead, hid a person. Or maybe it wasn't.
I stopped short, more out of surprise than of fear. The figure was shaking with seemingly silent tears, its face buried in it's hands.
Oh no. As always, one of my ill-timed sneezes tickled my nose. "Ah-choo!" The sneeze burst out of me like a water balloon hitting its target.
At my sudden noise, the figure jumped and turned around with a screech of surprise and terror. Somehow, I managed to hold back my own scream.
Now that I could fully see the figure, I realized how otherworldly it was. It was a basic human-like shape, but every possible detail was strange and different. The skin was a ghostly gray and was decorated with orange, moving tattoos that almost looked like portals. From its head sprouted two horns, similar looking to deer antlers. Dangling from one horn was the most unlikely accessory, a fedora. The figure's eyes locked on mine.
Now feeling very uncomfortable and slightly scared, I cleared my throat and timidly said, "Excuse me, Mr. Alien, sir?"The second the words came out of my mouth, the figure's face morphed into a mask of anger and resentment.
"Excuse you, I'm a DEMON." A raspy voice replied indignantly. "How typical, humans not knowing the difference between an other-world creature and an outer-world creature." The demon muttered under his breath.
Now, I'm a person who gets angry relatively easily, but some things send me over the edge more than others. Two things in the top five are muttering under your breath and assumptions. This so-called demon was making me very angry very fast,
I squared my stance and curled my hands into fists. "Excuse you, you rude demon," I scoffed on the word demon, making the fury in my voice even more evident. "Two points. One, how in the world am I supposed to know the difference between a demon and an alien if I've never seen either. And two, I honestly can't take you seriously in that stupid fedora." My voice rose sharply and I nearly shouted the last word.
The demon's face seemed to crumble as I finished my rant. The tears that had disappeared when I scared the demon came back full force. The previously sure-of-himself demon flopped on the ground, in a waterfall of tears.
Now collapsed on the trail, the demon began to speak between gasps of teary breath. "I'm... sorry I assumed... that you.. were being... ignorant. I...I... I'm sorry I spoke so rudely. And... and about the fedora,... I can't... actually get it off. Some... kids stuck it... on my horn... and I can't... reach it." The demon buried his face in his hands again and sobbed more forcefully than before.
Apparently, all of my good choices have gone out the window at this point. I sat down next to the shaking demon and awkwardly patted his back. "Well, I'm sorry too. I shouldn't have gotten so angry at you. You really weren't that rude."
We sat like that for a while, me feeling awkward and out of place and him too busy crying to care about much else. Finally, I stood and shook off the trail dust. I turned and offered my hand to the recently dry-eyed demon. "I've got a run to finish. Wanna come with me?"
"Really? After all that and after you know what I am, you still want to be around me?" He sniffled and blinked up at me.
"Yeah, I guess so. You don't seem like too bad of an alien." We both smiled at the joke. He reached up and grabbed my offered hand and stood.
"Alright, explain this human concept of running to me."
After much explained and testing to see if demons could run, we were ready to set off. "All right, one last thing before we start, there is a bit of a uniform to running." He looked at me confused. "No fedoras!" With a laugh, I reached up and pulled the hat from his horns, ripping it more in the process. "Done! Let's go!!" We dashed off together.
"The end." The elderly lady closes the books with a dreamy look on her face. "Actually what the book doesn't say is that we ended up running all the way to his house, where I meet the rest of his family and what was eventually my family after we got married." She smiles at the also elderly demon beside her, squeezing his hand.
"And that's really the end of the story." They say together.
