The park outside of my apartment has always been a curiosity. Built in the middle of Soviet-era housing projects, it provides a hint of green in a sea of gray cement. The trees of the park grow thick enough to block out the outside world, but if you look closely enough you can see groupings of joggers running around the park’s trails.

I’ve been watching the joggers for the past couple of weeks. Dressed in drab running gear, they looked exhausted but tranquil. As if by running they had managed to tap into something primal, something that brought peace to their lives. I desperately wanted to be one of them.

Life wasn’t going great. I had quit my job to become a freelance illustrator and what was once my hobby had become a daily chore. Most of my time was spent avoiding drawing and watching whatever half-baked series the algorithm recommended to me. I was smoking more, sleeping less and the idea of taking personal responsibility about how I use my time weighed me down into bed.

Starting to jog every day and quitting smoking were my New Year resolutions. I would get a regular exercise routine going, clear out my lungs and maybe, just maybe, fit in meditation and a healthy diet somewhere along the way. In the end none of that happened. In the end I met the Neon Man.

I woke up January 1st with a splitting headache and a mouth that tasted like an ashtray. Whatever excitement I had about living a healthy lifestyle was washed out with the booze I had drank on New Years.

Yet I knew that if I didn’t stick to resolutions on the first, I wouldn’t stick to my resolutions on the second. I binged through a handful of motivational videos, listened to monologues about how I am the master of my own destiny and how through hard work I can make a better life for myself. By noon I was out the door, high on self-help tapes.

Being the master of my destiny was a lot harder than the motivational video made it seem. By the time I reached the park I already felt like I was teetering on the edge of death. Crossing the road I was narrowly missed by a bus, my mind was completely focused on the act of moving my heavy feet. There was a distillery in my mouth that wanted out, my muscles burned and my head spun. I collapsed three benches into the park entrance.

Leaning back on the bench I could feel every cigarette I smoked last night tap my lungs goodbye. For a couple beats I felt like I might be on the verge of a stroke. But as my breath returned I calmed down. Sitting there, covered in a thin layer of sweat, I watched the joggers.

Even though I had not managed an actual run, I felt like getting to the park was a reasonable start. Even sitting there felt calming, outside of the passing bus-lines, it felt like I was in some little bubble protecting me from the city. The joggers occasionally tripped or had to slow down to catch their breath, but it felt like we were all engaged in some peaceful primordial ritual. I watched the tranquil wave of gray tracksuits. Then I saw the Neon Man.

He jogged past the other runners with surprising speed. His stubby form didn’t make him look like a good candidate for physical activity; his arms were too short, his legs were too pudgy, yet he outpaced the most athletic looking of runners. Clumps of fat bounced around in his neon green jogging suit. He sped past everyone else on the trail and headed straight towards me.

“Stop running! Go home!” He had a pair of wrap-around sunglasses on his head, the kind that I would imagine a step-dad who is really into fishing to wear. I could see a reflection of myself in them.

“Sorry?” a mirror image of me asked.

This set him off. He started stomping on the ground in anger. “I warned you!” His stomps got heavier. “Stop running! Go home!”

With every stomp his whole body jiggled. Layers of fat bounced up and down inside of their neon green prison as the pounding of his feet grew faster. There was something odd about his yelling, as if the words didn’t really hold any meaning for him, as if he was simply trying to make noise to frighten me.

“I warned you! I warned you! I warned you!”

Before I could come up with an answer his angry stomps turned mobile, he jogged away from me. Still yelling.

“Iwarnedyou!Iwarnedyou!Iwarnedyou!”

He disappeared behind the trees and his voice soon faded. No one in the park had noticed, they were entirely too focused on their own running to take in anything else. In a sea of headphones no one noticed me or the Neon Man.

I left soon after. Whatever tranquility the park provided was taken away by the outburst of the strange green-clad man. I was scared he would come back and stick me with a switchblade or something. I walked back to my apartment.

Inspiration just wasn’t flowing when I got home. I wanted to get some light sketching done and try to drum up some commission work but the internet led me into a procrastination rabbit hole. I got out about six hours later, having watched a dozen video-essays about a children’s TV show featuring cats in space that I have never seen. I felt like trash.

My knees hurt from the miniscule amount of exercise I had done that day and my lungs had cleared out enough for them to crave another cigarette. I went into another rabbit hole, one made of doubts about one’s value as a human being. I would have gone to sleep chronically unhappy, but instead I scrolled past a video of a championship domino stacker.

The video started with impressive domino structures being tumbled. Seeing those meticulously planned sculptures was impressive enough, yet the true shock of the video came when the author of those sculptures was shown. He had no hands! Apparently his whole life people were telling him that he shouldn’t stack dominos if he has no hands, but he loved what he did and made due with his mouth. Now he was a championship domino stacker. He followed his dreams and didn’t let anything get him down. Where were the naysayers now? Probably dead in poverty.

I got a rush of inspiration. If he could achieve his dream and become the master of his own destiny, so could I. I had feet, and those feet were made for running. I crushed and flushed the pack of cigarettes I kept in case I wanted to start smoking again. Within five minutes of finishing the domino video my laptop was closed and I was in bed. I was going to get the best rest possible for my next run. No one was going to tell me what I can and can’t do.

If only that domino player gave up on his dreams, if only I never stumbled upon that video; things would have turned out much better. Instead, the domino player was living his best life on the other side of the globe and I was dreaming sweet dreams of calm jogs. The Neon Man completely slipped my mind. He shouldn’t have.

There was a drizzle out the next day. The park was virtually empty. Still high off of my motivation boost from the domino player I decided that a little bit of a drizzle wouldn’t stop me from running. I geared up, watched three videos about tips for beginner joggers and set out on my run.

I made my way to the park with much greater ease than the day before. I paid attention to my breathing, didn’t push the pace of the run past my comfort level and held to a variety of other rules that YouTubers in nice jogging suits recommended.

I slowly made my way through the park. My lungs hurt and my legs were feeling heavy, but there was a stride in my movement. I started to think about how human history, if you zoom far enough away from it, is just a bunch of guys chucking spears at deer and then running them down until they die. The trees had grown thick enough to block out the housing projects; it felt like I was far away from anything Soviet, like I was in the heart of nature. A thought about how I would fair among my hunter-gatherer ancestors started to brew in my mind but it was smacked out of my head. The Neon Man punched me in the jaw.

I barely kept my balance after the hit. He silently ran along me, his reflective glasses aimed straight at me.

“I warned you! I warned you! I warned you!” He screamed, mixing in some spittle into the drizzle that was hitting me.

“Why?” I managed to squeeze out, before the pain properly spread through the jaw.

This seemed to make him furious. He huffed and sprinted off around the corner.

This was assault. I stopped and started searching for my phone. Reaching for the cops was my immediate response, the last time I had been in a fistfight was in elementary school and it did not go over well. I tried to get past my lock screen to dial but before I could enter my pin, I was shoved.

Somehow he had managed to get behind me. The man was shockingly strong, as shrimpy as his arms were, his push managed to lift me off my feet and send me tumbling towards the tree line. A flurry of pain spread throughout my body as I landed.

“Iwarnedyou! Iwarnedyou! Iwarnedyou!” He started to stomp in place again, his head trained squarely on me.

The cops weren’t coming. This man was clearly unstable and anything that came out of my mouth was making him more agitated. Out of a mixture of fear and social anxiety I nodded my head.

Even though I didn’t say anything the Neon Man’s stomping got even more frantic, he ran off once again.

There was no way I was going back down that jogging trail. Whatever his running route was, I wanted to be as far away as possible. I opted to cut through the trees and make my way towards civilization by popping out among the bus lanes. The little that I knew about this man was that he did not like me running, so I made my way through the trees with the fastest limp I could muster.

Whatever feeling of oneness with nature had faded, I wanted nothing more but to be back home frying my brain on the web and soothing my lungs with cigarettes.

The forest seemed to stretch on for ages, and what was worse I was sure he was following me. As I limped past all of the branches that littered the floor I could see flashes of an obnoxious green out of the corner of my eye. I started to hear the cracking of sticks coming from behind me, yet I also heard a car pass somewhere beyond the trees in front of me. I was near the edge of the park. I could get away from him if I moved fast enough. I ran for it.

Bad idea. As soon as I took a couple painful leaps I was swiped to the side by a giant branch which the Neon Man held. I landed face down into a bunch of leaves and mud.

“IWARNEDYOU! IWARNEDYOU! IWARNEDYOU!” He howled behind me. I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t breathe. He knocked the breath out of me, but before that thought managed to fully connect with my brain my lower half was weighed down with crushing pain. He was standing on my legs.

“IWAAARNNEEYOOOUU!” He slurred the words, keeping their sound but losing their meaning. I tried to squirm but his heavy body kept my legs pinned to the ground. All my attempts at yelling for help turned into painful squeals. He stomped his way up my back.

“AYWAAARRRNNNYOOOU!” Adrenalin was kicking in. Every muscle in my body tensed. My lizard brain was taking control.

“AYEEEWOOOOUUU!!!” I managed to turn my head. I could see his foot rising above my skull. A layer of mud kept two loose leaves on the bottom of his running shoe.

This is where my memory becomes patchy. Whatever short circuit my mind pulled, I wasn’t in control. I remember the sensation of wrapping my fingers over a tree branch, the thwack! of that branch hitting the Neon Man and then standing above him swinging away. I don’t know how many times I hit him, all I know is by the time I was done the branch was broken.

His glasses were smashed. His face was cut up. He wasn’t moving. I had beaten a strange, unstable man to death with a tree branch. This was not the primal experience I came to the park for.

I took out my phone and reconsidered calling the police; surely there were cameras somewhere in the park. I had acted in self-defense. Yet there was a dozen serialized dramas about people going to jail for a crime they didn’t commit that filled my head. I didn’t have to spend too long on my moral quandary though, the Neon Man started to move.

As if he was a baby coming back from a nap, he rolled from side to side, slowly growing in intensity. I started to back away, the man looked entirely too energetic for just receiving severe head trauma. He started to growl. His rocking grew in intensity. Within seconds he was back on his feet.

A pair of gray eyes completely void of meaning or life; they stared daggers into my heart. He roared. I ran.

“AYEEEWOOOOUUU!!!”

My body went into full flight mode; I saw the world in a tunnel, and that tunnel lead towards the final trees of the park. My mind was completely clear; the universe was distilled into me, the tree line of freedom and the slowly growing neon glow behind me. I pushed as hard as I could. There was no pain. There was no sound. Only the tree line and the neon light. As soon as I broke out of the park I was greeted by a deafening horn of a bus.

I narrowly missed the headlights, the Neon Man didn’t. His body flew a good ten meters as soon as it connected with the bus. It bounced across the concrete, shedding a shoe in the process. The Neon Man lay on the road motionless, covered in scarlet. I ran away as fast as I could.

I thought sharing this would make me feel better, that putting down this story on paper would make everything sound saner. But it didn’t. My body is covered in bruises and it hurts to breathe. There is nothing that could make me go back to that park or take another stab at running. If being the master of my own destiny means I will have to see the Neon Man again I will happily accept servitude. I am not leaving this apartment for the foreseeable future.

You know what’s the worst part? It’s as if the Neon Man never got hit by the bus. I can see the spot where it happened right outside of my window. There’s no cops, there’s no chalk outlines, even the shoe is gone.

He’s still out there. He’s still waiting. He’s still running.

I need a cigarette.