Bathroom Monologue: What Happened at the Race

Most runners couldn’t even see the starting line. Thousands of people filed up the streets in jogging shorts, pulling on numbered tees and wishing they’d done more cardio. They stretched, and either guzzled sports drinks or sniped about how drinking fluids before a race made you puke.

The announcement came and the stragglers cleared to the sidewalks. The runners all bent in preparation, several hundred rows of humans looking ahead to spandex-clad butts, save the front row, which looked down the empty road.

“And…” said the mayor, pausing for a moment of drama. Nobody was listening to him. When he saw no eyes come to him, he frowned and fired the starting pistol.

There was a loud cheer joining the echo of the shot. The runners leapt up. It was like sudden thunder in the subways.

Rumble.

Rumble.

Then a startled cry.

It was the cry of twenty people, the former first row, as they toppled into the pavement. All twenty went down, limbs akimbo.

The second and third rows let out slightly more amateur cries as they spilled onto the first row, then went face down on the pavement.

The mayor was forced to watch as nearly everyone in eleven rows of marathon runners slammed into the heap. It was like watching a third car slam into an accident, that unnecessary crash, except this was the equivalent of eight more cars behind it, and twenty lanes across. People screamed, many coming at the mayor either exaggerating ankle injures or demanding they start over and perhaps put me in front this time.

The mayor waved them off, looking at the street. He followed the sidewalk down into the gutter across from where the first runner had fallen. Something glistened amidst the grey.

He picked it up and quickly it went taut in his hand. It was a wire. He cussed and looked down the gutter, but the assailants were already gone. He yanked at it and saw it run into the mass of humanity still struggling and complaining in the road.

Yes, someone had used this wire to trip up the racers. And the mayor knew who. The bloody racists had struck again.