Night Jogger

My short story, “Night Jogger,” has just appeared in the excellent online magazine Danse Macabre.  You can read it here.

A couple of conflicting truisms rebound throughout fiction writing: write what you know and don’t write what actually happened.  All fiction is autobiographical—how can it not be?  The only question is how deeply to layer the metaphor.

I wrote “Night Jogger” because I used to jog in the dark.  The unevenness of the sidewalk in the diminished light led to more than just one spill on the hard concrete.  In fact, this happened to me again just last month.  I’m not as young as I used to be.

While out in the dark, in jogging togs, you are terribly vulnerable.  Your trusted senses fool you.  Those people loitering on the street corner are in reality trees at a distance.  That person sitting on the porch is really a round house address plaque above a lawn chair.  Reality is no longer real.

The truth of never wearing out, however, is essential to the story.  I was abandoned by several girlfriends in my younger years.  Their faces still sometimes come back to me in the night.  Who are they with?  Do they know that I’m still there?

Writing fiction is often about deciding how much of yourself you’re willing to reveal.  Like being outside in shorts and a tee-shirt, you’re vulnerable.

One winter I slipped on black ice while crossing a street on my jog.  I landed in a heap and a passing driver gingerly slowed to ask me if I was hurt.  It was dark.  “Only my pride,” I said, getting up to jog again.  The ending for a story I’d been puzzling over came to me then.

The original “Night Jogger” was darker, a bit more visceral.  I wanted to see it published so I toned it down a little.  Danse Macabre is one of the magazines that authentically understands the human experience.