Üks treeningpäev Ivan Denissovitši elus

It was a damp and murky November evening, the kind when you like to sit in front of a fireplace with a good read in your hand. Low rain clouds skimmed over undulating pine trees, obscured by a thin veil of rain. And there in the mist a lone light flickered between the trees. A spitting noise of slushy snow accompanied the light as it moved closer. It was a young boy running along the forest track with a headlamp to reveal tree roots pressing up through the earth like blood vessels on the back of your hand.

It was not just about training for big competitions or keeping fit. Running helped to organise his thoughts after strenuous school days. Nothing worked better than a jog along the old track: past all the eerie houses with peeling paint and rotting picket fences; through wheat fields that looked like seas of gold in summer and glistened under the sun in winter; across lurching swamps and over small hills that rolled like waves across the landscape. For the boy, the track was a constant, separated from everything mundane, a place where he could spend time filing the contents of his brain. When running he was sleepwalking, totally immersed in his thoughts, a solitary subject trying to make sense of his wretched existence.

Almost everything had gone wrong on that particular day. In the morning the boy woke up from slumber that leaves people more tired than they were on the previous evening. There was no time for breakfast and he had to make haste to get to school on time. Frustration started filling the boy when the bus arrived late and he missed his first lesson. To make matters worse, an invisible wall muffled all noises and blurred all images, and the boy made little sense of his teachers throughout rest of the day. He couldn´t wait to go for his run.

It started as it usually did. The boy left the oblong grey apartment building behind the knoll and took a course towards the ominous looking pine forest. He realized that he had forgotten to change the batteries of the headlamp the previous night. Only a faint light was emitted and it made things move in the darkness. But it wasn´t a reason for concern as this had happened before.

When the boy reached the old wooden houses by the forest, he could sense something awkward about the surroundings, something he had not felt before. Yet, he kept running and entered the forest where the dismal trees greeted him with grim creaking. It was still raining and pools of foul water covered the tracks.

After settling into a rythm, the boy started to think about his next day´s assignments, disturbed only by occasional obstacles. Crossing some mossy tree trunks fallen on the track, he heard a crack behind him. When he turned to look, he was unable to see anything, unrelenting drizzle embraced him so tightly that the headlight couldn´t illuminate further than his saturated feet. Since there was nothing to be seen or heard, the boy pushed on.

A moment later he was pondering about the days when a similar situation would have made him too scared to continue. As a little boy he used to sleep with a blanket over his head, because his uncle had dragged him to see too many horror movies, which nourished the creatures living in his bedroom closet. And whenever he used to take his bike from the windowless cellar, which always had a distinctive smell of old cabbages, the boy bolted down stairs in order to be too quick for all the life forms he believed were lurking in the hidden corners.

He laughed over his childhood foolishness. There was nothing amongst the trees, this time of the day the forest was always desolate. Passing a narrow glade, a glimpse of white caught his eye, which made no sense, because the whole ground was covered with melting snow. The boy squinted at the forest floor and a faint scent of cabbages filled his nostrils. Although by now darkness was suffocating him, the boy had a profound feeling that he was being observed. Finishing early started to seem a good idea. So, he started taking shortcuts which led him back to the side of the forest next to the wooden houses.

From time to time he peered back to see something, at the same time wishing that he hadn´t. Minutes passed, and the alarmed boy heard nothing but blood rushing in his ears. Thatched roofs of the old houses in the distance guided him on the road and he felt like a child who had just escaped a severe punishment.

Making first steps along the potholed road towards his apartment house he heard a sickening growl which pinned him to the ground. Something was approaching with heavy steps from the direction he had come from. The boy backed away unsteadily, feeling his legs relent as he stumbled into the picket fence lining the road. Cold dribble fell from the sky, making the boy shiver as he scanned the surroundings in stomach-aching suspense for the thing to reveal itself. And there it was, big as a calf, saliva oozing from its mouth and two ruby eyes flaring fiercely. Heart racing at enormous speeds the boy nimbly climbed over the picket fence. The creature stopped for a second as if to measure the height of the fence and then picked up speed for an enormous leap. In dire desperation the boy ripped a slippery picket and held it pointed towards the wild beast, who, in all its might, landed on him the picket penetrating its heart. The boy, soaked to the skin and covered in mud, stayed lying helplessly on the ground staring at the lifeless eyes of the beast.

Years later the event still sat in the boy´s mind, reminding him that terrifying things do happen and dreadful beings do exist. We can´t avoid them, no matter how special we think we are.