A short story by Ava Shaffer
Last fall semester, a total of 32 girls died during The Treadmill Mad Dash Battle Royale To The Death hosted by the Waterford University Sports and Recreational Center. The university celebrated this triumph with glee, as that was a whopping ten more fatalities than the previous year. Their donors would be quite happy about this vast incline in youth fitness motivation. Hopefully happy enough to feel so compelled as to give another one million dollars to the college for a seventh basketball court.
The Treadmill Mad Dash Battle Royale To The Death hosted by the Waterford University Sports and Recreational Center was a grand race held each fall. Students would line up inside the rec, at the very top of the staircase one had to breathlessly climb to even enter the stone building. There, the students, most of them young adult women, would crouch in a runner’s lunge, prepared for war. When the race started they would bolt towards the giant treadmill room across the building, trying to secure a machine before all of them were taken. In total, the race was only about one mile, but the casualties were typically in the tens during the first few yards. It was never the goal to necessarily kill one another, but if someone had to clobber another on their way to a nice treadmill, the administrative staff would turn a blind eye. Over time, this blind eye morphed into a pair of opera glasses. Students, professors, and sometimes Waterford University Moms and Dads would gather as spectators, hoping the girls would draw some blood. The race became a gory, exploitative, horrendous thing. It raked in more alumni donations and merch sales than any of the Waterford sports events combined.
Quinn Carson had been preparing for this event all summer. Her quaint hometown of Greenwood, Iowa where she had spent the past three months was surrounded on all sides by cornfields and overrun with plump, kind grandmothers who baked fresh bread. Greenwood had a weekly farmers market and a severe lack of bloodthirsty competition amongst women. Any time Quinn went to the Planet Fitness situated between Sheetz gas station and Aldi’s grocery store, she could just waltz right up to any old treadmill and get on. But where was the satisfaction in that? Where was the rivalry? The blood, sweat, and tears? The power in fighting tooth and nail for what she wants? Where was the rush?
Quinn Carson was an intense girl. She held on tightly to things. Grudges, ghosts, good grades. Strength. Long ago, she had learned to channel her restless energy into running. She became zealous, preferring the company of pavement to that of people. She liked the fact that tracks had lanes and nobody came into hers. She was a girl made of iron and gasoline, never stopping and never slowing down for anyone. Maybe that’s why she was always alone. Nobody could keep up.
“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.” Quinn had read this quote in a tomb of a book she leafed through after sleeping with a film major. Said film major was named James and James liked to frequent the local hookah lounge the way some frequent Sunday Church. Guiltily and religiously. One afternoon when James was sound asleep, snoring noisily next to her, and Quinn was waiting for her Uber Lux to pick her up, she got bored. To pass the time, she picked up a book from James’ nightstand. Infinite Jest she thought it was called. She wasn’t the type to read for fun, especially not a brick like what was balancing on her lap swaddled by James’ navy blue bedsheets that likely hadn’t been washed in months. But somehow that quote stuck with her. Claw marks. Yeah. She knew a bit about those.
Quinn was going places, that’s what everyone always said. Manhattan, to become a cutthroat socialite with an Amex Black Card. Before that, Harvard, if Waterford hadn’t offered her a full ride. (Of course they did, and offers from Yale, Columbia, and Cornell soon followed.) Before that, Dalton Preparatory School for Girls of Class and Insatiable Ambition. And before that, her mother recalls Quinn saying she was going to be the first and only girl to live on Mars.
She was also going to be the next champion of The 2023 Treadmill Mad Dash Battle Royale To The Death hosted by the Waterford University Sports and Recreational Center. Mark her words with a Waterford University branded pen that only sometimes works.
-
She stood in front of the mirror in her dorm, preparing for war.
Her Lululemon Attack High-Rise Crop 19” Leggings in burgundy, the ones that accentuated the natural curve of her ass and concealed five knives at the thighs, were donned for this most special occasion. Her Aerie sports bra was bulletproof, of course. She was a young woman in college, she knew where people liked to stare, to aim.
She slipped into her pink Hoka SpeedGoat 5 running shoes, double knotting the laces because she was not here to fucking mess around. Making a mental note to pick up another bottle of Glossier War Paint at Sephora, she smeared black stripes onto her cheeks. With her impossibly high cool blonde ponytail swishing against her muscled back, she felt unstoppable. She was unstoppable. At least she never had been stopped before, and what was prophecy if not the precedent she laid for herself?
It was 9am on a Wednesday, basically D-Day for college girls looking to get in a quick workout before class. Hundreds of girls lined up inside of the rec, just outside of the giant room that housed the treadmills.
The army of neon colors, Lululemon logos, and Hydroflask water bottles was a living, breathing thing. The girls glared and spat at one another, bearing their perfectly white teeth. Quinn Carson’s freckled button nose scrunched, sniffing the animosity and Ariana Grande God Is A Warrior perfume in the air. The linoleum floor rumbled, vibrating with the hustle and bustle of imminent death.
A giant banner bearing the phrase “The Treadmill Mad Dash Battle Royale To The Death hosted by the Waterford University Sports and Recreational center” hung above the door’s entrance. Lining the sides of the hallway’s entrance were the cheering, jeering fans of such an extraordinary spectacle.
Weightlifting bro-boyfriends bellowed, muscle tees rustling as their veins pulsed in their tree-trunk thick necks. They grunted, sweated, and toasted their Joe Burrow Body Armor protein shakes in solidarity. Sorority bigs jumped up and down wearing pleated tennis skirts, holding signs that read, “Go, Leila! Rip them to shreds, girl!” Giant cameras from CNN and Fox News panned around the room, the news anchors rooting for the blue-haired liberals or the fake-tan republicans. The audience could feel the fervor in the rec, feeding off it. Because what was a better show than pretty girls and the only type of hunger that keeps them thin?
Quinn looked down the lines of girls, sizing up her competition. She saw some meek looking freshman, their wide eyes and simple Nike shoes a dead giveaway. Quinn could devour them whole, like a great white. A couple more experienced girls were already eyeing the treadmills closest to the door, or cheap shots as Quinn liked to call them. She rolled her eyes, where was the competition?
At that thought, her eyes snagged on a shaggy haircut, a silver nose ring that caught the light. Dylan Martinez. She was tan and tall and altogether too cool to know very well. Her mussed brown hair was the same warm color as her eyes. Quinn hated that she knew what color her eyes were.
Dylan was wearing black bike shorts and an oversized t-shirt, the antithesis to the sea of delicate blonde around her. Her weapon of choice for The Treadmill Mad Dash Battle Royale To The Death hosted by the Waterford University Sports and Recreational center was a quarterstaff because of course it was. Dylan was one of the strongest girls in the race, the muscles in her legs defined and powerful. She was Athenian, as much brutal as she was beautiful. Dylan looked like a girl who was capable of a lot.
Quinn hated her. She hated her summertime brown hair and slender fingers. Her crooked teeth and nonchalant attitude. Her legs. Her laughter that was buzzing through the room, as if this weren’t a life-or-death situation. But most importantly, she hated her for her thievery. And also her legs.
On less busy race days, say a Sunday at 6am, when it wasn’t as difficult to get a treadmill, Quinn liked to come to the rec to run. On one occasion, Quinn found the perfect treadmill, the newest in the building, not too squeaky or worn down. She set her pink water bottle in the cupholder and ran to the bathroom quickly to check her eyeliner. But when she returned, there was a sweaty Dylan on her machine.
Quinn Carson asked her kindly, which is to say falling somewhere between harsh and indifferent, to get off her treadmill. Dylan had ignored her, just silently handing her the pink water bottle without a word. Quinn thought this was perhaps a one-off catty moment common for girls who grow up on spite, but the next time she was at a treadmill and stopped for a second to take a photo of her cute matching Fabletics lavender set in the mirror, Dylan was there again. Taking.
Then it happened again. And again. She wasn’t sure where this girl got off on stealing what was rightfully claimed, but Quinn’s feelings towards Dylan curdled the more she stood in her way. Every competition, every race, Dylan was there. To make matters worse, because with Dylan things could always get worse, the girl would sweat all over a machine and not bother to wipe it off afterwards. A few times Quinn would come into the rec right when Dylan was leaving and be met with a greasy mess on her favorite treadmill. It was like Dylan was leaving her a mark, a bodily reminder of the fact Quinn couldn’t escape her.
“Hey, girlie,” a voice said, breaking her out of her train of thought. Quinn turned to see the familiar face of Harper, who she only ever saw every Tuesday/Thursday at 11:40am for Intro to Linguistics. Harper was her closest friend. She had two bedazzled axes strapped to her back.
“Competition’s shit this time around,” Quinn replied in greeting.
“What’s your strategy for the prime spot this time?” Harper asked while doing leg swings. She was referring to the ideal treadmill, the athletic crème de la crème, the one the bravest of the runners would be fighting for. It was the newest edition, the AssualtRunnerPro3000, and it felt like running on a cloud. It faced outward, looking over the rolling hills of the beautiful Waterford campus. Directly above it was an industrial fan, so even if every other runner in the world was battling the sweat dripping in their eyes, the runner here would be immune to the common failings of a human girl. It was situated in the center of the room, a prime spot to be regarded as royalty. And because you had to fight like hell to get there, you kind of were. It was a shrine, a pedestal, an altar.
Quinn didn’t respond to Harper’s question, but Harper was used to their conversations being one-way. Typically, Quinn only responded with one-word answers, except when Harper would complain about her boyfriend, in which Quinn deigned to give two words: Dump him.
As the runners stretched their hamstrings, double-laced their shoes, and turned on their Angry Taylor Swift Songs playlist, a megaphone sounded.
“Alright listen up, ladies!” came the unmistakable voice of Simone Scarborough, the Executive Director for Recreation Services. Scarborough was something akin to a god in this town. You could practically picture a stained-glass window of her curly black hair, Waterford University polo, and signature megaphone hanging up in the Vatican. Waterford University was actually considering commissioning one of the school’s art students to craft an oil portrait of Scarborough to hang in the lobby of the rec.
“I want to see a nice, clean fight, you hear?” Scarborough narrowed her eyes at Jenna Jennings, who had been known to use her adult braces to chomp her way to victory.
Scarborough brought a golden whistle to her lips, eyeing the line of girls beginning to fold themselves into a runner’s starting crouch. Her left eye twitched in excitement.
“On your marks. Get set. SLAY!” she screeched, blowing the whistle until her face turned a lovely shade of purple.
A thunderous roar rose from the crowd and the girls were off.
Beltbags became nunchakus, wire headphones became strangling rope, and Hydroflasks became clubs that smashed into the temples of oncoming runners. Sweatbands were fashioned into slingshots that took down far-off opponents. Some contestants just used the pink pepper spray on their key chains. Anything was a weapon in this race, and any girl was an enemy.
As war raged, some girls took the easy way out. Quinn had no respect for shit like that. The weaklings- freshman, and girls in WGS classes who didn’t vibe with the idea of killing another woman s- immediately grabbed the treadmills at the start of the race. They were musty, old, squeaky cop-outs intended for the faint of heart.
“Cowards,” Quinn mumbled under her breath as she brought down the butt of her knife on an approaching runner’s head, knocking her out clean.
All around her, girls were being taken down. Attacked, sliced, pummeled. They were hitting the floor in flashes of neon nylon. Quinn pushed on, determined. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her best friend Harper get impaled by a sinister-looking wood plank. The piece of wood seemed to be a humongous frat paddle, whittled down into a point. She died on that stake, her body hanging limply as her hand reached towards her friend, like Quinn was God in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. Quinn was sad for about three seconds, mourned the loss of cordial conversation they shared every Tuesday/Thursday at 11:40am, and then carried on.
At this point in The Treadmill Mad Dash Battle Royale To The Death hosted by the Waterford University Sports and Recreational Center, almost all of the machines were already claimed. The mechanical sound of treadmills whirring to life combined with the cries of the injured. Quinn kept fighting her way towards the AssualtRunnerPro3000, stabbing any girl who dared cross her path.
Eventually, there were only two girls left. From the corner of her eye, Quinn could see a streak of dark hair nearing the only treadmill left in the room, the best one, the one that Quinn had worked months for. Quinn and Dylan raced towards the machine in the center of the room, the spectators watching, entranced, popcorn from the nearby concession stand in hand. Venmo requests were being sent sneakily through the crowd, the way cash is passed between hands during bets, because Waterford University was a cashless campus.
The girls collided at the base of the treadmill, Quinn’s knives at the ready as Dylan brandished her quarterstaff like some kind of medieval villain. Quinn jabbed first, Dylan blocked, and on they went. They continued their sparring match as the crowd cheered behind them, both losing their breath but never their stamina. Quinn pirouetted, knocking the other girl’s foot out from underneath her, effectively bringing her to the ground with a loud SMACK. She was on her in an instance, straddling her enemy and lowering the sharp weapon to her throat.
“Why do you only want what’s mine?” Quinn growled, her knife pressed into the tanned flesh of Dylan’s neck. Her brown eyes stared triumphantly back at Quinn. Somehow she still held the upper hand, even when she was pinned to the ground.
“Because it’s yours!” Dylan spat out from beneath the cool blade. Quinn’s grip loosened from shock, ever so slightly, and Dylan took it as her only chance to weasel out from her grasp. She rolled away, sputtering, putting much needed distance between them.
They stared at each other, the air between them thick. Both sweating, both bleeding. The CNN cameras zoomed in on the pair voyeuristically, while the Fox cameras angled their footage to only include one girl at a time. No way in hell could they broadcast such a heated, sexually tense conversation between two girls.
Dylan spoke first, and Quinn hated her for beating her to that too.
“This is the only way you would ever notice me,” she angrily confessed, “I tried talking to you freshman year when we sat next to each other in class, but you barely looked at me. I so badly wanted you to look at me.”
Quinn was looking at her now, her demeanor cold and her eyes colder. She let nothing show on that pristine face of hers, let nothing slip. Dylan, ever the fearless, charged on.
“And then one day I accidentally stole the machine you were on. I didn’t know it was yours until you came back and started glaring at me like I killed your favorite fluffy purse dog. You looked so mad, I just handed you your water bottle because I was too embarrassed to speak or move or anything.”
A pause more pregnant than the receptionist at the student health services front desk filled the air. Quinn didn’t speak, so Dylan charged on.
“But you were looking at me. The way you are right now.”
Dylan wasn’t sure if Quinn looked like she wanted to kill her or kiss her. What’s the difference anyway? Both would stop her heart.
Then Dylan uttered the most romantic words that can be quantifiable in college.
“What you said in your discussion post that one day during English class was so profound,” she said, that confession essentially declaring her undying love and devotion to the girl right there. Every person in the rec, at least those still alive, gasped. Fox quickly turned off their cameras. The crowd watched Dylan and Quinn with wide eyes, still reeling from the proclamation of love. If that wasn’t laying your heart on the line, bearing your soul to the universe, then what was? For there is nothing more sacred and vulnerable than a reply to one of your peer’s discussion post.
Dylan stared at her, hope in her eyes. She was so brave, and Quinn was having trouble breathing. Her first instinct was to be touched, to feel moved by the unfamiliar feeling of affection. Her body responded to it, her heart fluttering. But she did not train her body to be soft. She was all hardened edges and cinderblock.
“Whatever,” she replied.
Quinn rolled her eyes so as not to watch Dylan’s face fall.
She turned back to the treadmill, the AssualtRunnerPro3000, ready to claim her worthy spot on the throne. But as she climbed on the machine, she noticed a tiny yellow piece of paper, three words typed haphazardly in Comic Sans across it.
Out of order, it read.
Quinn’s heart fell. It tumbled, actually, pitching down a black hole and bonking into every boulder on the way down. She stepped off the treadmill in a daze, her eyes blank and soul sad.
She glanced around the rec, the injured and battered girls who had been beaten to a treadmill but not killed started to stand. They limped towards one another, some of them putting their arms around each other to help one another up. The crowd lining the hall and the girls not strong enough to win the race congregated in the center of the rec. They looked at Dylan, Quinn, and the yellow note.
One bold girl with purple hair and a steadying arm wrapped around her injured friend’s waist looked around the room. She noticed the machines, the blood, the weapons, the girls. There were hundreds of them, and only a handful of treadmills.
“I always wondered why they wouldn’t just buy more machines,” she mused, wiping the sweat off her forehead.
The other girls looked around, taking in the scene as well. With the amount of money Waterford University had, there should’ve been a treadmill for every girl. Probably even two per girl. But still, they host this grand race every year to watch the girls stomp over one another in their newest pair of trendy white sneakers. Was there not room for them all? If not here, perhaps someplace else?
They thought about this. Then they thought some more.
“You know, I’ve always wanted to try weight lifting,” came a small voice from the left of the room. Heads turned to look at Jenna Jennings, the girl known for her adult braces and the bite marks she’s left on past contestants.
She nodded towards the room five times larger than the treadmill area. Inside, the weight lifting bros were bench-pressing, grunting, shouting, and smacking each other’s asses (in a not gay way).
“There’s plenty of room over there,” Jenna shrugged. “I know the weightlifting guys don’t really want us in their space, but maybe they can learn to share.”
The crowd mulled this over, hushed whispers floating through the room.
“I’ll go if you go with me,” said a girl Quinn didn’t know. She was looking at the friend next to her, and her mouth spread into a sweet smile. She nodded and the girls embraced.
All at once, girls started pitching in, agreeing to join in the noble quest to the weightlifting room. They knew there would be war ahead, but danger is a girl’s best friend. As they started to band together and make their way towards the room, epic-fantasy-Hobbit-journey style, one person stopped and turned once again towards Quinn.
Dylan held out her hand.
Quinn allowed herself exactly five seconds to imagine it. Her hand slipping into Dylan’s, the warmth she’d find there. Limping towards a new adventure, for once with others instead of against them. Having someone else shoulder her weight for a little while. Complimenting someone on their shoes and asking where she got them.
The thought terrified her. She had been alone for so long, she didn’t know any other way to be. She was individual, she was strong, she was not like other girls.
Her allotted mourning time was up, and Quinn turned her back on the fantasy, unsheathing the last knife from her thigh, and jabbed it into the calf of the girl on the treadmill next to her. She went down with a howl. It was the second best machine in the building, after all. This will have to do.
Although the code of ethics of The Treadmill Mad Dash Battle Royale To The Death hosted by the Waterford University Sports and Recreational Center states that it is illegal to take a girl out once she was already on a machine, the rules no longer applied to Quinn Carson. Who was going to stop a girl with rage written on her birth certificate?
Ignoring the sound of gasps, the weight of her devastatingly antifeminist actions, and the heavy presence of one girl in particular, Quinn hopped onto the treadmill. And then she ran.
From the reflection in the mirrors lining the walls, Quinn watched the band of bloodied, bruised girls begin their odyssey towards the weightlifting section together. Some of them were holding hands. Quinn tore her eyes away from them. A bead of sweat rolled down one of her cheeks. Another chased after it, hot streaks pouring from her eyes. To have called it a tear would be to sign your own death wish, so the girls next to her pretended they didn’t see a thing. And Quinn ran faster.
She didn’t listen to any music as she ran, letting the sounds of her feet hitting the treadmill carry her someplace far away. Although there were still others around her, she couldn’t hear a thing. She couldn’t hear the sounds of running from the other girls. She couldn’t hear the groans of the injured, still laying in collapsed piles on the linoleum floor. She couldn’t hear the sounds of war beginning to thunder from the weightlifting room.
Adrenaline coursed through her, pushing her to sprint harder. Her legs burned with the effort, but the sting felt good. It always did. Sweat covered her chest, each gasp of air a cool bite in her lungs. In that moment, some say her legs were moving so fast it looked like she was flying. Some say she ran faster than any girl ever had before. Some say she was barely a girl anymore.