Survival Of The Fittest

It was 6:30am on a Saturday morning when Mikki's alarm went off, and it was still 6:30am on a Saturday morning when her hand reached over to her bedside table, clawed for her phone, and threw it across the room, all the while her face never touching the light.

Her phone was fine, of course. It sailed a short distance, landing on the carpet and bouncing a few times, before coming to a stop. Silicon case with a hard plastic cover - good buy from Redbubble, meant she wouldn't need a new Samsung for ages. Of course, her amateur pitch meant the alarm was still going, just on the floor and now out of reach - if she wanted to go back to sleep, she'd have to get out of bed, but getting out of bed meant she was fulfilling the purpose of the alarm: to get up for her new morning routine.

"nurghueenfuggin burrghfst."

Mikki let out a sound that was probably as close to human as she was managing at a time when the sun wasn't even up. Of course, it failed to reach above the electronic screeching Mikki had set as her alarm. The pillows were failing their new designated use as earmuffs, so Mikki threw them across the room as well. They landed on her phone. It made no difference.

Within seconds, lacking silence and pillows, Mikki threw the covers off of her bed and stormed over to where her phone sat on the carpet. Her skin met the small furnace produced by her cheap portable heater sitting condescendingly in the corner - it felt like getting warm at a house that reeked of cat piss. Not worth it. She reached down, pushed aside her pillows, and picked up her phone.
Yep, it was that kind of day. If it were any other kind of day, like a school day, Mikki would probably have just curled up on the floor amongst the pillows. But apparently, at a time she wasn't exhausted from staying up until 1am fixing up the remix she was going to tweet to Avicii in the vain hope of getting recognized and whisked out of Chatanooga, she'd promised herself she'd start running in the morning. And that meant a shower, putting on her running stuff, finding her wireless earphones, and that condescending app trainer, good god how she hated that fucking app trainer.

So Mikki swiped her phone, placed it back on her table, grabbed her towel, and trudged out into the freezing hallway.

*

A long thirty minutes later, during which she fell asleep again only for her secondary alarm she'd forgotten about to wake her back up, Mikki was standing on the sidewalk outside her home on one leg as her other sat in her hand behind her back, stretched backwards like she was going for a soccer kick. She swapped feet, taking the opportunity to stare at her street and the frozen lawns strewn along. Nobody else was up at this time of the morning, because the people who lived here and worked 9-5 were sleeping in because it was Saturday, and the people that didn't work had already stayed up all night and were just falling asleep right now. She'd taken many a wander back here at ungodly times. She knew her street, how it worked.

She looked at her phone right before she slid it into the sock she'd cut up and made into a ghetto running band. 7:00am. Not bad for her first time. Probably wouldn't last.

Alright, let's get physical.

She started walking down the street, per the instructions of her "trainer". Peppy-voiced little bitch from L.A., probably didn't even make a hundred from the 10 minutes in the recording booth. Trainer usually implied she had something special and specific just for Mikki. Instead, it was the usual instructions on how to get fit for a 5K marathon. Walk for five minutes, then a minute and a half.

Well that went by alright, but now she had to run. Mikki started hoofing it, fast.

Holy shit, this isn't so bad.

Every step felt like breaking through a wall of ice, but Mikki kept going. Her legs probably hadn't stretched like this of their own volition since she had to cheese it out of that abandoned FPV factory over in Red Bank, but part of it felt natural, like they were supposed to be doing this. She wasn't running from something, running for a reason - she was running just because.

She upped her pace, every thundering slap on the pavement an encouraging pulse through her body. Her heart rate quickened; her mouth curved into a pained but ecstatic smile.

Fuck, you're a natural, sister. Maybe you weren't meant to be a DJ after all - get ready Tokyo Olympics, here comes your next all-time sprinter, Mikki! Swift! Or whatever the fuck they say at the Olympics, find out later or whatever.

Of course, the feeling only lasted for so long. Her thighs began to strain. Her chest compressed inward, like the air coming in was being filtered through a sock. Her smile turned.

Or not. Fuck!

The overwhelming pain didn't last long though - that's because Peppy McLA chimed back in, letting Mikki know it was time to walk again. She had 90 seconds of that until she had to get back to running, but Mikki's legs screeched for relief, chest aching for stability, stability Mikki couldn't give it because Peppy didn't say it was over yet.

Whelp, this is gonna suck.

That was what she got for assuming she'd ace this.

And she still had seven more of these sets to go.

*

She made it to the fourth before she collapsed into the sand box at the children's park. If it were another day, another morning, another neighbourhood, concerned WASPs would be nervously thumbing the 9 and the 1 on their pretty rose-gold iPhone Xs. But instead Mikki lived where she lived and she got to lay down in a pit of dead rocks.

Thirty minutes later, she trudged back home, sat in her living room in front of the television, watching CNN and wolfing down a bowl of her mom's Special K. And ten minutes later, without even having left the couch, Mikki went back to sleep.

((Mikki Swift continued in There's Nothing Wrong With "Better"))