Tryst

by H. E. Sappenfield

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

After that, worry made Carol leave the bike at home. At first, she couldn’t part with it and called in sick for a week. Joyce came by the house to check on her, armed with chicken soup, saltines, and discreet looks.

When Carol finally did go to work, and she reached Sixth and Montgomery, a good ten miles from her house, the beat diminished, the world grew brighter, and her mind cleared enough to touch logic. Each day this happened, and in this time, Carol would panic, trying to find a way out. She would call her mother, spinning lies of normalcy and hating herself. Sell the bike.

She remembered the boys. No, she couldn’t even give it away or abandon it somewhere distant. Its next owner would find himself right where she was now. Destroy the bike.

Carol pictured herself disassembling it, struggling, but succeeding at loosening the bolts, pulling out the handlebars and stem, the cranks, the fork. She hoped she was strong enough, and she’d have to borrow tools, but no one else could touch the bike.

Her heart rushed as she imagined it, lying there, disembodied. Then she saw herself driving to the dump and standing on the edge as she hurtled the parts out among old papers, coffee grounds, and fruit rinds. She could smell the sweet decay and feel the rush of deliverance, knowing she was free and that the bike couldn’t consume anyone else’s life.

As she neared home though, the beat’s volume would intensify until, when she pulled into her garage, Carol could barely remember her plan. One evening, she’d parked outside church and stared at the firm doors, considering Confession. How could she put this transgression into words though? She’d called her mother instead, spilling tears and lies.

In desperation, she wrote Destroy it! on a pink sticky note and affixed it to her computer screen before she left work, so that in the morning she’d remember. Each day, Carol managed to hold on a little longer.

Finally, today, she’d sheepishly swung by Wendy’s and borrowed her tools.

“Eat something,” Wendy said as Carol left, worry tingeing her voice.

All the way home, Carol planned the bike’s destruction, even as the beat grew louder. She forced herself to concentrate on her plan.

She inched her Saturn into the garage, and she opened the car door with intent. There was the bike, its virility taunting her, caressing her with sensual pleasure, clouding her thoughts as she rose from the car.

Carol froze. She swayed, feeling her body warm as her mind succumbed to lust. One last ride, she reasoned. Just this one last ride. Who knows if I’ll ever have... She gritted her teeth. It’s a bike!

Moments later, Carol was gliding into her bike shorts the way a lover would disrobe, but she left the tools in the trunk, where the bike couldn’t see them.

* * *

Carol gritted her teeth as she spun along Highway 6, assuring herself that she controlled the sensual pleasure and allowed the speed and power that came from it.

“Last ride, lover,” she whispered intently, and grew furious with herself for this last fling, for not controlling this addiction. She gazed up the gradual ascent, but focused on her words, which created a thread of sanity, and Carol gripped it with a sense of peril and duplicity that made her stomach lurch. Time for this to end.

Carol recalled the tools now as she rode along. Last ride.

Silver lying flat against the black lining of her trunk. Salvation.

Feeling stronger, Carol hunched her narrow chest, pulling her own heartbeat from the bike’s. Another painful burst surged through her. Enough.

At the crest of the long hill, Carol checked both directions for traffic and guided the handlebars left in a u-turn.

They wouldn’t move.

As Carol struggled to make them go, the pedals suddenly increased cadence, and she paused because she thought she heard a growl. Eyes wide, she began the long descent down the hill’s other side. Carol pulled the brakes. They flared hot. Her fingers were seared, and she pressed them to her wind-cooled cheeks, seeking comfort.

Her mind raced, searching for an alternative. She could throw herself from the bike. She glanced down at the asphalt careening past. She liked this road because it had a wide, newly-paved shoulder. Peering ahead, she could see intermittent guardrails, bits of broken glass glinting. She glanced at her cyclo-computer: 38 miles per hour. She didn’t have the courage. She’d be ripped apart.

“Look, I’ll do what you want, I’ll be what you want. I promise, I’ll be what you want!”

The bike didn’t slow.

“Oh God!”

It knew.

Her hands rested only lightly, for balance, on the tops of her bars. Her legs spun in a blur. She glanced at the road again, at the wide, black shoulder, knowing she couldn’t face impact with that pavement, when she heard the semi-trailer’s heavy, echoing gears in a downshift behind her.

Carol whimpered, listening to the truck approach, and tried to twist her left foot out of her pedal clip, ready to dive right.

“Oh lover, please!”

The pedal held tight. She leaned over, pulling at her shoe’s straps. The bike violently dipped left. Carol screamed, flopping sideways then upright, like a puppet.

The truck was upon her. Her mind flashed to the driver, the redness he was about to see. Her blood. Passion betrayed.

Careening downhill, Carol closed her eyes, sat up, and pressed her palms together in fervent prayer. The bike swerved in front of the semi, jerking her. The truck’s honk was deafening, but the screech was worse, and its wail made Carol frantically reach for her shoe’s buckle again.

The bike dipped to the side more angrily than ever, and Carol felt the semi’s hot breath as she flopped up. Just as she reached the apex, before she slapped onto her seat, the bike’s back tire was flicked forward by the truck’s grill. The screeching continued as Carol was flung even farther up by the truck’s momentum.

She thunked against the hood, right near the windshield. Her pinkie caught on a wiper as she slid up the cool glass like a skier on a jump. She sailed, sideways, over the back of the cab and landed so hard she bounced on the long metal trailer behind.

Still the tires screeched, and Carol rolled over and over down the top of the box, feeling every painful indentation and groove in its surface, trying to reach out, to stop. There were many voices, screeching. She saw the trailer’s end and knew she would die.

The truck stopped.

Everything stopped, except Carol. The change in momentum flung her forward now, the sudden silence hurting her ears, and she rolled, slow-motion, two more times, slightly askew, toward the trailer’s edge. She finally stopped on her back, her right arm landing last with a thud that left it suspended over the metal edge.

Carol was broken; so broken she couldn’t feel anything below her waist.

Broken.

But alive.

Slow tears curved down her temples.

She listened for the beat.

Silence.

I’m free!

The voices below her started again, and Carol recognized them as chickens. She lay very still, heard a car door open, and marveled at the way the air lifted so many feathers, white, brown, gray, liberated in the golden arc of evening light.

I’m free! she thought, the airiness of no sensation spreading through her fractured body, yet nothing else mattered. The bike was gone. She had her life back.

A faint beat sounded, like an injured bird flopping upright, and Carol felt a grasping tendril of rage penetrate her.

Painfully, she forced her head to the side. Down the length of her extended arm, she could see the mangled bike lying on the stark, white line. Its rear wheel was pushed in on one side, the spokes emerging in a silver fan from the crumpled rim. Down its middle, down that beautiful top tube, the bike was folded to the side.

Sorrow mingled with relief as Carol, her eyebrows pressed close, anticipated the bike’s last beat.

The bike rocked slightly.

Carol blinked.

The beat grew louder, louder, and accelerated, building until it was fury, a conflagration, and below it, this time, Carol could discern the buzzing of many voices and a rumbling, primordial growl. Even through her pain, a sense of arousal ignited deep within Carol, and she felt her head would burst.

The handlebars grew blurry. Around them, Carol saw the curved horns of a dark beast with molten silver eyes. From deep within, Carol recognized this beast from her dreams, and she was appalled by the way her broken body knew and was drawn to it. In that instant, Carol understood that her soul was irreparably marked.

Suddenly, the beast’s snout opened wide as if in agony, and its head twisted. It lifted till only its rear wheel touched, and Carol saw a massive, muscled, fiery chest.

“Nooooo,” Carol pleaded.

The beast stabbed her with a possessive gaze, then arced toward the pavement, straightening its body and the frame within. As the beast faded, the back wheel pushed out to its full circumference. The beating subsided to its single, steady pulse.

“Jesus Christ! She’s up here!” a husky male voice shouted from the trailer’s far side. There was the hollow ping of footsteps on a metal ladder. Carol turned her head, the only part of her body she could move, back to the feathers on the air.

“Here’s her bike!” another male voice shouted, then incredulously proclaimed, “It’s not even hurt!”

The beat quieted.

“It’s beautiful,” the voice said, hushed, almost to itself.

“Leave it be.” The husky voice was beside Carol now, saying the words over the top of her. “The cops’ll take care of it.”

Carol felt more than saw the large man kneel down next to her; she was listening to the clucks below, reminding her of lies which would live on, hearing the futile sirens in the distance, and watching his damning words among the feathers. Behind it all, was the beat.

“Not that you’re gonna be ridin’ a bike for while, Ma’am. Prob’ly not even goin’ home for a bit. You gave me a hell of a fright. By God, you were lucky.”

Air burst from Carol’s lips: one pathetic, bitter laugh.

to Challenge 336...