The man on the bike
After a new friend raped her off that bike path, she exploded into a new universe: alien, indifferent, surreal. The impossible could happen, always threatening just beyond the lie of normalcy. Home felt like a book; work felt like a movie. She was cursed.
Always, she knew she had to return to break the spell.
A year later to the day, she pedaled down the trail like an invader. She would complete the ride she couldn’t one year ago. Her therapist said it was too soon.
The too-green trees shook their blades at her, but none drew blood as she biked past. The sun was low and fat, blinking blearily at her as it sank through the spires. The warm, humid air whipped about her at too many odd angles like it wanted to push her off the path.
She clicked her gear higher and persevered down the labyrinthine asphalt trail. Her breath, heart, and legs beat an angry polyrhythm. She had to feel the desperation, so she rode like she was chasing doom.
Nobody was around, like she’d fallen into another dimension. The whole world was this path, twisting and curving through the woods like a snake dropped into a boiling pot. Above her was a fake dome the color of overripe fruit, pressing down on her, squirting her forward through her sweat. Even her bike was overcomplicated: dozens of pieces moving and shifting like something inhuman fashioned it together. Familiarity grew obscene.
She would only know what she was hunting for when she found it.
A whisper of a foul smell reached her.
It’s the woods; things die here. Move on.
She reached the midway mark—the subtle stretch in direction homeward, the sun impaled and buried in the treeline, and the massive white tree stump, Big Bertha, split from the middle outward and bleeding a rash of crimson mushrooms.
She eyed the yonic corruption, glugged her water bottle.
That’s not me.
She dared her heart to give up. She knew she’d never get it if she wanted it.
Homeward bound. She crested the hill and hit the final straightway.
The stink returned to drown her nose and throat. She bit her lip and swallowed to choke back the upflux.
Was that a bow-struck deer, lost in its panic, hidden in the shades of the ferns as it watered them with its life?
Worrying was weak. Let it stink; let it help crowd the list of miseries she’d conquer. She swore at herself.
A fuzzy pinpoint in the distance appeared as the worm-tangled trail lengthened like a runway. Each revolution of her wheels heightened the smell’s power.
Time slowed. She slowed.
A large, round figure precariously balanced on a bike, facing away from her, going the same direction as she.
Her eyes narrowed.
A man.
There were two ways home from the loop. Decision.
She wanted to take both ways back, forward and retreat, and nearly ripped herself in two.
No—she was intact. She pushed forward but the momentum was gone. The sweat and the humidity gummed up her joints and the bike’s. Ride.
The broken stones and fallen trees and choked streams all existed only to watch her. She knew if she looked back, she’d see the world falling away into oblivion: used-up, no longer needed. She’d never look back.
She gained on the figure lazily cycling ahead.
What was he wearing? Not a helmet. Not biking gear.
She fought a wave of nausea like the trail was an abandoned abattoir.
It was a man that grabbed her a year ago.
This smell. Was it the man on the bike ahead? But it was beyond body odor.
It was a man that overpowered her.
She had pepper spray.
Keep going.
Reach him, pass him.
This was the smell of something rotting alive.
It was a man that cracked her safety.
The path aimed her front wheel right at him. She couldn’t control that agonizing pace like gravity itself faltered.
Too soon, she pulled up beside him as he paused at the stop sign at the end of the loop.
Trench coat. A leather, pointed wizard’s cap, slouchy at the brim. Both gray. He turned to her.
For an infinite second, she saw a costume. Clothes, arms, legs, a head, but—no, he was—
Raw and glistening like garnets drowning in condensed milk: butcher’s meats, congealed, living, bound together by some sick primordial force. Dry and wet-looking like enamel. Sinews crisscrossing like unspooled floss. As if it were a gooey caul of afterbirth, his coat clung.
She could feel reality failing again.
The path struck her—no, she fell. She kicked the bike off her trapped leg.
The man moved strangely, kicked out his bike stand and stood, stepped toward her.
With electricity in her veins, she scrambled backwards with her heels, left hand seizing asphalt while right spasmed at her belt.
Spray, spray.
The can clattered away like she had frostbite.
Everything laughed: the sharp pebbles and stiff tufts of grass, the peaty tree carcasses, the emerging stars in that painted sky. Ogling, guffawing at her demise. This was it—this was part of the plan, to break her and a year later consume her. All designed, all sanctioned. Everything roared.
Except him. That sallow, bloated face peered intently, taking in her thrashing form. His split-hotdog lips parted slightly, revealing anorexic needles. Loose cow eyes dangling from optic nerves never blinked at her. He crowded out the sky above.
She thought of what his face would feel like to strike. If she bit his cheek or neck, she swore she wouldn’t recoil at any taste, at any texture—anything at all to hurt him. Would her knee pierce his distended gut? Would he spill over in a pile if he tried to mount her, and she kicked her bike shoe as hard as she could into him? Could her screams rattle those monstrous ear holes? So foul were his foundations, could she break him apart?
His hand of stolen skins reached out.
She gripped her key, slashing it in front of her like a tiny blade—no, she had nothing—her hand was merely out, motionless, as if the magic in her palm would keep him away. Stop. Her vision was a tunnel, and the noise hushed.
The blasphemous grip on her—
was gentle, precious.
His other hand touched gingerly higher, on her elbow. A careful strength.
She rose. She was upright. Feet pressed back into the ground with her weight. Past the untied trenchcoat, she saw a megapolis network of veins and striations pulsing.
She felt rubber; he pressed the lifted bike’s handlebars into her tingling hands.
She couldn’t move, but she knew she was still there. Her mouth hung open like she had more eyes in there and they must all gawk.
As if to give her space, he then stepped back, hands out, fingers up, caressing the air.
Unnaturally balanced, too high, too rotund back on the bike, he prepared to leave. One last time he looked at her, and the faintest, awfulest smile hinted from his mouth.
“Ah.” The only sound he ever made. He raised a vomitous paw to his hat, and tipped it at her. His wheels turned.
Motionless as the stilled air, she watched the oddly bobbing man disappear off the trail. Her throat felt like it swallowed a weasel—she finally stopped screaming.
Crickets awakened in the twilight. She bent her stiffened knees and remounted her bike, sweat gone cold, and silently pedaled out the trail.
As she turned beyond the foliage, she started the bike path loop again.
Photo by Finn IJspeert on Unsplash