One Spoke

The bicycle's journey had started a long time ago. From its path in the factory, to being bought by a boy, and then being left on a road, it was used well and loved well.

There's one young man who hadn’t put a second thought about the bicycle’s numerous sounds and sights. For the sake of argument, we can call him Stanley. He was young in most every sense of the word, and if you had looked him over one might’ve even been fooled into the belief he was a remarkably tall elementary school student. His body seemed to possess a youthful vigor, with limbs comparable to the four wings of a dragonfly, thin and wavered quickly with an almost transparent hue. The veins inside bulged, but did not seem to be for want of escape. They simply desired to show their presence, and to remind the world of what really stood up for progress here. Above these four winged limbs were two eyes, one of a pair, squinted and searched for answers under the groggy sun. As the wheels of his bicycle twirled along the ground and back to the sky, his eyes searched for new ground for this wheel to steady itself on. As it whizzed, we broke new ground on the plane of grey and yellow, smothered the old road beneath the rear tire.

The path Stanley had taken on the way to his new knowledge was one threaded by many of his neighbors, most of whom would never see a new morning for lack of awakened eye sockets. Parked in each driveway was a four-wheeled one-eyed rust bucket, which calmly watched his pass. One car, orange and speckled with grey, held an older man. His spirit and body were not close to youth, although they mightn't wished it. His hair was a greasy, tired, straw, which fell across his tall forehead without notice or envy.  His limbs too, were thin, but in a way we never see in the children like Stanley. In his arms, not only the veins but even the bones seemed to vie for escape, as if they had seen his wretched characters pull of deeds of incomprehensibility and wanted no further part in his troubles. From his hair, there came a breed of nervous rain, trinkled through greased straw and scaled the tall mountain of facetious expression, eventually landed in his damp lap. His name was Bart.

Bart had waited in his car that day for only one reason, which can be ascertained from the events surrounded him. There hadn’t been anything but the stillness of an old street, and the sound of a red Schwinn bicycle that whizzed and spun . There was a sidewalk in front of Bart's house, that day. It had been there yesterday, and even lasted until the day after that, but only on that day would it live out the nomination of its purpose.

Bart had called out to him. “Hey! Friend! I need help!”

The young kid in question, named Stanley, looked over to see a greased, pale stranger who sat in a ripped carseat and leered towards him from a vacant silt of a speckled car's window. Now, Stanley had no cause for quarrel with this man, but there had been an air about him that seemed creepy. Perhaps it had been his eagerness to speak and make conversation, or the ulterior motives which had been lurked behind that glistened, friendly face. Stanley rode onwards, and had picked up his pace to a slight degree to get further away from the strange fellow who occupied that speckled car. The wheels of the bicycle turned and whizzed and spun louder, but the eyes were no longer on the new road ahead instead focused on the man behind them, who had rolled up his window and smoothed out his face. Why, the new ground could hardly be called new anymore, with nobody around to see it. No witnesses to the earth meant that its quality and break-ship would be sullied remarkably, as the driver and rider of the spun and clacked new time would be pre-occupied with other new sights.

As the old speck harrumphed and groaned under the weight of the engine’s new powered state, and blindly pawed at the sullied earth to find grip, Bart tightened his grip, and thought all about his new plans for the future, and how lovely they would be. The room in the house was set up and all the locks and bolts and watchers were in their places, lined up like ducks in a row. The crumbled floor-mat of his vehicle tickled his bare foot, crunched into even smaller infinitesimal pieces as he pressed more into the gasoline ignition pedal. This spotted automobile had its sights dead-set on the new young boy who rode in front of it, who now in a panic was fled as quickly as he could from the angry car roars and bright unseen light, which even in the morning sun had sung a bright new song behind him and it drew ever closer and closer and closer and it was there it was behind him upon him

Bart popped open his car's door, and sighed with his newfound exhilaration. For a moment, he had basked in his own glory. Then, he pulled himself up, leaned over the doorframe, and peered with his old eyes at the crumpled frame which lay on the newly red pavement before him. The black wheel of the red bicycle still spun and clicked, as though it had known of the danger and had continued in the attempt to flee from it. Not that it would’ve been able to, all things considered.

Stanley watched as the last light he would ever see shut with a clunk.

They drove off into that good morning.