woke up to see another hermit has been chased off tumblr by people being absolute disrespectful dickheads. great /s

you can’t keep away from fate | CH1

Pairing : Percy jackson x demigod!reader 

summary : The daughter of destiny- literally, along with inevitability, compulsion and necessity. Being the child of a primordial goddess doesn’t really assure you a quiet calm life but when you return to new york after five years of being shipped off to boarding school, your once mundane life says goodbye.

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A/N I’ve been wanting to write this for quite some time so here it is! this is going to be quite a long fanfic so i’ll have the parts linked in each post when they’re ready. (p.s the pov’s might change from yours to percy’s just because some parts of the story will seem better that way) enjoy!

 It took about 2 weeks to convince your father to let you tag along with him to his business trip to new york. You were certain he would never comply but after you pulled your ‘puppy eyes’ and ‘it’s been 5 years’ cards, he grudgingly agreed. 

So for one week only you said goodbye to your sophisticated private boarding school and you were off to america, the current central of western civilisation- in other words, the land of the gods. 

Once in New york, your father had let you roam around on your own which surprised you a lot. You’d had expected him to get one of his assistants to babysit you but you both knew deep down that you were rather capable of taking care of yourself- wether that was being kidnapped or attacked by a monster, or both. 

Before you left he made sure that you were wearing your mother’s bracelets, two pearl and diamond encrusted items which could extend into long elegant swords by the flick of your wrists. You didn’t use them on the regular so it felt foreign to you, the last time you had used them was when you lived with you mum. 

Your mum wasn’t exactly a sore subject, yeah sure, she had sent you off to live with your father at the age of eleven and then disappeared off the face of the earth without any trace or any goodbye to anyone- which you guessed wasn’t exactly difficult for a goddess, but you knew it was for the better. She’d wanted you to live an as normal life as you could, keep you out of harms way- but that was wishful thinking. Being her daughter, you would never get a normal life. 

Even though northern europe didn’t exactly host a load of monsters, unless you were near the mediterranean,  and you had lived like any other mortal- you knew that was sure to end, someone or something would find you one way or another. 

and by coming to new york, standing in front of the empire state building, was exactly how you’d ended it. 

Your father hadn’t exactly said you were forbidden to go there, but it was an unspoken rule that didn’t exactly needed saying. It was just like your father not choosing to state you weren't allowed to commit mass murder but you knew not to do it anyway. 

You stared at the building, you had an itch to go inside; maybe just to see who was manning the lobby- but you knew you wouldn’t be allowed up, would you? it would be a very bad idea to go up. You wondered if olympus still looked the same.

 It sometimes made you angry that you were tossed out of there five years ago, even though there were valid reasons as to why, but you couldn’t be blamed, after all- it was where you were born.  

......

It was one of those days where percy wished nothing would interrupt a lovely day with his friends. But when those friends are a satyr and a demigod you can’t really expect nothing to go wrong.

Annabeth and grover had come down from camp half blood to spend the some time with percy which was the very thing he had been looking forward to this entire week, him and his two best friends enjoying pizza at the best place in the whole city.  But in the mid way of their lunch, grover paused, a look of shock painted on his face.  “What is is?” Percy asked, looking around for any threats, his hand clasping on riptide in his pocket.

“It’s a demigod- i think” Grover muttered the last part, then his shocked face turned to fear.

“What, grover what is it? What do you mean you think it’s a demigod?” Annabeth questioned, but grover continued to nervously shake his head. 

“And a monster” Grover started to panic, “There’s a monster, there’s obviously a monster-i could sense them from a mile away” he rambled and annabeth and percy shared a look of confusion. 

Percy didn’t know why grover was in such a state of shock, he’d sensed demigods being followed by monsters all the time and never had he panicked like this- something was wrong and for about the millionth time this week, percy just wished he was normal. 

“Do you know where they are?” Percy questioned, already standing up, annabeth following in suit. 

Grover looked up with them with scared eyes, “uh yeah, but we aren’t following them are we?” he asked, picking up percy’s empty coke can and nervously chewing it.

“Yes we are” Annabeth and percy said in unison, and grover slumped. 

“Alright then, let’s go fight a monster”

It wasn’t long till Grover had lead them down a few blocks and stopped in in the middle of the street, facing the other side with his legs shaking so hard, he could barely keep his crutches straight. 

“There” he said, not pointing or giving any gesture to show who he was looking at but percy knew immediately who he meant. 

There, walking hurriedly was a petite girl, with long caramel hair dressed in a thin black army jacket, jeans and a grey tube top. gods you were pretty. You practically made percy breathless and almost forget that you had a monster following you somewhere. 

You glanced back quickly then turned your attention back to the road but not before your eyes landed on the three of them. You put them all in a state of shock, it was like you could tell they were watching you, it was like you knew what they were. 

Percy watched you take an intake of breath like you were going to say something, but you turned your head and disappeared into the new york crowd. But before percy could think about what had happened, Grover shrieked and hid behind annabeth and percy could see exactly why.

Lumbering slowly through the crowd was a giant, with pudgy skin seeping in places and wearing nothing but a loincloth. He walked through the mortals and nobody acted like they could see him, whatever they saw the giant as through the mist, it must’ve been normal. 

“What’s that thing doing here?” Annabeth hissed, and she immediately made her way to cross the street, percy followed after her and after a short pause, so did grover. 

They followed the giant, which wasn’t exactly hard, through the busy flow of people. They knew they had to kill the giant but they couldn’t do so in the middle of the street filled with mortals. And just after a couple of blocks the street began to empty, leaving the three of them with a clear view of you and the giant in front of them.

But you suddenly ducked into a side road which made percy curse. 

The giant would have no problem trying to kill you now.

The giant seemed to take this in too, he looked around the street just to check there weren’t any others planning to duck into the alleyway and followed you in.

The three of them ran. 

Percy had already uncapped riptide, taking the lead of the chase, he couldn’t imagine what the giant would do, he had to save you- quickly. 

But as he turned the corner, it seemed like you didn’t need saving. 

Somehow you had thrown yourself onto the giants head, your legs chocking the giant as he aimlessly tried to swat you away like some bug that annoyed him. He dangerously swayed side to side, threatening to smash you into the narrow set walls either side of you.

“Tell me who you're working for!” you shouted, a slight accent perking your voice. 

it made you all the more cuter, percy thought.

“Who sent you!” you screamed, hands pulling up on the giants ears causing it to yell out in pain. 

“You shall die!” the giant bellowed but it didn’t phase you.

You rolled your eyes, you seemed bored and tired of this monsters bull crap and  with one hand you made a gesture as if you were pulling a string away from the giants nose and the monster began to cough. 

Then it stood still, eyes wide and then- it exploded into ashes. 

And that left you sitting on nothing, so you fell towards the floor. 

Percy acted before he could think and ran under you, arms spread out and in a split second, you landed in his arms. 

“Oh-” you said, shocked, staring at the dark haired boy whose arms you were laying in, “hello” 

His sea green eyes shifted awkwardly to the side for a second before returning back to you again, “ uhm, hi” 

smooth percy, smooth. 

The two of you looked at each other, faces inches apart. None of you spoke and just looking at your coffee coloured eyes made percy’s heart beat erratically, but the fact that you were there in his arms made his heart burst it’s way out of his chest. 

Percy gulped, you smiled at him. 

“ahem” annabeth coughed, and percy turned to see the two of his best friends with smug grins of their faces, “ sorry to bother but she was just attacked by a giant” 

“More like the giant was attacked by her” grover said a sheepish smile on his face, amazed by the mystery girl’s unexpected ability.

“You can put me down now,” you said quietly, patting percy’s chest to which his awkwardly mumbled out a ‘right, sorry’ and set you down gingerly beside him. 

Percy could hear the sniggers from behind him and it made him even more flustered. gods he was going to kill the both of them. 

“How did you do that? I mean, you barely did anything and the giant died” Annabeth questioned, adoration and confusion lacing her voice as she approached you.

“Oh, i uhm,” you stuttered, tucking your hair behind your ear, “i made him stop breathing” 

“by strangling him?” percy asked and you shook your head with a small smile. 

“No, i stopped the air from entering his lungs” you replied innocently as if you were saying “i asked him if how his day was” 

Percy’s mouth fell open, “you what?!”

“So you can manipulate air?” Annabeth asked and you nodded. 

“Wait you’re definitely a demigod right? not some sort of sorceress or minor goddess” Grover questioned, still shocked at the fact that you had defeated that giant so easily.

You laughed, “i’m no goddess, just a demigod” 

well you sure looked like a goddess, percy thought, had a laugh like one too and had the power of one, he wasn’t even sure he could defeat a 7ft giant with no weapon. 

“I’m annabeth, this is grover and this is percy” Annabeth introduced, hand stretched out in greeting, you shook it and gave them a large smile.

“I’m Y/N” 

The more he stared at you, the more details he seemed to take in, how your hair was actually dyed- your black roots appearing at the crown of your head, how your jacket was two sizes too big and how it draped slightly on one shoulder, how perfectly manicured your nails were. 

could you be anymore attractive? 

“So do you know who your godly parent is?” Annabeth asked and you nodded but you didn’t expand on the question and it was obvious to the three of them that you weren’t too keen on sharing information to 3 strangers. 

“If you want, we could take you back to a safe place, it’s for demigods, it’s called camp half blood” Annabeth coaxed, and percy knew she was trying to recruit the you. 

These were desperate times and camp half blood needed all the help it could get. 

“Camp half blood? oh! i know that place!” you said excitedly- throwing the three of them into shock.

“You do?” percy asked, and you nodded your head.

“My father went there, he was a son of Hephaestus” 

If it was possible, this put the three in even more shock.

“You’re father was a halfblood?” percy asked amazed. It was known that once demigods got older they would leave camp and try to make a life for themselves, but at that moment it seemed so impossible to even survive after 16 that percy found the idea so foreign. 

“How come you didn’t go to camp half blood then?” grover asked.

“I don’t live in america” you explained, which was rather evident from your accent but now that it was stated, percy didn’t have to assume.

 “Well i think chiron would really want to meet you, he might have known your dad” Annabeth said, leading you out of the alleyway as you two talked.

Percy was left staring at our back, grover stood next to him.

“you know, you could try talking to her rather than just ogling at her” Grover snickered and without a word percy punched him. 

Accomplice (2/?)

Again, Happy ShinAi Day, everyone!

This isn’t really ShinAi, but I wrote this chapter to Accomplice to start off the prompt posts for my 31 Days of CoAi project! If you haven’t seen my meta post yet:

I will be posting very short fics daily from 4/2 to 4/30! (tag: x prompt fills)

If you’re interested in my ramblings about the CoAi fics I’ve written, I’ll be talking about them one at a time daily from 4/1 to 5/1! (tag: x fic posts)

And, finally, on 5/1, I will be posting One Chilly Morning, which is the third chapter to One Rainy Afternoon, to end my 31 Days of CoAi project… 

This month will be a ride, for sure! As much as I’ve expressed how incredibly painful preparing this project for me is, it has been loads of fun for me to express my love for CoAi, and in such a grandiose manner too!

I think I consider this project my love letter to CoAi. I’m a sucker for the romantic, sorry, haha!

I hope everyone enjoys it, too, to the very end!

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31 Days of CoAi Prompt Fill 1 of 31

Accomplice

Fandom (Pairing): DCMK (CoAi) (KaiShi) Title: Accomplice Summary (Word Count): AU where there is no APTX, and the partner became the accomplice. (2493+?) Links: Also on AO3 and FF. Part 1 is also on Tumblr (tag: x dcmk accomplice)

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“This is the fifth time you hit me, detective!”

As what’s becoming usual between the two of them, Kudo Shinichi ignores Kid’s complaints as he chases Kid across a maze of hallways and stairways, this time in the TV station building where Kid nicked the showpiece during live broadcast.

The way this Kid is much more talkative tells Shinichi the thief he’s been chasing for the past heists is Thief Kid. Only Thief Kid.

And that pisses Shinichi off more than he’d like. Is Thief Kid thinking he can just pull off whatever he wants against him without the assistance he’s particularly proud of?

Shinichi can’t deny Thief Kid did manage to escape last time. And the other time. And that other time, too. But that’s in the past. The present is much more important because in the present he’s been leading Thief Kid into a dead end and he’s been wonderful in cooperating so far.

Yes, a dead end that does not include rooftops, nor windows and, even, vents.

All this while kicking various office property at Thief Kid that he swears is necessary for him to be able to lead Kid into his setup. Yes, all necessary. He can’t help that he has just that good aim since he’s just that good at soccer, and that Thief Kid can’t dodge completely right?

As Thief Kid leaps to the right after Shinichi kicks a trash can to his left, smoothly going into the room Shinichi has been steering him into since the chase began, he shouts, “Will you stop being so violent if I answer one question of yours?”

Shinichi enters the room in a beat, and excited as he is with his plans falling into place, he doesn’t even think before he asks, “You’re alone this time?”

In the middle of the room, Thief Kid is stunned into silence for more than a second, and Shinichi feels seeing the expression is so gratifying... until Thief Kid laughs. As much as Shinichi wanted to remain unaffected, the corners of his mouth turn down, uncontrollably, to an unmistakable grimace.

They stay like that for a short moment, Shinichi blocking the only exit to the room and Thief Kid cackling while holding his sides, in full of view of the unamused detective in front of him.

Thief Kid, after laughing for a good while, wheezes, “...That’s it? That’s the question?”

Shinichi’s scowl grows deeper in reply.

Thief Kid, as chatty as he’s proven to be these past heists and as shameless as Shinichi had always assumed him to be, continues, “Are you trying to pick me up? Or are you trying to pick me up?! Oh, another misguided youth, you wouldn’t be able to handle me! To be honest, the safer option is to fancy the good ol’ me in front of you! Oh, but then, dear, why so violent! You must be gentle when courting! That must be why you’re still single, detective...”

Not even bothering to focus on whatever nonsense Thief Kid has been spouting, Shinichi backs up a few steps to end up just outside the doorway, and proceeds to kick the bin nearby in a perfect trajectory to Thief Kid’s incessantly babbling mouth.

Thief Kid deftly sidesteps to avoid the projectile, all the while dramatically intoning, “Whoa, whoa, detective, keep that up and you’ll chase me away! I’m not an M, really, I’m actually pretty vanilla! I prefer the traditional way of courting—”

With a snappy kick to the top of the bin that had fallen off, Shinichi manages to hit him right on his arm this time, and Thief Kid yelps, “—Ouch!”

“Hey! Ok, ok, I’m alone today! Tch!”

Seemingly soured by another arm injury, Thief Kid throws a familiar canister hard on the spot on the floor between the two of them almost petulantly—but Shinichi is prepared. He quickly wears the mask he had Hakase make and rushes Thief Kid.

He’s just four—no, three big steps away from Thief Kid, and then he feels a prick right smack in the middle of his forehead. He feels his senses fade, and the foot he had raised in an effort to take an even larger stride to handcuff Thief Kid lands on the floor without strength, and he falls, face down.

“This is going to cost me big...” is what Shin hears over the hissing of the cloudy white gas from the canister, which is evidently not the sleep gas he had been preparing for.

The last thing he hears is a big sigh before everything cuts to black, and it frustrates Shinichi that he knows exactly why this feels like déjà vu.

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When the next Kid heist comes around, Shinichi’s face is set to such a grim expression that even Nakamori-keibu is apprehensive about going near him, much less ask him why.

Shinichi doesn’t notice the dark aura arising from him though. He’s mentally going through his plans and their preparations, watching the clock as the seconds tick closer and closer to the announced time.

Still, whatever his plans and how intricate they may be, Shinichi certainly didn’t expect that before the heist has even started, he’ll find himself blacking out already.

And out cold he is, with a handful of seconds to spare before the clock rang out the time.

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As soon as Shinichi regained consciousness, his resentment overrode his survival instincts and, without even taking note of his state and his surroundings, he immediately forces out the words, “Is this a thing, you rendering me unconscious?”

“Hit him again and I’ll make sure you won’t be able to move a single limb for a week,” is what he hears before he can even regain his focus.

It’s that flat voice, familiar in its tone, at the same time unfamiliar due to the high, decidedly feminine, pitch it now has, that responded to him.

It’s him—or her, Escape Kid. Shinichi feels a bit of pride, being able to force both Kids to act against him.

But then again, he can’t exactly gloat right now since there’s a dangerous intent emanating, not so much dripping killing intent, but enough menace to know Escape Kid fully intends to go through his threats.

And he can’t even lift his head nor open his eyes yet to see just where he’s been dragged off to.

Quite possibly, and correctly, expecting him to stay silent in his disorientation, Escape Kid continues, “I trust you’re smart enough to understand with just one warning, detective. Because I only warn once.”

Shinichi hears a rustle of clothes and shuffling of feet, and he deduces that Escape Kid is about to leave. Escape Kid stops a moment though, and Shinichi hears them say, “And. Not that he’d need me to outwit idiots… but he’s not alone. So since you aren’t any help, stop messing with us. Else—”

“—You’ll knock me out at every heist. How very imaginative of you, and how very unlike a criminal,” Shinichi croaks, with as much ridicule as he can, cutting them off as he struggles to sit up, tied up as he is.

“So noble,” he continues, hoping it drips with as much sarcasm as he intended that to have. He can finally open his eyes a bit, the light flooding his sight, surprisingly, since he expected to be locked in a dark room, even when he’s managed to open them in just tiny slits.

“Clearly I’m the villain here, and it’s Kid, innocent Kid, who must be protected at all costs—” Shinichi stops suddenly when he manages to successfully lift his head and he finally sees his kidnapper: brunette—no, that’s not the right shade—locks, mostly hidden by a black cap, tied in a low ponytail, in a black bodysuit and tight-fitting black pants, with a plain tactical belt laden with pouches, boots securely tied, eyes that, though blocked by the cap, he can feel literally and figuratively looking down at him, a murderous looking smirk that chills his bones—

“Yes, yes, detective dear, I must be protected at all costs! I am the clearest, most precious, gem, the purest white pearl of the deep blue sea, the paragon of innocence! I’m just a kid after all!”

The room that had dropped several degrees in temperature returns to normal the moment Thief Kid started his boisterous entrance. Shinichi turns his head to see the familiar gaudy white outfit, cape swishing as if to emphasize his unending droll claims to virtue.

Upping the level of absurdity, Thief Kid, hands on his hips, goes on to say, “On the other hand… you! I was wondering where my persistent suitor was and I go and find him cheating with you!”

Escape Kid’s smirk had long gone from her face. Now a small amused smile has taken its place, as she says, “I knew he was your type. You would never have put up with him otherwise.”

“Hey! I missed you too, don’t be jealous now... After all," Thief Kid clears his throat, "I’m not alone, right?”

“… You..!”

“Heh, the queen has issued her decree! By her majesty’s orders, I can be injured no more!”

“… Calling you a birdbrain would insult the birds, really…”

“If her majesty would give me her hand, I would love to whisk her away from this dull and gloomy place, very unfitting of her personality as bright and sunny as—”

“Shut up. Let’s go, idiot.”

“Aye! By your leave, madame!”

Shinichi finds that he doesn’t have the words to describe what he’d just been audience to, except, maybe, a romcom skit starring a brazen flirt and an overprotective tsundere..?

Thief Kid’s voice blasts through his thoughts though, as he calls out, “Hey, I just saved you from the devil’s wrath; you owe me one, detective!’

Shinichi, having done nothing but lie down then sit in who knows how long, finds himself feeling incredibly tired already throughout the whole affair. Since he still can’t move his arms and legs, he can only reply, “I owe you. Really.”

In contrast to Shinichi’s I-might-as-well-be-lying-in-a-ditch-since-I-can’t-do-anything-like-this mood, Thief Kid is in high spirits, answering in an almost too-bright tone, “Was that your attempt at sarcasm? Anyway, yep, you do! You really wouldn’t want to know what she can and would do. See you! Someday, maybe, you can make it up to me and her royal highness. Until then, you’re in my debt!”

Shinichi feels this the most radiant he’s ever seen Thief Kid, even as he scrambles out the door, shouting after Escape Kid...

… Leaving him with a temporarily paralyzed body, bruised ego, confusion, and, if he’s being honest, keyed up anticipation over the next heist.

Except he’s not being honest, so he settles for annoyance and curses both Thief Kid and “her royal highness” under his breath.

I only warn once, your ass.

You owe me, your ass.

Meanwhile, two figures escape with the stolen scepter, unbothered and uninjured.

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Check out my 31 Days of CoAi series on AO3 for a better formatted information on my project!

Overrated

Title: Overrated Pairing: AU: Merman-Castiel x OFC Binda, Dean & Sam Prompt: merpup Summary: In her world filled with annoying, overbearing boys, Binda just wants something of her own she doesn’t have to share.  Will a kind, quiet merman have the answer? Warnings:  Salt-water fluff.  A couple of curse words. Word count: 2,200-ish

A/N:  I’m so tickled to take part in my first writing challenge!  Thank you to @siren-kitten-his for hosting “Kitten’s Mermaid Challenge”.  This is also my first AU, so I hope I did the characters proud.  A big thank you to @thesassywallflower for being my beta on this one.

Binda - “deep water” (Aboriginal Australia)

This is a work of fiction based upon characters created by CW.  The character “Binda” is my own creation.  Please do not repost without my permission.

(photo: Robert Harding, Getty Images)

With one final grunt of effort, Binda flopped onto her belly and sighed in contentment.  Creating the perfect resting spot took more fussing than a mama sea turtle digging a nest for her eggs, but it was worth it!  The gentle hill of sand she had studiously constructed curved her spine into a gentle arch as she pillowed her face on her crossed arms.  Sheltered here from the currents, Binda smiled as she felt herself sink into a welcome nap.

It was damn hard to get any peace with those two around.

“Bee!”

Damnit.

“Maybe she’s not here, Dean.”

“Nah, Cas said he followed her here.”

DAMNIT!  Binda growled as their voices echoed above her.  She should have known those dumb gobies wouldn’t leave her be.  She also should have known that nosy codfish was going to tail her.

“C’mon, Bee, come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Maybe if she just kept quiet, they’d go away...a clam dropped onto her head and frantically skittered away.

“Ow!” she squawked, flopping upright and glaring upwards as she rubbed the sore spot.  

“Hiya, princess!”  Bright green eyes glinted down at her above Dean’s trademark smirk.  Sam drifted into view, his gaze apologetic, as both brothers blocked out the sunlight drifting into her precious coral cave.  Luckily, her gargantuan brothers were too big to fit through the opening.

“I tried to stop him, Binda.”

“Obviously not hard enough,” she grumbled as she plunked herself back onto the sand.  The poor terrorized clam was struggling to bury itself, and Binda crooned to it soothingly as she sluiced a handful of sand on top of it.  

“Aw, don’t be like that, Bumblebee.”

The childhood nickname grated on her already raw nerves.  “It’s ‘Binda’, Dean.  Go away.”

A chunk of dead coral thunked on her head next, getting tangled in her gypsum-white hair.  Days of being pestered, bedeviled, and hounded suddenly burned like sand in a fresh coral scrape.  Binda snarled, a snap of her tail shooting her straight to the cave’s mouth.  The groans from both her brothers as her skull slammed into their noses was worth the sudden headache.

“What. Do. You. WANT?” she roared into their faces.

“Great Whites, Binda, what the hell?” Dean groused, rubbing between his eyes gingerly.

“I didn’t even do anything this time,” her taller brother whined from behind his hands.  

“Sorry, Sam,” she huffed, crossing her arms over her chest.  “Seriously, just leave me alone, guys!  What’s a girl gotta do to get some peace and quiet?”

“Calm your clam shells, toots.  Geez,  Binda, are you heading into your egg-laying season?”  

Red.  She literally saw red.  Dean literally never saw her right hook coming.

“Son of a bitch!” Blood ribboned into the water from Dean’s nose as Binda turned to glare at Sam.

“Don’t look at me! Chasing you was his idea!” Sam yelped, his gold-striped grouper tail scrambling him backwards.

Binda ignored him, stabbing one slim pointer finger towards her brothers.  “You two listen to me!  If you follow me, I will harpoon you in the Amazon in the middle of a piranha colony!”  Infuriated beyond belief, Binda spun and waved her powerful tail, surging away from them.  “And don’t think I won’t do it!”

Weaving amid flurries of fish, Binda ignored Sam’s shout as she swam away.  It’s not that she didn’t love her big brothers; she did, truly.  With their mother gone and their father always away, they’d practically raised her.  From the first toddling flip of her dorsal fin, her brothers had been there for her through it all.  No mermaid in all the seven seas ever had better brothers.

They were always there for her.  Really.  Always frickin’ there.  

If it wasn’t Dean needling her to go treasure hunting, Sam had his latest scroll he just couldn’t wait to share.  They were there in the mornings, eating her favorite North Pacific krill.  They were there to swim her home after her lessons, glaring off any cute mermen she even blinked at.  They were there in the evenings, arguing over which lagoon to hit for dinner.  As much as she loved them, Binda felt like she couldn’t breathe sometimes with how always...there...Sam and Dean were.

Distracted by her thoughts and frustrations, Binda didn’t check the corner before banking around a coral outcropping and plowed headfirst into something.

Someone, actually.

The someone in question flailed backwards at the force of their collision, straight into a swarm of visiting electric eels.  The alarmed critters sputtered and thrashed, snapping great sparks into the unsuspecting soul thrust into their midst.  Binda shrieked, darting forward and grasping a wrist to yank him out of the spitting, arcing tangle.  The merman collided heavily into her, his face smashing into the curve of her neck and shoulder.  Hissing with displeasure, the eels hurried on their way.

Gasping to catch a breath, Binda leaned back just as the mystery merman did.  She found herself snared by a pair of astonishingly blue eyes.

“Castiel?” she asked dazedly.  The merman straightened and moved away, rotating his shoulders a bit stiffly.

“That was unpleasant,” he rumbled in that deep voice.  

“Oh, my gosh, Cas!  Are you okay?”  Binda’s gaze flitted over him, searching for injuries.  

“I’ve sustained no permanent damage.”

“What are you even doing here?” she quizzed the merman, her brows twitching with confusion.

“I, uh -” the dark-haired mer glanced downwards, rubbing the back of his neck a bit sheepishly.  “I followed you.”

Binda’s eyes popped open at the remark.  “You followed me?”  Exasperated anew, Binda flung her arms up.  “Of course you did!  Everyone follows me!”

Cas cocked his head to the side, squinting at her.  “I do not think everyone follows you, Binda.  There are many species in our cove who aren’t…” His voice dwindled off when the mermaid levelled a hard glare in his direction.  “Nevermind.”

“Oh!  What is it with you mermen?!  Can’t you leave me alone for even a second?” Frustration rolled off the maid in waves, and Cas couldn’t help but stare.  The current washed around them just so, billowing her white, waist-length locks around her in tantalizing tendrils.  Her gorgeous tail, the bright gold and orange of a fan goldfish, gleamed about her in delicate, flowing fronds.  It reminded him of the fancy dress adorning a human woman he’d seen on a distant shore long ago.  Her green eyes, different from her oldest brother’s, shone brighter than any anemone, like a gem he’d spied in a wreckage.  Practical soldier though he was, Cas was convinced Binda’s smiling gaze could soften the hardest of hearts.

That gaze wasn’t smiling at him now.  

“I’m sorry, Binda.”

“No, you’re not!”  She advanced at him, wagging a finger under his nose.  “If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have told those two yahoo brothers of mine where I was!  For carp’s sake, Castiel!  You three are gonna be the death of me!”  Her ire growing with each moment, Binda began swimming a line in front of Cas, arms gesticulating wildly.  “When I wake up, there they are!  When I go out, there you are!  I can’t even go browsing for new top shells alone!  Can’t I, just once, have a moment to myself?  Have something that’s only mine that I don’t have to share?”

“I just...”

“What, Castiel?  Just - what?”

“I just....want to make sure you’re safe.”  With those words, all the ire drained out of her like air out of a puffer fish.  This amazing, strong, handsome merman wanted to make sure she was safe.  Binda would be lying if she said her heart didn’t flutter about the serious Castiel.  While the other mermaids fawned over Dean’s vivid green and black cichild scales, or Sam’s bright gold stripes, Castiel’s midnight blue and black betta tail had always caught her eye.  Different from any other mer, Cas possessed an extra set of fins separate from his tail.  Thin, nearly translucent, the two long slender fins hung from his shoulders like wings.  Chest muscles she’d blushingly admired bore an intricate tracery of gold in some ancient script - Enochian, Binda had heard Sam call it once.

Yes, Castiel was altogether quite the catch, pardon the phrase.  But it was his quiet, gentle presence Binda most enjoyed.  He often joined her as she tended the Pearl Reef, sometimes sitting with her as she rested in the quiet away from the busy-ness of cove life.  He’d point out some bright flag of seaweed that made a picturesque splash against the rocks, or tell her about the seahorse hatchlings he’d seen the day before.  Binda had always hoped she might catch affection in his gaze one day..

But his gaze held only duty, just like always.

Binda’s shoulders sagged at the thought.  It wasn’t Cas’ fault, really.  Her father or her brothers had probably told him to keep an eye on her.  Trying for nonchalant and failing, Binda drug up a half-assed smile for the merman.

“It’s alright, Castiel.  I’m sorry for yelling.  I think I’ll head on home now.  I’ll see you later.”  With a wave of her side fins in farewell, Binda took herself off for the family caves.  

Castiel sighed, brow creased in frustration as he watched her go.  This wooing was much more difficult than he anticipated.  He didn’t dare ask Sam or Dean for advice.  He needed help from someone who wouldn’t laugh at him.  And he knew just the one!

In a flurry of blue-black fins, Castiel took off for the friendliest corner of the cove.

Curled up under a large network of seaweed fronds, Binda lay quietly, staring up at the surface.  The sun above shimmered like hammered silver in fleeting glimpses between the leaves.  She huffed a sigh as she rolled to her side, twitching when something tickled her.  One, then two, then five little pink seahorses poked their wee heads up above her fins.  Binda smiled as she held out her hand to let them weave between her fingers playfully.  

The boys had mercifully left her alone, and Binda had it in her heart to feel bad.  Almost.  At least for making Dean bleed. Although, she wasn’t going to waste the peace and quiet gifted to her.  And if her smile looked a bit mopey - well, her peace and quiet were the only ones there to see.

“Shhh!”  The muffled sound barely caught her attention, but it did that of the seahorses.  The little creatures bobbed forward curiously, and Binda waved herself upright.  

“Hello?” she called out.

“Uhhh…” Binda would know that confusion anywhere.

“Castiel?”  She swam a bit higher to see over the seaweed; the merman seemed to be hunched weirdly backwards, like his anal fin was caught in his wings or something.  “Are you alright?”

“I - I consulted Garth about my quandary,” he spouted out, his cheeks a bit flushed with...what?

“Oh.  What quandary?  Can I help?” Binda asked, her eyes tinged with concern as she swam nearer.  

“No.  Yes.  I - I -” The poor mer couldn’t seem to make up his mind; the expression on his face looked like he might spontaneously combust.  Was he ill?  He suddenly lurched, his features contorting in discomfort.

“Cas, did those eels hurt you?  Let me see!”  Binda demanded, approaching him determinedly.

“No!  Uh - this is for you!”  The poor soul looked almost green as he thrust something into her arms.  Binda’s arms instinctively closed around it, and the mass came alive as it wriggled and whined and…licked?

The merpup was all white, fur soft as the sand from a place called Puerto Rico her father once visited.  His gleaming scales were iridescent green, showing hints of blue and purple in the light.  And the black eyes that looked up at her had her falling in love in a heartbeat.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, cuddling the little pup under her chin.  Her happy laughter splashed out when sweet puppy kisses found her jaw and cheek.  “Oh, Castiel, thank you!”

“Please accept this canine as a token of my affection for you.”  Castiel thought he spoke out loud but he wasn’t sure.  His heart was pounding so hard with nerves, he honestly thought he might throw up, but Binda’s blinding smile distracted his queasiness.

At Castiel’s mumbled proclamation, Binda’s heart skipped and skipped again.  Without thinking, she wrapped an arm around those broad shoulders and smushed a happy kiss to his lips.  A spark that had nothing to do with any eels leapt between the two, painting matching flushes on both faces.  

“Th-thank you, Cas, I accept!” Binda managed to stammer out.

“That’s...reassuring to hear.”  Binda’s smile widened as Castiel’s shoulders sagged with relief.  The pup continued to whine happily, yipping as he craned his head to swipe more kisses on Binda’s face.  “I don’t know how much peace and quiet you’ll find with him”

“Peace and quiet are overrated!  What should we call him?” she cooed, reaching up to scratch the little ears.

“Garth said his name is Mr. Fizzles.  Which I find confusing because this canine emits no effervescence of any kind.”

Pure delight echoed in the chuckles Binda couldn’t hold in, and she beckoned the merman with a bob of her head as she cradled the merpup closer.

“Come on!  Let’s get him settled!”  

Snared by that blinding smile, all for him, Castiel couldn’t help but follow.  The two spent a lovely hour getting Mr. Fizzles comfortable, and Binda eagerly waited for her brothers to return home so she could show him off.  Her pup and her Castiel. 

(very sad photo editing by me of a very cute puppy)

Virus Control - Part Two

  Skip a week(still in flashback), Nate pov

  Bright fireworks pull me from my thoughts. I haven't been able to sleep since it happened. I look out from the only part of our base still above ground, the parrot house. Empty now, reserved as a watchtower. Five pairs of glowing eyes roam the dark landscape, wandering across the bridges, across the barren archery range, past the glowing nether portal. They must have tripped the makeshift alarm system we created. I sense the others emerge from the ladder behind me, hear joints popping, knuckles cracking, "What's going on?" Finn asks. "Sick ones," I mumble, pointing down at the wandering beacons of eerie purple light. "I have enough antidote to heal all five of them," Alayna mumbles, gesturing to five small vials in her belt, "Who are they?" I shrug, "No idea, they only just showed up," Jimena, who hasn't said a word since we lost everyone, suddenly squeals, "BIANCA!" She shouts, pointing at the smaller figure standing outside the nether portal. It sweeps it's gaze towards us and we all duck, "Is it really?" I ask, hope flaring in my chest. "I know that shirt anywhere!" Jimena replies excitedly. Fundy peers over the leaves, "Tommy and Techno!" He hisses, "On the archery range!" I stare past them and watch as Wilbur wanders onto the bridge, "Wilbur, too,"

  2nd person pov

  Alayna looks over at the fifth figure, "GEORGE!!" She screams, diving over the leaves. Avoiding the gaze of all five as they watch her glide down she lands in front of George who has settled himself in what used to be the auditorium. His dead gaze sweeps over her as she crouches in front of him, pulling a vial from her belt. Mega dives from behind, nudging George towards her as she pops the stopper out of the vial, watching George out of the corner of her eye. She holds the vial out towards him as she has seen done only once before, slowly inching her way towards him. His head tilts curiously as she tips the vial up slightly, the smell reaching his nose. It's a strange smell but he doesn't react, staying passive as she puts the vial up to his lips. She tips it and the purplish liquid passes his plump lips, oozing down his throat. Once the vial is empty she slowly backs away, waiting for it to take effect. She sees his adam's apple bob as he swallows the liquid, falling to his knees, she doesn't even notice as Nate, Finn and Fundy snatch a vial each. George's eyes flicker, he blinks once, twice, his skin warms. His hands, previously an inky black colour that looked like gloves, stretching up his arms like dark roots, flex and start to return to their natural colour. He looks up, "What happened?" He mumbles, coughing a couple of times.

She sobs, tripping over herself as she falls into his embrace, "I-" She sniffs,"I thought I lost you!" She wails, "I lost all of you!" He wraps his arms around her, his strength slowly returning, the black roots growing up his arms slowly withering away. A small vwoomp interrupts them and she looks to the side, spotting the form of Wilbur watching them curiously, unsteady on his feet. He probably hadn't tried to teleport before now. George pushes her towards him, "Come on," He mumbles, "Heal him too," She uncaps the final vial with shaking hands, tiptoeing to Wilbur and then repeating the process to give him the antidote. George wraps his arms around her waist as they watch his eyes fade back to their natural brown. The other four walk over supporting Techno, Bianca and Tommy as Mega darts to support Wilbur, "How long were we out? The place looks awful," Techno asks. "We demolished and collected everything the day we lost you, it's supposed to look like it's already been destroyed, it's only been a week," Nate replies, keeping his two sisters close. Tommy and Wilbur look equally battered, ripped clothing, missing armor peices. "I'm surprised you guys managed to keep a hold of your elytras," Fundy comments, it's true: none of them are missing an elytra. "Mine's so broken," Wilbur replies, slipping it off and clutching it to his chest, "Any membrane left?" I nod and we all enter the underground base once more.

We lost more that day than we will ever begin to comprehend. That was last year, she'll make a move again soon. She'll turn them against us. It's a miracle that the six of us managed to get away, and then a week later when they wandered back into our territory we used the only antidote we had to save George, Bianca, Wilbur, Techno and Tommy. We lost family, we lost friends. We can't get them back without more of the rare antidote, they're lost to this world. Without killing the mother dragon? This will never be over. We will never be safe again. You see, when you 'respawn' the ender dragon to defeat her again, she is simply pulled from the dragon dimension, forced into a fight she has no hope of winning. But this dragon, this dragon is something different. Controlling, strong, massive. Literally the mother of all dragons, she has no weakness, you just have to survive longer than her in a  battle in where it's either your life or hers.

  Skip a month or so

  "Stick together! We don't know what we're getting into," Techno shouts over his shoulder, his voice almost being lost to the wind. The scorching air is making the eleven adventurers sweat profusely, "Any further?" Finn shouts from the back and Techno banks to the side, landing on a nearby floating island of netherrack. After a quick scan for blazes and ghasts, the rest of them spiral and join him. "The bastion is directly north from here, about two hundred blocks. It's completely out in the open with a lot of holes in the side-" He kneels down, using a pickaxe to scratch a small square shape in the netherrack, "-We'll split into four groups, three per group with one group of two. The group of two will be Alayna and Mega, they will stay up the very top on watch for ghasts and other hostiles, they will also be backup if any of us get into a sticky situation." Mega nods, slinging his arm over Alayna's shoulder. He points around the rough diagram, adding lines, "Nate, George and I will tank, taking out all the magma cubes and hostiles. Tommy, you Wilbur and Jimena will loot the chests and take the gold blocks, remember to block yourselves in so the piglins can't get at you. Fundy, Bianca and Finn will be in charge of covering lava and getting rid of magma blocks," He finishes, "Any questions?"

  Skip, Nate pov (Yes I know I'm skipping a lot, I'm getting to the point)(By here, wilbur, alayna, nate, jimena, bianca, george, fundy, tommy, techno, finn and mega are fine)

  The Bastion raid went smoothly, we only lost a couple of gold blocks to the lava, we traded the rest with the piglins to get the precious pearls that we can't get out in the overworld anymore without killing someone we might know. We returned home, demolishing the temporary portal and storing the pearls away for safe keeping, for emergencies, and then settle down for the night. Fundy's on watch, I hope he doesn't get us almost killed like last time. I curl up in bed between Bianca and Jimena, Chase laying across from me. Usually we all lie in a mosh-pit in the middle of the beds, as the entire floor is just beds, but now that there's less of us we're more spread out. My blank gaze passes over my wrist, over the bracelet Darryl bought me a month before the initial attack. It's a gold chain bracelet with six small charms hanging off: a feather, a cloud, a black sword, a conduit eye, a small pair of wings, and a diamond. It's the only thing I have left of him. I close my eyes, letting my mind drift off. A quiet vwoomp cuts into my thoughts and I jolt up, peering into the gloom, searching for the telltail purple sparks or white eyes. "Guys! It's some of the others!" A shout comes from outside, barely audible, "GUYS!" "He's probably hallucinating," Wilbur mutters, still lost in the depths of sleep. Alayna and I sit up, beginning to wake everyone, before heading outside.

  "Fundy if this is a false alarm I won't hesitate to throw you off a cliff without your ely..." Techno trails off, spying the five pairs of white eyes trained on our group. "Ari!" Jimena shouts and I grab her before she can run off. I look over to Alayna and spot tears running down her cheeks, George by her side holding her hands. She moves too quickly for any of us to stop her, letting go of George's hands and racing towards by far the skinniest of this batch, clearly Vincent. "ALAYNA NO!" George shouts, "COME BACK!" "WE HAVE NO ANTIDOTE LEFT!" Tommy yells. A few of us run forward, Me, George, Techno, but she holds a hand up behind her, her eyes locked on Vincent's chest to avoid eye contact, "I can do this!" She says, placing her other hand on his chest over where his heart should be. I suck in a breath, knowing he won't attack unless she makes eye contact, but still worried nonetheless. She closes her eyes, lifting her head level and holding her shoulders back, "Vin..." Her voice cracks and he tilts his head to the side, a small murmur of a sound emerging from between his lips. "I know you're in there, I know you would never hurt me," She says, her voice shaking, "I know you're scared, but I can help you," She opens her eyes. One beat. Two. Three. He blinks, purple particles falling from the corners of his eyes like stars.

  He blinks again, white noise emitting from  everywhere and nowhere, "HE'S AGGRO! GET BACK!" Finn yells behind me, "HE'LL KILL HER!" I spin, shushing him harshly, "She's onto something!" When I turn back Vincent is lifting his hands to her face, making me freeze, "Or maybe not..." But his hands are gentle, he doesn't strangle her like I thought he would, instead cupping her cheeks and holding her face gently, as if she may break. "~+~6{~?" He speaks no language I have ever spoken, gaze locked with Alayna's, the language of the endermen is almost impossible to understand. It's astounding, how she managed to reach him through the virus and the control of the dragon. Usually eye contact, the closest thing Endermen have to warmth, is how they detect souls. It's how they find targets, programmed to kill. But they way she broke all of that down with just a few words... "I know, I know, you're gonna be alright," She mumbles, bringing her hand up to his face, slowly, almost hesitantly, "I'm right here, I love you," A dark tear streaks down his cheek, leaving a purple trail in it's wake.

  "Al~6{a," His hands slide down to hers, his voice echoing in an ethereal way and her face lights up, "Yes that’s me! Do you recognize anyone else?" She looks back to us and suddenly his left eye is its normal brown colour, the right one still blank and dead. "N~te," He mumbles in broken english, staring straight at me. "His accent was bad enough before," Finn jokes, "How the hell are we supposed to understand him now?" He cracks his first smile, the black roots crawling up his neck beginning to shrink, relenting control. She looks back with a smile still on her face and throws her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly, "I knew you were still in there," She mumbles, "I knew I could get you to come back," "Yo> s~ved me," His voice is soft, still slightly broken but understandable. Out of the corner of my eye I see Tommy head for Tubbo, who has silently watched the entire exchange, blood periodically dripping from a nasty-looking wound on his shoulder.

why is it easier for me to write shit like this than it is to write an essay

Love,

Chase

There must be no compulsion to hide the bodies. Otherwise I’d have never found them. It was a Tuesday night. I was riding home after work, my leather roll of knives strapped across my back. I’d left my apron on the hook at the restaurant, but I still smelled like the kitchen. Before Doreen had moved out two months ago, she’d jokingly accused me of having a series of affairs at work, and that I was trying to mask the scent of all those other women with garlic and turmeric. It had been funny, a running joke, at least until the new sous-chef needed me to walk her through cleanup again after hours, and then leaned back into me while I was reaching around her to demonstrate where the fryer basket clicked in. I had been with Doreen four years, then. And the sous-chef—what the cheating man says in stories is that she didn’t mean anything. But that’s not right. That’s not fair. What she meant for me, it was a way out. So far, this is how my life’s gone, pretty much. I do all this work to build a thing—in this case trust, a relationship, someone to watch stupid television with, someone who lets me sleep late because chefs keep different hours—and then, once the Jenga tower gets tall enough to look a little bit scary, I start pulling out blocks, seeing how far I can skeletonize my life before it all comes crashing down again. Taking the bike paths home each night after work, though, it reminds me that I wasn’t always like this. There was a time. It was college. I was on the racing team. The university was buying us the latest bikes, sleek things, bullets with wheels—we weighed them in grams—and the sponsors were supplying us with the same shorts and helmets and gloves and glasses the pros wore, and every day my legs were pumping, pushing, pedaling. That was the only time I hadn’t started pulling out blocks, as it were. If college had lasted forever, I’d still be out riding, just zoning out at forty miles per hour, choosing the line I was going to take, just like Coach was always saying. You have to choose your line. Coming home at two in the morning, Velcroed into my old racing shoes that have the clips worn down to nubs—dull little nubs my pedals know like a ball knows its socket—I could pretend that life had never ended. That I was still me. That I hadn’t run Doreen off on purpose. That I wouldn’t run the next Doreen off just the same. All the other kitchen staff who biked in and out, their bikes were these bulky hybrids. Some were even labeled “comfort.” The comfort in riding—it’s not physical, it’s spiritual. My bike’s built for racing, still and always. Aggressive stance, the bars dialed low so you have to lie down on the top tube, pretty much. A butt-floss saddle canted forward like I’m a time trial racer. The only concession to middle age, I suppose, is the light clamped to the handlebars. It makes me feel old, but I’d feel older if I endo’d into the creek. The trail between the restaurant and my apartment is lit up intermittently, these pale yellow discs you kind of float through, but there are plenty of long, dark tree-tunnels over those two and a half miles. Those tunnels are fun to shoot in the dark, don’t get me wrong, but the dark isn’t the thing to worry about. The whole year, there’d been a battle going on in the opinion pages of the newspaper. Motorists were bullying bikers, bikers were kicking dents into fenders and doors. Nobody’d been hurt too bad yet, but it was coming. One of us was going to get nudged a bit too hard by a bumper, nudged hard enough to get pulled under the car, and the motorist was going to walk for it like they always do, and then cyclists were going to be riding side by side from one ditch to the other, stopping traffic for miles. It had happened before, and it was happening again. Even up in the mountains. Apparently—this just going from what I read, as I stick to asphalt and concrete—the hikers had been sabotaging the trail against mountain bikers. Deadfalls, rocks, the occasional spike. Helmets or no, riders were getting hurt. And now it had come to town. For five nights in a row, there’d been driftwood from the creek dragged up onto the trail. It was then I’d relented, finally started running a headlight. And the headlight was how I saw them. The bodies. Two guys, young, floating in the shallows where the creek turns west. On the shore was the large piece of driftwood they’d been trying to dislodge, to drag up across the trail. It was too much for two people. But they were the only ones there. One of them was floating facedown in the water. The other was on his back. His throat was gone. No blood was seeping from it. They were on the news by seven in the morning, the two dead kids. College students from one of the farming towns on the eastern plains. I had considered reporting them myself, but it was just a fluke of timing that I’d been the one to find them, I decided. Someone else would come along at about daybreak. Boulder’s full of concerned citizens, people for whom it would be a rush to get involved. Me, I was tired. We had two new bussers. You wouldn’t think a couple of non-lifers that low on the food chain would change the dynamic of a kitchen that much, but dishes, they’re our lifeblood. It had been chaos and emergency, from the first group reservation on. I deserved to just come home, watch some vapid cop drama until the sun came up. The last bit of the news I saw was the weather. The spring melt was coming down hard. Tonight the creek was going to be lapping at the concrete of the trail again. Awake again by three in the afternoon, I clamped my bike up onto the rack by the breakfast bar—by what would have been the breakfast bar—and administered to its various needs. The same way soldiers in movies are always taking their weapons apart and reassembling them, old cyclists, we like to perform our own maintenance. Old. I’m even starting to say it. When Doreen was leaving for good and ever, was on her last walk-through to be sure the last four years of her life were completely boxed up, we’d of course had to have it out a little. The main thrust of her accusation involved me just wanting to feel young again. That I’d never let that part of myself go completely, like other men did when it was time to grow up. I hadn’t had any accusations for her to feed on, to cultivate, to take with her and coat with saliva like a pearl. Just apologies, and very little eye contact, and one last offer of the apartment, which we both knew had just been a gesture, as it had been mine when we’d met. For dinner I ate sliced deli turkey straight from the container. Hang around a hospital for even ten minutes, you’ll see the nurses huddled up at the handicapped entrance, stabbing cigarettes into their mouths. Hang around chefs long enough, you’ll find us in the fast-food drive-throughs of the world. There we’ll be, walking out of the gas station with a bag of chips for dinner, so we can have enough energy to plate some salmon at sixty-per. The world doesn’t make sense. I tuned the news back on. The eyewitness—a senior citizen in a tracksuit with actual stripes on the sleeve and legs—was telling her story about finding the bodies. I watched the woods behind her, where the camera didn’t mean to be looking. At first I thought I was looking for myself—stupid, I know—but what I saw, what nobody else was seeing, it was a pair of cycling glasses, hanging by their elastic band from a small, bare sapling pushing up through the dank brush, way over in the ditch you never ford into, because you know it’s a literal dumping ground for the homeless population. What got me to hit the rewind button, then the pause button, it wasn’t as simple as castoff equipment. I’ve peeled out of I don’t know how many sunglasses and gloves and jerseys while riding, because I didn’t have time to dispose of them properly, but needed the ounce or two they’d free me of. What got me to hit the stop button was the color pattern on the elastic band. It was from a company that had been defunct since my junior year of college. And these glasses, they weren’t for the sun. They were clear. The kind you wear when riding at night, when what you need is a gnat-shield, goggles to keep you from tearing up, to keep the world from blurring away. And they were ten years old, at least. They had to be. I ate my turkey from the bag and I kept those clear glasses paused on the screen. Just watching them. My twenty-year-old self would have been disgusted, but when it started drizzling at five in the afternoon, and I was scheduled to meet the two new bussers twenty minutes before dinner prep—six—I accepted the ride downtown Glenda next door was offering. She asked after Doreen, said it had been too long since we’d been over for drinks. I agreed. Because she saw how I’d tried to shield my newly spotless bike from the water, loading it into her Honda’s hatchback, she backed up between the restaurant’s dumpsters for me. I grabbed my roll of knives and told her to drop in this week, tell the hostess she was my guest and, once again, she said she might just do that, thanks. Did she know Doreen was gone? Was this a game we were playing? I didn’t know, but it was too late to stop. I nosed my bike into the space past the line of coat hooks, chained it to the handrail like always. The components alone are probably two grand—all Campy, all high-end—and, while I’d like to think restaurant staff are good people, I also consider myself something of a realist. Only one of the bussers showed up for my hands-on training. I should have gone easy on him, repaid his loyalty or discipline or stupidity or whatever it was, but instead I just heaped all the attitude and scorn I had on him, and told myself that this is how it is for everyone, starting out in the kitchen. You’re tough or you’re gone. If I was chasing him off with this, then I was doing him a favor. He must have needed the work. The three times I came out to talk to tables—the first was someone I’d worked with years ago but wasn’t thrilled to see, and the other two were first dates showing off their food IQ, but masking it as simpering complaints—I made sure to linger long enough to see whether the groups huddled on the wrong side of the hostess podium were glittering with raindrops or not. I’d left my bike at the restaurant overnight a few times before, either hitched a ride home with a server or manager or just cabbed it, but I wanted to get out and stretch tonight, if possible. Judging by my second two trips out to the dining room—dry shoulders from the hostess podium crowd—it just might be possible. Granted, there would be puddles, a slick spot or two, and my bike would need another thorough rubdown once I got home. But the wind in my face would make it worth it. It always did. And, after a rain, the paths and bike lanes are usually devoid of traffic, completely lifeless. All mine. Coach used to always tell us to choose our line, to stay focused on that, to not look anywhere else but the direction you’re going. It was advice that worked in the kitchen as well. The line I could see ahead of me, it led past cleanup, out the back door, down the bike lane for half a mile before swooping and banking onto the path for nearly three glorious, empty miles. In the alley at two in the morning, my clothes steamed at first. It always made me feel like I was just touching down in this strange atmosphere, my alien fabric off-gassing, adjusting. It was just temperature differential, of course. It had been happening since I first started washing dishes, would clock out soaked from head to toe. I usually wasn’t this wet by the end of the night, had already paid those dues, but, because I was ready to be shut of the kitchen, and because the captain has to go down with the ship, I’d stepped in beside Manny, our dishwasher of nine months. You can’t help getting sprayed, especially when you’re dealing with a ladle. But we got it done in half the time, racked the wine glasses so they wouldn’t spot, and then I saluted him off into the night, hung my apron on its hook, and rolled up my knives. I should have been using them to cut up the day-old bread for croutons—a ten-minute job, with nobody tugging on my sleeve—but screw it. Sometimes you just have to walk away. Feed yourself first, right? The bike lane away from the restaurant was as empty as I’d imagined. I leaned back from the bars, planed my arms out to the side like I was twelve years old again. What do people who lose that part of themselves do, I wonder? When Doreen had accused me of not growing up, I’d felt parentheses kind of form around my eyes, the question right there in my mouth: And? It’s not some big social or emotional impediment to still be able to close your eyes, pretend to be an airplane. Some people hold on to that with video games, some with books about space, some with basketball or tennis, if their knees hold together. For me it was a bike. For me it was this. Soon enough the path opened up just across the creek, inviting me to slalom down it one more time, but I stopped mid-bridge, still clipped in, my arms crossed on the rail on the uphill side. The melt was coming fast, and hard. The surface of the water breathed like a great animal, the sides of the creek surging up just over the bank, washing the concrete of the path and then retreating. I was definitely going to be up until dawn, drying my bike out. Somebody old and sensible, they probably would have gone the long way, the dry way. My only concession was turning my headlight on, and hitching the strap of my knife-roll higher across my chest, like the bandolier it most definitely was. The first mile, the water never even crested up over my valve stem. And, down here by the creek, the sound was massive. It felt like the mountains were bleeding out. But I didn’t forget the promise I’d made earlier: A mile into it, right at the bend where the creek turned west, I stepped my right foot over the top bar, rode sidesaddle on my left foot, and looked behind me, at the rooster tail of mist I was leaving. It was stupid. It was wonderful. Before the bike rolled all the way to a stop, I stepped down into the grabby muck, hitched the bike up onto my arm like I was racing cyclo-cross. What I was really doing was playing detective. The mud in the tall grass and brush and tangle of vines and trash turned out to be sloppier than I’d hoped, but I trudged and clumped through it, picked those clear glasses off the naked sapling like the fruit they were. I’d been right, that afternoon. These were seriously antique, from another decade of cycling gear. Usually, something like this hung in a tree or set up on a rock with another rock there to keep it from blowing away, it was just what you did when you stumbled onto something somebody else had dropped. It was only kind. Surely they’d be back, looking for it, right? This was too far out for that, though. There were closer places to the path to hang a piece of equipment. I stood there by the sapling, raised the wet glasses to my face and looked through them. At the shiny path. At the silhouette of trees waving back and forth. At the creek where the two college kids had been floating. For maybe twenty seconds, I couldn’t look away from that bend. It was like I was seeing them again. Like a puzzle piece in my head was nudging itself into some bigger picture. Before it could resolve, I looked over, to the right. There was someone there. On a matte-black aluminum bike. You can tell aluminum from carbon by the turns in the frame. Aluminum bikes, they’re ten years ago as well. And the rider—where I was in kitchen rags, like usual for the ride home, he was in tights. Not shorts or a bib, but some kind of wet suit a surfer might wear: slick black like a second skin, ankle to neck to wrist. It would have been terrible in the sun, and at night it had to be terrible as well, since there was no way your skin could breathe. To match the black seal suit, this cyclist also had black shoes and black gloves, a flash of pale skin at wrist and ankle. No helmet. And—looking down to what I was holding—no glasses. I held them out across the muck, through the misting rain, and in response, this night cyclist, he snarled. I’d never seen anybody actually do that before. Like a dog you were happy was on a chain. “What?” I said, only loud enough for myself, really. He was already whipping his bike away, standing to granny gear it through the silt just under the water. When he looked back, his dank black hair was plastered to his white face. And his eyes—they were all pupil. Like smoke, like a whisper, he faded once he made the dry concrete. For maybe ten seconds, I considered what had just happened. And then I saw it for what it was: An invitation. A challenge. A dare. I smiled, splashed through the tall grass, ran past the deep water, and hit the concrete running alongside my bike, catapulted up into the saddle already shifting hard, my nostrils wide because my lungs were about to need air. It had been too long since I’d really gotten the opportunity—the need—to open up. Coach had diagnosed me early as a sprinter, and he’d kind of sneered when he said it, like there was no hope, really. He’d work with me, sure, but I was what I was. For four years it made me faster, better, harder. He was right, though: I’m a born sprinter. I’ll burn through my quads those first two miles, leave the whole pack in the dust. It was one mile until the trail nosed up into the canyon for twenty vertical miles. It was one mile, and this night cyclist, he only had about a half-minute head start. If only Doreen could see me now. Where I finally saw him again, it was at the pond the low part of the trail had become, downtown. He was standing there, one foot down in the water. There’s no way I was making any more noise than the flooded creek, but still, as soon as I rounded the corner, he whipped his head back settled his black eyes on me. I gave him a cocky two-fingered wave from my grips. He didn’t wave back. He was watching the water again. My big plan was to walk my bike up beside him, so as to keep from whipping water into his face. Not like we weren’t both already soaked, but manners are manners, even at two in the morning, in the dark and the rain. He never gave me the chance. I was fifty feet away when he hauled his bike around, rode the lapping edge of the water through the wet grass, all the way up to the road, stepped down for just long enough to lift his bike up onto the cracked sidewalk that runs up there. He didn’t lift his bike because he didn’t have momentum—the climb he’d just made would have even taxed my sprinter’s legs in their prime—he lifted it because road bike rims, especially old aluminum ones like he was running, they’ll crimp in from that kind of action. I bared my teeth just like he’d done, and I gave chase, having to run my bike up the last ten or fifteen yards, when my narrow road tires started to gouge into the mud. By the time I clipped in on the sidewalk, he was a receding black dot in the car lane. I ramped down off the curb at a handicapped place, and I gave my bike every last bit of myself I had. We took the turn—on the road, not the path—up into the canyon maybe ten seconds apart, him running the beginning of the red light, me catching the end of it, leaned over too far for wet asphalt but I didn’t care anymore. My left pedal snagged on the blacktop, hitching the ass-end of the bike over a hiccup, but the tire caught somehow, and I rode it out. Watching my line. I was watching my line. It led straight to him. He looked back just like Coach was forever telling us not to, but it didn’t slow him or tilt him even a little. A half mile after the turn, the road started its wicked uphill slope. Twice I’d gone up it, but that was fifteen years ago, and the road had been barricaded off for the event, and I’d still been pretty sure I was going to have to sag wagon it. Not because I was a sprinter. Because I was human. I’d promised myself never again. But this was now. This was tonight. I geared down, stood on the cranks. He was there in my headlight. Not riding away. Just crosswise in the road, like a barricade himself. I rear-braked, my rooster tail slinging past without me, like my intentions were going where I couldn’t. The night cyclist wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t anything. He was just looking at me. “I’ve got your—!” I said, pulling the clear glasses away from my neck, against the elastic. He turned in a huff, uphill, and, because I had the jump, I figured I’d be alongside him in two shakes. Wrong. He was faster on the climb than I was. It wasn’t even close. Even with me screaming for my lungs to be deeper, for my legs to be younger, for the grade to flatten out. It was like the mountain was sucking him uphill. And when he looked back on the first turn, his mouth wasn’t haggard and gasping like mine. He was calm, even. Not winded in the least. Two miles into it, blood in my throat, I had to stop. I threw up over the guardrail, then collapsed across it, not caring how it was chiseling into my midsection. No headlights came along to hitch me down the hill, into town. “What are you?” I said to the night cyclist, wherever he was. Miles away by now, I thought. Or—watching me from the trees? I tried to bore into the darkness, to catch his outline there, but then I was throwing up again, from deep, deep inside, like I was dry heaving all the years between who I was and who I had been, and then I climbed back into the saddle like the rag doll I was, rode my brakes home, taking the roads this time. I was bonked by the time I crawled into my living room. The adrenaline had burned through all the blood sugar I had, and left me in the hole for more. I couldn’t remember the last time this had happened. I didn’t miss it. It was like having sludge for blood, and having to look at the world through one narrow, long straw. I settled my bike against the back of the couch in exactly the way I never do—it was Doreen’s couch—unrolled my knives on the counter to be sure the oiled leather had kept them dry, and then I ate great heaping handfuls of corn chips and chocolate morsels from the pantry. Not because that’s any kind of magic formula, but because they were the first things I saw. It took ten or twelve minutes, but I finally woke up enough to rack my bike, dry it with a hand towel from the kitchen, even going so far as to twist off the valve stem caps, blow any lingering droplets in there back onto my face. Only after my bike was properly stabled did I change into dry clothes myself. Just some mountain bike shorts I’d only bought because they were on clearance and I had credit at that store. They were my house shorts, had a pocket right on the front of the thigh. My phone dropped into it perfectly. I turned on the television to see if our race had been documented, but all up and down the dial it was just cop shows sentenced to ten years, hard syndication. The first time I woke still watching, I rolled off the couch, checked to make sure the front door was secure—never trust yourself when your blood sugar’s flatlined—then climbed into bed on what I was still calling my side. The way I turned the lamp off in the living room was by shutting my eyes. The next time I woke, I wasn’t completely sure that’s what I’d just done. The way my legs were still both burning and noodled at the same time, I thought for a second that maybe I was at the end of a long ride, years ago. Something up in the peaks, in the thin, crisp air, permanent snow back in the shadows of the evergreen. Was that where he lived, I wondered? The night cyclist? Except—nobody could make that ride up the canyon. Any sane person would fork over the change for the bus. But this night cyclist, he hadn’t had a pack, hadn’t had a rack on his bike. If he did live up the hill, what was he even down here in the big wet for? Exercise? Recreation? That would be more like suicide, having to make that climb after bopping all around town in the dark. And, yeah, now that that was on the table: the dark. No light? Nothing reflective to him at all. Like he just wanted to whip past, be already gone by the time the smear he’d been even registered to anybody on the trail that late. “What are you?” I said out loud, but the comforter muffled my voice. Which was good. There was a shadow stretched out through the open doorway of my bedroom. My heart gorged up into my throat. And then, like my heart was that loud, the head of that shadow, it cocked around in a way I knew. A way I remembered. It was him. My first response was to curl deeper into the safety of my comforter. My next response, it was to ask him how he’d done that. How he’d sprinted uphill, away from me, a born sprinter. And on a relic of a bike at that. Keeping the blanket around my shoulders, I stood, shushed over into the doorway, for some reason superstitious about stepping directly into his shadow. Like it was a well I could fall into? Like that blackness was going to leech up through the print of my bare feet? I don’t know. It was instinctual; it was automatic. It was polite. In magical places, you make all obeisance you might think proper. He knew I was there, had probably clocked my approach from the exact instant I’d stopped breathing. What he was holding, and considering, it was his clear glasses. The reason he was considering them, it was that I’d put them on the plate Doreen had decreed the home for all glasses. The reason he was reconsidering them, it was that right there in the bowl were mine. My daytime ones, polarized, iridescent, and my night ones, clear and sleek, the elastic tight and young. My clear ones were enough of an update on his that they were practically a reinvention. He looked up to me, and his face, it was cut stone. Harsh, angular, pale. And those eyes. I’d been right, last time: The pupils or irises or whatever, they were blown out. There was hardly any white. Of course he didn’t need a headlight. Creatures of the night, they get along just fine in the darkness. There were no eyebrows, either. “What happened to you?” I almost said. And his thighs—if I hadn’t seen him ride, I’d never have clocked him for a serious cyclist. A rider who can rabbit up the canyon even just a mile or two without breaking a sweat, his quads should be jodhpured out past what any denim could ever contain, with thick, veined calves to match. Like gorilla forearms. His legs though, they were slender, smooth. Probably pale as his face, pale as those wristlets of white between his gloves and sleeve, between the cuff of his tights and the crescent of his shoe-tops. He must be corded like steel, and wound tight. At which point, finally, I cased the front door. It was shut, the deadbolt still twisted tight. Meaning—yep. Right on cue, the drapes over the sliding glass door billowed in, then sighed back out onto the balcony. The third-floor balcony. “I know what you did to those kids in the creek,” I said. “Before they were in the creek, I mean.” It was supposed to be what kept him from coming for me. Knowledge. Except, idiot that I am, I’d made sure he knew that the only place that knowledge lived, it was in my head. Dig that out, and he’d have nothing to worry about. “You didn’t have to,” I added. “They were never going to get that log moved.” He just stared at me. Evaluating me, it felt like. How long had it been since anyone attempted conversation with him, I wonder now? If he had spoken, if he could, what would he have even said, after so long? Would he have asked why a die-hard cyclist was defending those who would do violence to cyclists? Looking back, my guess is that he couldn’t speak at all. Not without showing me his teeth. “I didn’t invite you in here,” I said to him, my bulk—with the comforter—filling the doorway. To show how little threat I was, he turned away from me, studying his glasses again. Then raising them, to inhale their scent. “I didn’t wear them,” I said. “Not really.” What he was smelling, it was my sweat on the band, from when they’d been around my neck. From when I’d been chasing him. In a moment’s association, then, I knew that that was how he’d found me here on the third floor of an apartment building miles away from the last place I’d seen him. He’d picked my scent out of all the smells of the city. Out of all the thousands of other bodies out after dark. He’d known me through the rain. I swallowed, the sound of it crashing in my ears. He’d come here because I’d seen him. He’d come here because he couldn’t be seen. “You don’t ride in the sun, do you,” I said. It wasn’t really a question. I nodded down to the glasses he was still considering. “And the stores are only open in the daytime. So you can’t—you can’t update your gear.” I could tell by the new stillness about him that he heard me, but he didn’t look up. “Take them,” I said. Slowly, by labored degrees, he looked over to me. “Mine,” I said. “Take them. You need them.” Because it wasn’t in him to leave evidence behind, he hooked his down over his neck like I’d worn them, then settled mine around his head, the continuous lens cocked up on his forehead. When he lowered them, the dents left from the elastic’s pull didn’t fill with red color. But I’d known that wasn’t going to happen. “You’re fast,” I said to him. “I used to be fast.” He looked up to me for what I knew was the last time. I knew it was the last because there was a grin spreading across his face. No, not a grin. A sneer. What he was saying was that he was fast. The fastest. And he didn’t need lungs. And he slept—where he slept, it was probably burrowed into a hole somewhere up the canyon. Under a rock ledge, in a cave only him and the marmots and the chipmunks knew about, and whatever beetles and grubs can live in gaspy thin air, without the sun. The moment his grin flashed into a smile, I saw the dirty yellow sharpness past his lips and I took an involuntary step back. That was all it took to spook him. He moved like quicksilver over the couch, past the rattan stools, and onto the balcony. I rushed over after him, to see him silently touching down, or swimming through the night air, but he was already gone. I should have expected nothing less. Three nights later, the waters receded from the bike path. I hadn’t been riding to and from work. Doreen had called, actually. Just to talk. I told her to swing by the restaurant soon, that I’d make her favorite, like old times. Her breath hitched a bit over that. Four years, that’s a long time. For me too. “And you need to be careful,” she said, when we were both signing off awkwardly—awkward because we’d been saying the same thing at the end of every call for so long. What were we supposed to say now? “Careful?” I said. “Those two kids who died,” she said. “They weren’t riding,” I told her. “Just be careful.” I promised her I would and we somehow broke the connection. It was my night off. What she’d said, though. It was a challenge, wasn’t it? You only have to be careful when you think something can really happen to you. When you’re twenty, twenty-five, nothing in the world can touch you. To prove that still applied to me, I unclamped my bike from the rack, checked the tire pressure front and back, then nodded to myself about this, trucked us downstairs, to the sidewalk that led to the path that ran alongside the creek, up the canyon if I followed that far. It was one, two in the morning. Late enough that the hand-in-hand lovers would be bedded down someplace secret. Late enough that all the smokers who’d promised they’d quit weren’t out for one last drag. Just me and the creatures of the night. My headlight only stabbed fifteen, twenty feet into the darkness. To show I could, that I still had those legs, I pumped hard for the black space of the mountains. I knew better than to try to make the whole climb. But even a little would prove something. I made it the same two miles, not pushing hard, just steady climbing, before I wheeled around, rode gravity back to town. Two homeless men, tuned to nature better than the usual baby stroller crowd, stepped away from each other to let me slip between them at thirty miles per hour. I nodded thanks, but it’s always an empty gesture. You’re going too fast for it to register, and you can’t ever check back to see if they even saw your gratitude. Empty gestures are what make the world go round, though. I swooped under two, three bridges, pedaling though I didn’t really need to. There was still silt on the concrete. It crunched under my tires like sugar granules. “Careful,” I said again, to myself. Just retasting the word. Mining into it for what Doreen had really been trying to get across. I looked down, shut my eyes—I was on a straightaway, the one that tunneled through the next quarter mile or so of trees—watching my top tube coast back and forth instead of doing the first thing Coach always said: keeping my eyes on the line I was taking. My headlight was what saved me from myself. A piece of driftwood, obviously dragged up onto the path. Doing it without thinking—it was years too late to stop—I bunny hopped the wood. When you’re clipped in and your bike goes eleven pounds, you can do this. I came down with both tires at once, like’s proper if you want to keep control, and had to skid immediately, as clearing the next chunk of driftwood would only land me on a third piece. This wasn’t just a symbolic attempt to sabotage the trail. This was set up to hurt any rider who came at it with a head of speed. I didn’t wipe out, though. It was close, but I knew to cantilever out, ahead, and keep hold of the bike so it didn’t crash into me, send us both spinning into the darkness. It was a once-in-fifty tries dismount, but I landed it. Breathing hard from the close call, all the profanity I knew welling up in me, I looked back at what almost was, what should have been if I hadn’t just cashed in all my luck for the next ten years, and then I directed my headlight ahead, into the turn, to what other obstacles awaited. The night cyclists’s white face looked back to me. His white face and his red mouth and chin. His deep black eyes. I flinched, but then realized why he wasn’t already at my throat: He was impaled on the seat post of his own bike. He was impaled just like I would be, if I hadn’t reeled all my speed in. But my speed, it had probably only been half of his. I could see what had happened, too. Like me, he’d bunny hopped over the initial chunk of driftwood but, going faster, his hop had carried him farther, into the next strategically placed driftwood. It had been too much to recover from. He’d probably fallen over sideways, slapped the concrete of the trail hard, but he was going fast enough that instead of splatting into a skid, he bounced, he cartwheeled. And his bike was right there with him, coming apart at its welds, components spinning up into the night sky. Specifically, his seat. Only, the clamp hadn’t let go. The seatpost, it had snapped. A carbon-fiber seatpost, it would have splintered, would be showing thread. An old-style aluminum post like he was running, though, it’ll snap off up near the saddle, leave a ragged tube, a hollow spear. The night cyclist had hit the tree with his back, hard, and an instant later his bike’s seatpost, still extending from the bike itself, had jammed through his sternum. The blood around that wound, it was black, even at this distance. Not red like the blood at his mouth. I adjusted the strap across my chest, only just then realized I had my knives with me. They were clean, like always, but I could tell from the flare of his nostrils that he knew what I was wearing. That this was just one more insult the night had for him. One more stupid thing between him and wherever he was going. His lips thinned, his teeth baring, but before he could complete his display, he whipped his head over to the left. I looked too. Nothing. No sound. And then there was. Not voices, but brush and branches, parting. At first I thought it was the two dead boys from the creek, risen. But one of them had shaped sideburns this time, the other a shaved head. Different college kids. What they were carrying was a double-bit axe and a camp hatchet, one of those kinds with a textured hammer on the back side. And then I realized exactly where we were: at that bend in the creek. It’s why I’d thought they were the dead boys, risen. These were their friends, then. The other night, they’d tried to muscle that big log up onto the trail. This night, they’d come back with proper tools. To finish the job the night cyclist had interrupted. And to avenge their fallen comrades, as they probably saw it. When one of them dragged a flashlight up to the night cyclist, I saw that his chin and mouth, their redness wasn’t from himself. That Double-Bit and Hatchet were still standing, that meant that, a few minutes ago, they’d been three. I finally tracked down to the night cyclist’s feet, and there was the body that had to be there. The boy who had stepped too close, to taunt. At which point his two friends had decided to go for tools. For weapons. And they still hadn’t seen me. Because bicycles, when properly greased, they’re quiet. I laid my bike down into the grass, unlimbered my roll of knives, spread them out before me. I didn’t know for sure that Double-Bit and Hatchet could kill the night cyclist like they wanted—they’d still have to get close—but the sun would be coming up eventually, and if he was still pinned to the tree, then they might as well have killed him. The night cyclist saw me stepping forward but didn’t move a muscle on his face. And, because his eyes showed so little white, even if he was watching me, the two still coming at him wouldn’t have been able to tell. Double-Bit hit him once, swinging his great axe like a baseball bat into the night cyclist’s shoulder, and then Hatchet came not at the night cyclist, but the bike. He caught it on the bottom bracket with the hammer side, the full force of his impact traveling up the aluminum frame, driving the seat post deeper into flesh. The night cyclist didn’t even grunt. The black blood just slipped from his mouth, oiled his chin and chest. He did smile, though. “What do you have to smile about?” Hatchet screamed, bouncing like a boxer on his toes, wrapping up to swing again. Double-Bit smiled, seemingly pleased with how the night was falling out, but he caught me in his peripheral vision, too. At the last possible instant. He turned away just fast enough that my paring knife caught him across his open mouth, instead of his temple, like. The blade crossed between his upper and lower teeth, the dagger-point nicking the bunched-up jaw muscle at the back of his mouth on both sides, I was pretty sure. He reeled back, away from the pain. Into the mouth of the night cyclist, open just as wide as his now was, like a snake about to swallow an egg. When the night cyclist bit in, some of the blood spattered onto my face. I was wearing my backup clear glasses, but still I flinched, blinked. This all in a moment cut so thin it was nearly transparent. In the next moment, Hatchet was turning to me. I flipped the paring knife around and grabbed it by the tip, as if to throw—on the cycling team, we’d fake-lob a water bottle high to someone, then spray them hard with the water bottle we secretly had—and while Hatchet had his arms raise to protect his face, I drove my eight-inch knife up into his belly, digging for his diaphragm. Maybe I got it, I don’t know. He fell back into the night cyclist’s bike, fell back hard enough to crack it to the side, out of the night cyclist, and then the night changed. The night cyclist slumped down, free of the seatpost, his hair hanging over his face, and inside I was screaming at myself to run, to ride, to leave this place. But Hatchet was already coming for me, holding his guts in with one hand, his weapon high in the other. He would have got me, too, if the night cyclist hadn’t stabbed a hand forward, dug his sharp fingers into Hatchet’s calf. Instead of pulling Hatchet’s throat to him, instead of climbing hand over hand up to Hatchet’s throat, he simply pulled that calf to his mouth, and, with Hatchet facedown in the muck now, he drank, and drank deep, his Adam’s apple working up and down with each swallow. His eyes, they never left mine. When Hatchet was drained, just his foot spasming, the night cyclist pulled himself over to Double-Bit, drank some more there as well. And then he rolled over, convulsing in the mud, holding his shoulder. I could have run then, I know. But I didn’t. When he could, he stood weakly, looked up the path the way I’d come, then back the other way. We were alone. He lurched forward, for his ruined bike. “No,” I said. He stopped, studied me, his eyes showing real fatigue for the first time I’d seen. Shaking my head no, I pointed with my paring knife back to the bike in the grass, the one he could surely smell. He looked into that tall grass, then back to me. “Take it already,” I said, and nodded down to his bike. “Need to put this one out of its misery.” His front wheel was taco’d, one drop was lower than the other, and one of the cranks had bent in under the top chainring. I couldn’t imagine going that fast through the darkness, alone. It was a rush just thinking about it. “What the hell are you?” I said when he took that first step bike-ward, though I knew. In reply, he took my paring knife forearm in the cold grip of his good arm, pulled the meat of my hand right up to his mouth. He opened slow. His teeth were impossible. I had my big knife in my other hand, but it might as well have been someone else’s hand. He lowered his teeth to my skin, his eyes never leaving mine, and I understood what he was offering. Eternal youth. Night rides forever. Going faster than I’d ever dreamed. He was offering to share the night with me. What had my scent told him, revealed to him? Standing in the living room of my apartment, had he smelled the flavor of Doreen’s last accusations? I don’t put anything beyond him. Or his kind. When his teeth brushed my skin, I didn’t jerk back, but I did hear myself say it, my eyes welling up: “No.” He stopped, looked up into my face. “I’m going to call her back,” I said, trusting that he knew what I was talking about. Who. He held my eyes for a moment longer, long enough for me consider exactly what I was giving up here, then he nodded, pushed my arm back to me. He licked his lips, dabbing at a bit of dried blood, and then his eyes snapped up to the path. Company, soon. “Go,” I told him, and when he walked by I smelled it on him, from him. The decay. If he ever peeled out of his suit, it must smell like the grave for acres in every direction. Partway to my bike, he scooped up my leather roll, slung it back to me as if it was something any chef could possibly ever just leave lying there. Then he leaned my bike up from the grass, stepped across the top tube then back off, to adjust the seat. Not with a multi-tool, but by pinching the clamp’s bolt between his fingers. When he stood into the pedals, the bike was dialed perfect for him. He clipped in with both feet, just balancing there, getting the feel of this new machine—he liked it, could sense the speed locked in its geometry—and then, without looking back, he powered away, into the silhouette of the Flatirons, which, at night, are the maw of a great cave. Who he must have passed, who showed up two, three minutes later, it was a pregnant woman and a guy. They were bundled up, both crying over something—I’d never know what. He’d let them pass, though, the night cyclist. He surely needed even more blood to rebuild himself, but he needed worse to ride. I understood. With every part of myself, I understood. When the couple got to me, the pregnant woman yelped, stumbled back—I was standing in the gore of three more college kids, both my knives dripping, bug-eyed under the clear glasses, my face spattered with blood—and, and this is why I love the world, why I’m going to cook Doreen’s favorite meal tomorrow, just take it to her: The man, scrawny and useless as he was, he stepped in front of her, to stand between her and the monster I looked to be. “There’s no compulsion to hide the bodies,” I said to them like a joke, spreading my arms as if to showcase my night’s work—words and a gesture that would be on the national news by morning—and then I bowed once and stepped back into the darkness, and came out onto the path a half mile later, walked up onto the plank bridge, my knives cleaned and in their roll again. The waters were surging beneath me, inexorable, going for miles and miles, for centuries. I patted the rail’s cold steel and walked on across, home.

There must be no compulsion to hide the bodies. Otherwise I’d have never found them. It was a Tuesday night. I was riding home after work, my leather roll of knives strapped across my back. I’d left my apron on the hook at the restaurant, but I still smelled like the kitchen. Before Doreen had moved out two months ago, she’d jokingly accused me of having a series of affairs at work, and that I was trying to mask the scent of all those other women with garlic and turmeric. It had been funny, a running joke, at least until the new sous-chef needed me to walk her through cleanup again after hours, and then leaned back into me while I was reaching around her to demonstrate where the fryer basket clicked in. I had been with Doreen four years, then. And the sous-chef—what the cheating man says in stories is that she didn’t mean anything. But that’s not right. That’s not fair. What she meant for me, it was a way out. So far, this is how my life’s gone, pretty much. I do all this work to build a thing—in this case trust, a relationship, someone to watch stupid television with, someone who lets me sleep late because chefs keep different hours—and then, once the Jenga tower gets tall enough to look a little bit scary, I start pulling out blocks, seeing how far I can skeletonize my life before it all comes crashing down again. Taking the bike paths home each night after work, though, it reminds me that I wasn’t always like this. There was a time. It was college. I was on the racing team. The university was buying us the latest bikes, sleek things, bullets with wheels—we weighed them in grams—and the sponsors were supplying us with the same shorts and helmets and gloves and glasses the pros wore, and every day my legs were pumping, pushing, pedaling. That was the only time I hadn’t started pulling out blocks, as it were. If college had lasted forever, I’d still be out riding, just zoning out at forty miles per hour, choosing the line I was going to take, just like Coach was always saying. You have to choose your line. Coming home at two in the morning, Velcroed into my old racing shoes that have the clips worn down to nubs—dull little nubs my pedals know like a ball knows its socket—I could pretend that life had never ended. That I was still me. That I hadn’t run Doreen off on purpose. That I wouldn’t run the next Doreen off just the same. All the other kitchen staff who biked in and out, their bikes were these bulky hybrids. Some were even labeled “comfort.” The comfort in riding—it’s not physical, it’s spiritual. My bike’s built for racing, still and always. Aggressive stance, the bars dialed low so you have to lie down on the top tube, pretty much. A butt-floss saddle canted forward like I’m a time trial racer. The only concession to middle age, I suppose, is the light clamped to the handlebars. It makes me feel old, but I’d feel older if I endo’d into the creek. The trail between the restaurant and my apartment is lit up intermittently, these pale yellow discs you kind of float through, but there are plenty of long, dark tree-tunnels over those two and a half miles. Those tunnels are fun to shoot in the dark, don’t get me wrong, but the dark isn’t the thing to worry about. The whole year, there’d been a battle going on in the opinion pages of the newspaper. Motorists were bullying bikers, bikers were kicking dents into fenders and doors. Nobody’d been hurt too bad yet, but it was coming. One of us was going to get nudged a bit too hard by a bumper, nudged hard enough to get pulled under the car, and the motorist was going to walk for it like they always do, and then cyclists were going to be riding side by side from one ditch to the other, stopping traffic for miles. It had happened before, and it was happening again. Even up in the mountains. Apparently—this just going from what I read, as I stick to asphalt and concrete—the hikers had been sabotaging the trail against mountain bikers. Deadfalls, rocks, the occasional spike. Helmets or no, riders were getting hurt. And now it had come to town. For five nights in a row, there’d been driftwood from the creek dragged up onto the trail. It was then I’d relented, finally started running a headlight. And the headlight was how I saw them. The bodies. Two guys, young, floating in the shallows where the creek turns west. On the shore was the large piece of driftwood they’d been trying to dislodge, to drag up across the trail. It was too much for two people. But they were the only ones there. One of them was floating facedown in the water. The other was on his back. His throat was gone. No blood was seeping from it. They were on the news by seven in the morning, the two dead kids. College students from one of the farming towns on the eastern plains. I had considered reporting them myself, but it was just a fluke of timing that I’d been the one to find them, I decided. Someone else would come along at about daybreak. Boulder’s full of concerned citizens, people for whom it would be a rush to get involved. Me, I was tired. We had two new bussers. You wouldn’t think a couple of non-lifers that low on the food chain would change the dynamic of a kitchen that much, but dishes, they’re our lifeblood. It had been chaos and emergency, from the first group reservation on. I deserved to just come home, watch some vapid cop drama until the sun came up. The last bit of the news I saw was the weather. The spring melt was coming down hard. Tonight the creek was going to be lapping at the concrete of the trail again. Awake again by three in the afternoon, I clamped my bike up onto the rack by the breakfast bar—by what would have been the breakfast bar—and administered to its various needs. The same way soldiers in movies are always taking their weapons apart and reassembling them, old cyclists, we like to perform our own maintenance. Old. I’m even starting to say it. When Doreen was leaving for good and ever, was on her last walk-through to be sure the last four years of her life were completely boxed up, we’d of course had to have it out a little. The main thrust of her accusation involved me just wanting to feel young again. That I’d never let that part of myself go completely, like other men did when it was time to grow up. I hadn’t had any accusations for her to feed on, to cultivate, to take with her and coat with saliva like a pearl. Just apologies, and very little eye contact, and one last offer of the apartment, which we both knew had just been a gesture, as it had been mine when we’d met. For dinner I ate sliced deli turkey straight from the container. Hang around a hospital for even ten minutes, you’ll see the nurses huddled up at the handicapped entrance, stabbing cigarettes into their mouths. Hang around chefs long enough, you’ll find us in the fast-food drive-throughs of the world. There we’ll be, walking out of the gas station with a bag of chips for dinner, so we can have enough energy to plate some salmon at sixty-per. The world doesn’t make sense. I tuned the news back on. The eyewitness—a senior citizen in a tracksuit with actual stripes on the sleeve and legs—was telling her story about finding the bodies. I watched the woods behind her, where the camera didn’t mean to be looking. At first I thought I was looking for myself—stupid, I know—but what I saw, what nobody else was seeing, it was a pair of cycling glasses, hanging by their elastic band from a small, bare sapling pushing up through the dank brush, way over in the ditch you never ford into, because you know it’s a literal dumping ground for the homeless population. What got me to hit the rewind button, then the pause button, it wasn’t as simple as castoff equipment. I’ve peeled out of I don’t know how many sunglasses and gloves and jerseys while riding, because I didn’t have time to dispose of them properly, but needed the ounce or two they’d free me of. What got me to hit the stop button was the color pattern on the elastic band. It was from a company that had been defunct since my junior year of college. And these glasses, they weren’t for the sun. They were clear. The kind you wear when riding at night, when what you need is a gnat-shield, goggles to keep you from tearing up, to keep the world from blurring away. And they were ten years old, at least. They had to be. I ate my turkey from the bag and I kept those clear glasses paused on the screen. Just watching them. My twenty-year-old self would have been disgusted, but when it started drizzling at five in the afternoon, and I was scheduled to meet the two new bussers twenty minutes before dinner prep—six—I accepted the ride downtown Glenda next door was offering. She asked after Doreen, said it had been too long since we’d been over for drinks. I agreed. Because she saw how I’d tried to shield my newly spotless bike from the water, loading it into her Honda’s hatchback, she backed up between the restaurant’s dumpsters for me. I grabbed my roll of knives and told her to drop in this week, tell the hostess she was my guest and, once again, she said she might just do that, thanks. Did she know Doreen was gone? Was this a game we were playing? I didn’t know, but it was too late to stop. I nosed my bike into the space past the line of coat hooks, chained it to the handrail like always. The components alone are probably two grand—all Campy, all high-end—and, while I’d like to think restaurant staff are good people, I also consider myself something of a realist. Only one of the bussers showed up for my hands-on training. I should have gone easy on him, repaid his loyalty or discipline or stupidity or whatever it was, but instead I just heaped all the attitude and scorn I had on him, and told myself that this is how it is for everyone, starting out in the kitchen. You’re tough or you’re gone. If I was chasing him off with this, then I was doing him a favor. He must have needed the work. The three times I came out to talk to tables—the first was someone I’d worked with years ago but wasn’t thrilled to see, and the other two were first dates showing off their food IQ, but masking it as simpering complaints—I made sure to linger long enough to see whether the groups huddled on the wrong side of the hostess podium were glittering with raindrops or not. I’d left my bike at the restaurant overnight a few times before, either hitched a ride home with a server or manager or just cabbed it, but I wanted to get out and stretch tonight, if possible. Judging by my second two trips out to the dining room—dry shoulders from the hostess podium crowd—it just might be possible. Granted, there would be puddles, a slick spot or two, and my bike would need another thorough rubdown once I got home. But the wind in my face would make it worth it. It always did. And, after a rain, the paths and bike lanes are usually devoid of traffic, completely lifeless. All mine. Coach used to always tell us to choose our line, to stay focused on that, to not look anywhere else but the direction you’re going. It was advice that worked in the kitchen as well. The line I could see ahead of me, it led past cleanup, out the back door, down the bike lane for half a mile before swooping and banking onto the path for nearly three glorious, empty miles. In the alley at two in the morning, my clothes steamed at first. It always made me feel like I was just touching down in this strange atmosphere, my alien fabric off-gassing, adjusting. It was just temperature differential, of course. It had been happening since I first started washing dishes, would clock out soaked from head to toe. I usually wasn’t this wet by the end of the night, had already paid those dues, but, because I was ready to be shut of the kitchen, and because the captain has to go down with the ship, I’d stepped in beside Manny, our dishwasher of nine months. You can’t help getting sprayed, especially when you’re dealing with a ladle. But we got it done in half the time, racked the wine glasses so they wouldn’t spot, and then I saluted him off into the night, hung my apron on its hook, and rolled up my knives. I should have been using them to cut up the day-old bread for croutons—a ten-minute job, with nobody tugging on my sleeve—but screw it. Sometimes you just have to walk away. Feed yourself first, right? The bike lane away from the restaurant was as empty as I’d imagined. I leaned back from the bars, planed my arms out to the side like I was twelve years old again. What do people who lose that part of themselves do, I wonder? When Doreen had accused me of not growing up, I’d felt parentheses kind of form around my eyes, the question right there in my mouth: And? It’s not some big social or emotional impediment to still be able to close your eyes, pretend to be an airplane. Some people hold on to that with video games, some with books about space, some with basketball or tennis, if their knees hold together. For me it was a bike. For me it was this. Soon enough the path opened up just across the creek, inviting me to slalom down it one more time, but I stopped mid-bridge, still clipped in, my arms crossed on the rail on the uphill side. The melt was coming fast, and hard. The surface of the water breathed like a great animal, the sides of the creek surging up just over the bank, washing the concrete of the path and then retreating. I was definitely going to be up until dawn, drying my bike out. Somebody old and sensible, they probably would have gone the long way, the dry way. My only concession was turning my headlight on, and hitching the strap of my knife-roll higher across my chest, like the bandolier it most definitely was. The first mile, the water never even crested up over my valve stem. And, down here by the creek, the sound was massive. It felt like the mountains were bleeding out. But I didn’t forget the promise I’d made earlier: A mile into it, right at the bend where the creek turned west, I stepped my right foot over the top bar, rode sidesaddle on my left foot, and looked behind me, at the rooster tail of mist I was leaving. It was stupid. It was wonderful. Before the bike rolled all the way to a stop, I stepped down into the grabby muck, hitched the bike up onto my arm like I was racing cyclo-cross. What I was really doing was playing detective. The mud in the tall grass and brush and tangle of vines and trash turned out to be sloppier than I’d hoped, but I trudged and clumped through it, picked those clear glasses off the naked sapling like the fruit they were. I’d been right, that afternoon. These were seriously antique, from another decade of cycling gear. Usually, something like this hung in a tree or set up on a rock with another rock there to keep it from blowing away, it was just what you did when you stumbled onto something somebody else had dropped. It was only kind. Surely they’d be back, looking for it, right? This was too far out for that, though. There were closer places to the path to hang a piece of equipment. I stood there by the sapling, raised the wet glasses to my face and looked through them. At the shiny path. At the silhouette of trees waving back and forth. At the creek where the two college kids had been floating. For maybe twenty seconds, I couldn’t look away from that bend. It was like I was seeing them again. Like a puzzle piece in my head was nudging itself into some bigger picture. Before it could resolve, I looked over, to the right. There was someone there. On a matte-black aluminum bike. You can tell aluminum from carbon by the turns in the frame. Aluminum bikes, they’re ten years ago as well. And the rider—where I was in kitchen rags, like usual for the ride home, he was in tights. Not shorts or a bib, but some kind of wet suit a surfer might wear: slick black like a second skin, ankle to neck to wrist. It would have been terrible in the sun, and at night it had to be terrible as well, since there was no way your skin could breathe. To match the black seal suit, this cyclist also had black shoes and black gloves, a flash of pale skin at wrist and ankle. No helmet. And—looking down to what I was holding—no glasses. I held them out across the muck, through the misting rain, and in response, this night cyclist, he snarled. I’d never seen anybody actually do that before. Like a dog you were happy was on a chain. “What?” I said, only loud enough for myself, really. He was already whipping his bike away, standing to granny gear it through the silt just under the water. When he looked back, his dank black hair was plastered to his white face. And his eyes—they were all pupil. Like smoke, like a whisper, he faded once he made the dry concrete. For maybe ten seconds, I considered what had just happened. And then I saw it for what it was: An invitation. A challenge. A dare. I smiled, splashed through the tall grass, ran past the deep water, and hit the concrete running alongside my bike, catapulted up into the saddle already shifting hard, my nostrils wide because my lungs were about to need air. It had been too long since I’d really gotten the opportunity—the need—to open up. Coach had diagnosed me early as a sprinter, and he’d kind of sneered when he said it, like there was no hope, really. He’d work with me, sure, but I was what I was. For four years it made me faster, better, harder. He was right, though: I’m a born sprinter. I’ll burn through my quads those first two miles, leave the whole pack in the dust. It was one mile until the trail nosed up into the canyon for twenty vertical miles. It was one mile, and this night cyclist, he only had about a half-minute head start. If only Doreen could see me now. Where I finally saw him again, it was at the pond the low part of the trail had become, downtown. He was standing there, one foot down in the water. There’s no way I was making any more noise than the flooded creek, but still, as soon as I rounded the corner, he whipped his head back settled his black eyes on me. I gave him a cocky two-fingered wave from my grips. He didn’t wave back. He was watching the water again. My big plan was to walk my bike up beside him, so as to keep from whipping water into his face. Not like we weren’t both already soaked, but manners are manners, even at two in the morning, in the dark and the rain. He never gave me the chance. I was fifty feet away when he hauled his bike around, rode the lapping edge of the water through the wet grass, all the way up to the road, stepped down for just long enough to lift his bike up onto the cracked sidewalk that runs up there. He didn’t lift his bike because he didn’t have momentum—the climb he’d just made would have even taxed my sprinter’s legs in their prime—he lifted it because road bike rims, especially old aluminum ones like he was running, they’ll crimp in from that kind of action. I bared my teeth just like he’d done, and I gave chase, having to run my bike up the last ten or fifteen yards, when my narrow road tires started to gouge into the mud. By the time I clipped in on the sidewalk, he was a receding black dot in the car lane. I ramped down off the curb at a handicapped place, and I gave my bike every last bit of myself I had. We took the turn—on the road, not the path—up into the canyon maybe ten seconds apart, him running the beginning of the red light, me catching the end of it, leaned over too far for wet asphalt but I didn’t care anymore. My left pedal snagged on the blacktop, hitching the ass-end of the bike over a hiccup, but the tire caught somehow, and I rode it out. Watching my line. I was watching my line. It led straight to him. He looked back just like Coach was forever telling us not to, but it didn’t slow him or tilt him even a little. A half mile after the turn, the road started its wicked uphill slope. Twice I’d gone up it, but that was fifteen years ago, and the road had been barricaded off for the event, and I’d still been pretty sure I was going to have to sag wagon it. Not because I was a sprinter. Because I was human. I’d promised myself never again. But this was now. This was tonight. I geared down, stood on the cranks. He was there in my headlight. Not riding away. Just crosswise in the road, like a barricade himself. I rear-braked, my rooster tail slinging past without me, like my intentions were going where I couldn’t. The night cyclist wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t anything. He was just looking at me. “I’ve got your—!” I said, pulling the clear glasses away from my neck, against the elastic. He turned in a huff, uphill, and, because I had the jump, I figured I’d be alongside him in two shakes. Wrong. He was faster on the climb than I was. It wasn’t even close. Even with me screaming for my lungs to be deeper, for my legs to be younger, for the grade to flatten out. It was like the mountain was sucking him uphill. And when he looked back on the first turn, his mouth wasn’t haggard and gasping like mine. He was calm, even. Not winded in the least. Two miles into it, blood in my throat, I had to stop. I threw up over the guardrail, then collapsed across it, not caring how it was chiseling into my midsection. No headlights came along to hitch me down the hill, into town. “What are you?” I said to the night cyclist, wherever he was. Miles away by now, I thought. Or—watching me from the trees? I tried to bore into the darkness, to catch his outline there, but then I was throwing up again, from deep, deep inside, like I was dry heaving all the years between who I was and who I had been, and then I climbed back into the saddle like the rag doll I was, rode my brakes home, taking the roads this time. I was bonked by the time I crawled into my living room. The adrenaline had burned through all the blood sugar I had, and left me in the hole for more. I couldn’t remember the last time this had happened. I didn’t miss it. It was like having sludge for blood, and having to look at the world through one narrow, long straw. I settled my bike against the back of the couch in exactly the way I never do—it was Doreen’s couch—unrolled my knives on the counter to be sure the oiled leather had kept them dry, and then I ate great heaping handfuls of corn chips and chocolate morsels from the pantry. Not because that’s any kind of magic formula, but because they were the first things I saw. It took ten or twelve minutes, but I finally woke up enough to rack my bike, dry it with a hand towel from the kitchen, even going so far as to twist off the valve stem caps, blow any lingering droplets in there back onto my face. Only after my bike was properly stabled did I change into dry clothes myself. Just some mountain bike shorts I’d only bought because they were on clearance and I had credit at that store. They were my house shorts, had a pocket right on the front of the thigh. My phone dropped into it perfectly. I turned on the television to see if our race had been documented, but all up and down the dial it was just cop shows sentenced to ten years, hard syndication. The first time I woke still watching, I rolled off the couch, checked to make sure the front door was secure—never trust yourself when your blood sugar’s flatlined—then climbed into bed on what I was still calling my side. The way I turned the lamp off in the living room was by shutting my eyes. The next time I woke, I wasn’t completely sure that’s what I’d just done. The way my legs were still both burning and noodled at the same time, I thought for a second that maybe I was at the end of a long ride, years ago. Something up in the peaks, in the thin, crisp air, permanent snow back in the shadows of the evergreen. Was that where he lived, I wondered? The night cyclist? Except—nobody could make that ride up the canyon. Any sane person would fork over the change for the bus. But this night cyclist, he hadn’t had a pack, hadn’t had a rack on his bike. If he did live up the hill, what was he even down here in the big wet for? Exercise? Recreation? That would be more like suicide, having to make that climb after bopping all around town in the dark. And, yeah, now that that was on the table: the dark. No light? Nothing reflective to him at all. Like he just wanted to whip past, be already gone by the time the smear he’d been even registered to anybody on the trail that late. “What are you?” I said out loud, but the comforter muffled my voice. Which was good. There was a shadow stretched out through the open doorway of my bedroom. My heart gorged up into my throat. And then, like my heart was that loud, the head of that shadow, it cocked around in a way I knew. A way I remembered. It was him. My first response was to curl deeper into the safety of my comforter. My next response, it was to ask him how he’d done that. How he’d sprinted uphill, away from me, a born sprinter. And on a relic of a bike at that. Keeping the blanket around my shoulders, I stood, shushed over into the doorway, for some reason superstitious about stepping directly into his shadow. Like it was a well I could fall into? Like that blackness was going to leech up through the print of my bare feet? I don’t know. It was instinctual; it was automatic. It was polite. In magical places, you make all obeisance you might think proper. He knew I was there, had probably clocked my approach from the exact instant I’d stopped breathing. What he was holding, and considering, it was his clear glasses. The reason he was considering them, it was that I’d put them on the plate Doreen had decreed the home for all glasses. The reason he was reconsidering them, it was that right there in the bowl were mine. My daytime ones, polarized, iridescent, and my night ones, clear and sleek, the elastic tight and young. My clear ones were enough of an update on his that they were practically a reinvention. He looked up to me, and his face, it was cut stone. Harsh, angular, pale. And those eyes. I’d been right, last time: The pupils or irises or whatever, they were blown out. There was hardly any white. Of course he didn’t need a headlight. Creatures of the night, they get along just fine in the darkness. There were no eyebrows, either. “What happened to you?” I almost said. And his thighs—if I hadn’t seen him ride, I’d never have clocked him for a serious cyclist. A rider who can rabbit up the canyon even just a mile or two without breaking a sweat, his quads should be jodhpured out past what any denim could ever contain, with thick, veined calves to match. Like gorilla forearms. His legs though, they were slender, smooth. Probably pale as his face, pale as those wristlets of white between his gloves and sleeve, between the cuff of his tights and the crescent of his shoe-tops. He must be corded like steel, and wound tight. At which point, finally, I cased the front door. It was shut, the deadbolt still twisted tight. Meaning—yep. Right on cue, the drapes over the sliding glass door billowed in, then sighed back out onto the balcony. The third-floor balcony. “I know what you did to those kids in the creek,” I said. “Before they were in the creek, I mean.” It was supposed to be what kept him from coming for me. Knowledge. Except, idiot that I am, I’d made sure he knew that the only place that knowledge lived, it was in my head. Dig that out, and he’d have nothing to worry about. “You didn’t have to,” I added. “They were never going to get that log moved.” He just stared at me. Evaluating me, it felt like. How long had it been since anyone attempted conversation with him, I wonder now? If he had spoken, if he could, what would he have even said, after so long? Would he have asked why a die-hard cyclist was defending those who would do violence to cyclists? Looking back, my guess is that he couldn’t speak at all. Not without showing me his teeth. “I didn’t invite you in here,” I said to him, my bulk—with the comforter—filling the doorway. To show how little threat I was, he turned away from me, studying his glasses again. Then raising them, to inhale their scent. “I didn’t wear them,” I said. “Not really.” What he was smelling, it was my sweat on the band, from when they’d been around my neck. From when I’d been chasing him. In a moment’s association, then, I knew that that was how he’d found me here on the third floor of an apartment building miles away from the last place I’d seen him. He’d picked my scent out of all the smells of the city. Out of all the thousands of other bodies out after dark. He’d known me through the rain. I swallowed, the sound of it crashing in my ears. He’d come here because I’d seen him. He’d come here because he couldn’t be seen. “You don’t ride in the sun, do you,” I said. It wasn’t really a question. I nodded down to the glasses he was still considering. “And the stores are only open in the daytime. So you can’t—you can’t update your gear.” I could tell by the new stillness about him that he heard me, but he didn’t look up. “Take them,” I said. Slowly, by labored degrees, he looked over to me. “Mine,” I said. “Take them. You need them.” Because it wasn’t in him to leave evidence behind, he hooked his down over his neck like I’d worn them, then settled mine around his head, the continuous lens cocked up on his forehead. When he lowered them, the dents left from the elastic’s pull didn’t fill with red color. But I’d known that wasn’t going to happen. “You’re fast,” I said to him. “I used to be fast.” He looked up to me for what I knew was the last time. I knew it was the last because there was a grin spreading across his face. No, not a grin. A sneer. What he was saying was that he was fast. The fastest. And he didn’t need lungs. And he slept—where he slept, it was probably burrowed into a hole somewhere up the canyon. Under a rock ledge, in a cave only him and the marmots and the chipmunks knew about, and whatever beetles and grubs can live in gaspy thin air, without the sun. The moment his grin flashed into a smile, I saw the dirty yellow sharpness past his lips and I took an involuntary step back. That was all it took to spook him. He moved like quicksilver over the couch, past the rattan stools, and onto the balcony. I rushed over after him, to see him silently touching down, or swimming through the night air, but he was already gone. I should have expected nothing less. Three nights later, the waters receded from the bike path. I hadn’t been riding to and from work. Doreen had called, actually. Just to talk. I told her to swing by the restaurant soon, that I’d make her favorite, like old times. Her breath hitched a bit over that. Four years, that’s a long time. For me too. “And you need to be careful,” she said, when we were both signing off awkwardly—awkward because we’d been saying the same thing at the end of every call for so long. What were we supposed to say now? “Careful?” I said. “Those two kids who died,” she said. “They weren’t riding,” I told her. “Just be careful.” I promised her I would and we somehow broke the connection. It was my night off. What she’d said, though. It was a challenge, wasn’t it? You only have to be careful when you think something can really happen to you. When you’re twenty, twenty-five, nothing in the world can touch you. To prove that still applied to me, I unclamped my bike from the rack, checked the tire pressure front and back, then nodded to myself about this, trucked us downstairs, to the sidewalk that led to the path that ran alongside the creek, up the canyon if I followed that far. It was one, two in the morning. Late enough that the hand-in-hand lovers would be bedded down someplace secret. Late enough that all the smokers who’d promised they’d quit weren’t out for one last drag. Just me and the creatures of the night. My headlight only stabbed fifteen, twenty feet into the darkness. To show I could, that I still had those legs, I pumped hard for the black space of the mountains. I knew better than to try to make the whole climb. But even a little would prove something. I made it the same two miles, not pushing hard, just steady climbing, before I wheeled around, rode gravity back to town. Two homeless men, tuned to nature better than the usual baby stroller crowd, stepped away from each other to let me slip between them at thirty miles per hour. I nodded thanks, but it’s always an empty gesture. You’re going too fast for it to register, and you can’t ever check back to see if they even saw your gratitude. Empty gestures are what make the world go round, though. I swooped under two, three bridges, pedaling though I didn’t really need to. There was still silt on the concrete. It crunched under my tires like sugar granules. “Careful,” I said again, to myself. Just retasting the word. Mining into it for what Doreen had really been trying to get across. I looked down, shut my eyes—I was on a straightaway, the one that tunneled through the next quarter mile or so of trees—watching my top tube coast back and forth instead of doing the first thing Coach always said: keeping my eyes on the line I was taking. My headlight was what saved me from myself. A piece of driftwood, obviously dragged up onto the path. Doing it without thinking—it was years too late to stop—I bunny hopped the wood. When you’re clipped in and your bike goes eleven pounds, you can do this. I came down with both tires at once, like’s proper if you want to keep control, and had to skid immediately, as clearing the next chunk of driftwood would only land me on a third piece. This wasn’t just a symbolic attempt to sabotage the trail. This was set up to hurt any rider who came at it with a head of speed. I didn’t wipe out, though. It was close, but I knew to cantilever out, ahead, and keep hold of the bike so it didn’t crash into me, send us both spinning into the darkness. It was a once-in-fifty tries dismount, but I landed it. Breathing hard from the close call, all the profanity I knew welling up in me, I looked back at what almost was, what should have been if I hadn’t just cashed in all my luck for the next ten years, and then I directed my headlight ahead, into the turn, to what other obstacles awaited. The night cyclists’s white face looked back to me. His white face and his red mouth and chin. His deep black eyes. I flinched, but then realized why he wasn’t already at my throat: He was impaled on the seat post of his own bike. He was impaled just like I would be, if I hadn’t reeled all my speed in. But my speed, it had probably only been half of his. I could see what had happened, too. Like me, he’d bunny hopped over the initial chunk of driftwood but, going faster, his hop had carried him farther, into the next strategically placed driftwood. It had been too much to recover from. He’d probably fallen over sideways, slapped the concrete of the trail hard, but he was going fast enough that instead of splatting into a skid, he bounced, he cartwheeled. And his bike was right there with him, coming apart at its welds, components spinning up into the night sky. Specifically, his seat. Only, the clamp hadn’t let go. The seatpost, it had snapped. A carbon-fiber seatpost, it would have splintered, would be showing thread. An old-style aluminum post like he was running, though, it’ll snap off up near the saddle, leave a ragged tube, a hollow spear. The night cyclist had hit the tree with his back, hard, and an instant later his bike’s seatpost, still extending from the bike itself, had jammed through his sternum. The blood around that wound, it was black, even at this distance. Not red like the blood at his mouth. I adjusted the strap across my chest, only just then realized I had my knives with me. They were clean, like always, but I could tell from the flare of his nostrils that he knew what I was wearing. That this was just one more insult the night had for him. One more stupid thing between him and wherever he was going. His lips thinned, his teeth baring, but before he could complete his display, he whipped his head over to the left. I looked too. Nothing. No sound. And then there was. Not voices, but brush and branches, parting. At first I thought it was the two dead boys from the creek, risen. But one of them had shaped sideburns this time, the other a shaved head. Different college kids. What they were carrying was a double-bit axe and a camp hatchet, one of those kinds with a textured hammer on the back side. And then I realized exactly where we were: at that bend in the creek. It’s why I’d thought they were the dead boys, risen. These were their friends, then. The other night, they’d tried to muscle that big log up onto the trail. This night, they’d come back with proper tools. To finish the job the night cyclist had interrupted. And to avenge their fallen comrades, as they probably saw it. When one of them dragged a flashlight up to the night cyclist, I saw that his chin and mouth, their redness wasn’t from himself. That Double-Bit and Hatchet were still standing, that meant that, a few minutes ago, they’d been three. I finally tracked down to the night cyclist’s feet, and there was the body that had to be there. The boy who had stepped too close, to taunt. At which point his two friends had decided to go for tools. For weapons. And they still hadn’t seen me. Because bicycles, when properly greased, they’re quiet. I laid my bike down into the grass, unlimbered my roll of knives, spread them out before me. I didn’t know for sure that Double-Bit and Hatchet could kill the night cyclist like they wanted—they’d still have to get close—but the sun would be coming up eventually, and if he was still pinned to the tree, then they might as well have killed him. The night cyclist saw me stepping forward but didn’t move a muscle on his face. And, because his eyes showed so little white, even if he was watching me, the two still coming at him wouldn’t have been able to tell. Double-Bit hit him once, swinging his great axe like a baseball bat into the night cyclist’s shoulder, and then Hatchet came not at the night cyclist, but the bike. He caught it on the bottom bracket with the hammer side, the full force of his impact traveling up the aluminum frame, driving the seat post deeper into flesh. The night cyclist didn’t even grunt. The black blood just slipped from his mouth, oiled his chin and chest. He did smile, though. “What do you have to smile about?” Hatchet screamed, bouncing like a boxer on his toes, wrapping up to swing again. Double-Bit smiled, seemingly pleased with how the night was falling out, but he caught me in his peripheral vision, too. At the last possible instant. He turned away just fast enough that my paring knife caught him across his open mouth, instead of his temple, like. The blade crossed between his upper and lower teeth, the dagger-point nicking the bunched-up jaw muscle at the back of his mouth on both sides, I was pretty sure. He reeled back, away from the pain. Into the mouth of the night cyclist, open just as wide as his now was, like a snake about to swallow an egg. When the night cyclist bit in, some of the blood spattered onto my face. I was wearing my backup clear glasses, but still I flinched, blinked. This all in a moment cut so thin it was nearly transparent. In the next moment, Hatchet was turning to me. I flipped the paring knife around and grabbed it by the tip, as if to throw—on the cycling team, we’d fake-lob a water bottle high to someone, then spray them hard with the water bottle we secretly had—and while Hatchet had his arms raise to protect his face, I drove my eight-inch knife up into his belly, digging for his diaphragm. Maybe I got it, I don’t know. He fell back into the night cyclist’s bike, fell back hard enough to crack it to the side, out of the night cyclist, and then the night changed. The night cyclist slumped down, free of the seatpost, his hair hanging over his face, and inside I was screaming at myself to run, to ride, to leave this place. But Hatchet was already coming for me, holding his guts in with one hand, his weapon high in the other. He would have got me, too, if the night cyclist hadn’t stabbed a hand forward, dug his sharp fingers into Hatchet’s calf. Instead of pulling Hatchet’s throat to him, instead of climbing hand over hand up to Hatchet’s throat, he simply pulled that calf to his mouth, and, with Hatchet facedown in the muck now, he drank, and drank deep, his Adam’s apple working up and down with each swallow. His eyes, they never left mine. When Hatchet was drained, just his foot spasming, the night cyclist pulled himself over to Double-Bit, drank some more there as well. And then he rolled over, convulsing in the mud, holding his shoulder. I could have run then, I know. But I didn’t. When he could, he stood weakly, looked up the path the way I’d come, then back the other way. We were alone. He lurched forward, for his ruined bike. “No,” I said. He stopped, studied me, his eyes showing real fatigue for the first time I’d seen. Shaking my head no, I pointed with my paring knife back to the bike in the grass, the one he could surely smell. He looked into that tall grass, then back to me. “Take it already,” I said, and nodded down to his bike. “Need to put this one out of its misery.” His front wheel was taco’d, one drop was lower than the other, and one of the cranks had bent in under the top chainring. I couldn’t imagine going that fast through the darkness, alone. It was a rush just thinking about it. “What the hell are you?” I said when he took that first step bike-ward, though I knew. In reply, he took my paring knife forearm in the cold grip of his good arm, pulled the meat of my hand right up to his mouth. He opened slow. His teeth were impossible. I had my big knife in my other hand, but it might as well have been someone else’s hand. He lowered his teeth to my skin, his eyes never leaving mine, and I understood what he was offering. Eternal youth. Night rides forever. Going faster than I’d ever dreamed. He was offering to share the night with me. What had my scent told him, revealed to him? Standing in the living room of my apartment, had he smelled the flavor of Doreen’s last accusations? I don’t put anything beyond him. Or his kind. When his teeth brushed my skin, I didn’t jerk back, but I did hear myself say it, my eyes welling up: “No.” He stopped, looked up into my face. “I’m going to call her back,” I said, trusting that he knew what I was talking about. Who. He held my eyes for a moment longer, long enough for me consider exactly what I was giving up here, then he nodded, pushed my arm back to me. He licked his lips, dabbing at a bit of dried blood, and then his eyes snapped up to the path. Company, soon. “Go,” I told him, and when he walked by I smelled it on him, from him. The decay. If he ever peeled out of his suit, it must smell like the grave for acres in every direction. Partway to my bike, he scooped up my leather roll, slung it back to me as if it was something any chef could possibly ever just leave lying there. Then he leaned my bike up from the grass, stepped across the top tube then back off, to adjust the seat. Not with a multi-tool, but by pinching the clamp’s bolt between his fingers. When he stood into the pedals, the bike was dialed perfect for him. He clipped in with both feet, just balancing there, getting the feel of this new machine—he liked it, could sense the speed locked in its geometry—and then, without looking back, he powered away, into the silhouette of the Flatirons, which, at night, are the maw of a great cave. Who he must have passed, who showed up two, three minutes later, it was a pregnant woman and a guy. They were bundled up, both crying over something—I’d never know what. He’d let them pass, though, the night cyclist. He surely needed even more blood to rebuild himself, but he needed worse to ride. I understood. With every part of myself, I understood. When the couple got to me, the pregnant woman yelped, stumbled back—I was standing in the gore of three more college kids, both my knives dripping, bug-eyed under the clear glasses, my face spattered with blood—and, and this is why I love the world, why I’m going to cook Doreen’s favorite meal tomorrow, just take it to her: The man, scrawny and useless as he was, he stepped in front of her, to stand between her and the monster I looked to be. “There’s no compulsion to hide the bodies,” I said to them like a joke, spreading my arms as if to showcase my night’s work—words and a gesture that would be on the national news by morning—and then I bowed once and stepped back into the darkness, and came out onto the path a half mile later, walked up onto the plank bridge, my knives cleaned and in their roll again. The waters were surging beneath me, inexorable, going for miles and miles, for centuries. I patted the rail’s cold steel and walked on across, home.

From Horror photos & videos July 14, 2018 at 08:00PM

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