A Rendezvous in the Dark...

At 5:00AM, Biker Dude flew down the Walnut Street hill past the train station. He got low and aero to pick up speed. He shifted into high gear and raced to stay ahead. He crossed the train tracks and then jumped up onto the sidewalk to let an impatient taxi driver pass.

When he'd crossed the river and reached a point just south of the riverboat casino, he dove through a break in the bushes, and after riding a dirt path through the grass for twenty feet, emerged onto the bike trail. He shifted up a gear. Dried leaves crunched under the bike tires as he sped southward. A crescent fingernail of moon hung in the eastern sky. The paved trail surface was alive with moving shadows and blowing leaves.

The trail ran past a grocery store parking lot before plunging into the heavily forested area south of route 20. Under a streetlight, its dim bulb swinging by its wires like a pendulum in the wind, a family of raccoons gathered around a rusty blue trash can that had fallen over. Huddled together in the midst of cans and shredded hefty bags, they feasted on the remains of a White Cottage pizza box. They scattered as biker Dude approached. He smelled rotting vegetables and rancid meat and almost gagged as he rode by.

Up ahead, on the route 20 overpass, a Fed Ex truck crossed the river and headed east. Biker Dude rode under the bridge and squinted. His eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness. The gray moonlight through the trees barely illuminated the line where weeds bordered the trail on either side. A tree branch reached out from the side and scratched at his arm. He ignored the distraction and focused on steering down the middle of the trail.

A hundred yards ahead and to the left, a rock crushing factory rumbled and quaked. It's metal towers and buildings stood black against the sky like machines out of H.G.Wells' War of the Worlds. Biker Dude rode into shadow behind the wall separating the factory from the bike trail. He'd ridden this way for five months, starting in May, when there was plenty of light at this time of morning. Now in September, though sunrise wouldn't happen for another hour and a half, he kept his light off to save the batteries. He wasn't worried. He knew all the twists and turns.

Besides, nobody was ever on the trail at this time of day, except him.

Suddenly, a dark, cat sized shape materialized just six feet directly in front of him. Like India ink poured into black paint. No details. Just a vapor of something darker than the surrounding shadow. A black ghost. A striped tail shot upwards.

Oh no.

Visions of bathing peroxide and baking soda flashed through his mind. He saw people holding their noses when he walked by; giving him a wide berth. Then he had another thought.

"Nooooooo...," he cried out. But before he could steer around it or stop, he felt the pa-thump, pa-thump of his tires running over something soft... something furry... something alive.

His heart fell. Suddenly, he wasn't so concerned about getting sprayed. He turned around to look, but all he saw was blackness. He braked a little. The clicking of the rear wheel slowed. He debated. He stopped and looked back. He turned first one ear, then the other and listened. "Give me a sign," he said. "Snap a twig. Growl. Purr. Do something to let me know you're okay." But if anything was moving or alive, there was no way he could hear it over the sounds from the nearby factory.

He sniffed the air. Nothing. Just a smell of stone dust and diesel exhaust.

Years before, in the daylight, he had ridden over a squirrel that had darted across the path. In shock, he'd looked back expecting the squirrel to be lying there, its guts smashed, its eyes all bugged out, but no. It had gotten right back up and kept going. And skunks were more rugged than squirrels right? Well, they were bigger anyway. Biker Dude hoped that this skunk was, like that squirrel, tough enough to take on a speeding bicycle and live to tell about it.

Biker Dude got to work fine, but all day, he kept thinking. What if he had swerved. Why didn't he? Why didn't he have his light on? Would things be different?

He kept reliving the moment. He'd close his eyes and see the shape rise up, and then a tail, and then the sick feeling of a living being under the tires. He felt something on his arm and looked to see a two inch long scratch that he hadn't noticed before. Probably that tree branch that he had been hit by. The blood had dried and started to scab. There would be a scar.

He smiled.