The Night Cyclist Read Online Free PDF

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.
    â€œI’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.
    â€œGo,” 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.
    â€œThere’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.

 
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    Copyright © 2016 by Stephen Graham Jones
    Art copyright © 2016 by Keith Negley