by Tomorrow's Man
Rider
He sleeps for one hour.
In the dream, the sunset is at the end of an eternal highway. It hangs there, coaxing out waves of desert heat. Molten -- his eyes, his hands, his jeans -- are coated in molten tangerine.
His ears are filled with thunder beneath him, the Harley. The world is heat and vibration, noise and melting orange miles, speeding by under the bike.
He smiles. He lifts.
He has begun to lucid dream.
The bike speeds along, and he speeds along with it. He is the Rider, even as he rises out of himself to see. His perspective shifts with a gasp.
The Harley is like no machine he has ever seen. The lines, the fork, the calipers. The raked billet. The headlamp nacelle, liquid metal, burning chrome. Alien.
He recognizes the head of the Rider, the hands of the Rider, gripped. He recognizes his Exception Evo sunglasses. His Buco leather jacket, with the bullet scar rip at the left shoulder. He recognizes the style and the smile – they all belong to him. He realizes, so does the bike.
He wakes from one hour’s sleep.
Scrambling to his feet, he finds the charcoal, a pencil, the grid paper, he finds the laptop. He carries them to the garage on a case of Mountain Dew and drops it all at the ready.
He works, and works, and works. He welds, he bleeds, he drinks, he builds. He finishes, wiping at a blue eye. A drop of sweat turns the eye molten tangerine.
The Dew long gone, he looks at his new machine. He looks at the bike from his dream.
Exhausted, he collapses backward, smiling.
He sleeps for one hour.
Excerpt from "After the Adrenaline Rush" by Christopher Albanese, November, 2006.