The bicycle slid down the rain-dampened street, its rider taking in the early morning light. A blank-windowed building cast in gray within a puddle was briefly split in half by its kinked wheel. The rain had stopped sometime before now, and a fickle sun was beginning to shine on a newly washed city.
It was a new day.
And on this wanly dreary example, Ezra McNeil was trying very hard not to crash his bike. It was a beat up old thing, and both tires were worn completely bald so that their traction on the wet asphalt of the streets was less than wonderful and more than worrisome. He wore no helmet, which he knew put him in danger of splashing his brains all over the pavement, but as far as he could tell, there wasn't a whole lot of anything contained in said brains that would make their loss a particularly tragic event.
He glanced at his watch, which told him it was 4:44AM. He had gotten it in a clearance bin at the discount store a block from his house, and it had told him nothing but bad news since: "You're late for your interview!" it would say. "Class starts in seven minutes!" it would also say. Sometimes, in the small hours of the morning, it would ask, "Hey, it's four o'clock in the morning. Why haven't you fallen asleep yet?" and would repeat similar messages until he would eventually give up on ever getting to sleep, drag his bike out from under his bed and go for a ride. On such mornings, after seemingly endless sleepless nights, he craved the simple exhilaration of the virginal morning air whipping around his face, drying out his eyes, making his nose run. With almost no one out on the streets at that magical time, he felt as if he belonged to a small, elite group, comprised mostly of shop owners, workaholics, police officers, a few scattered homeless people and fellow insomniacs, and they ruled the world.
This morning, however, something was different in this sleepless corner of the city. A pervasive sense of déjà vu had accompanied him throughout his ride, as he spotted the same pair of shabbily dressed men in the same beaten up old Bentley at nearly every stoplight he passed. At every intersection, he'd glance up, see the car and peddle a little faster, attempt to remain calm and remind himself of the strange things a person's mind can do when provided with little rest.
He was sure he was being irrational, but after the fourth appearance, he put all his weight and leg strength into his pedals and pounded down the road, passing dreamily slow-moving traffic and turning the city into a smudgy tunnel of watered down shades of gray. His heart pounded somewhere directly behind his adam's apple and the veins in his forehead tightened their grip on his skull.
He clung sweatily to the handlebars as he bore a hard right into the still air, skidded into an alleyway and slammed his shoulder and side into a brick protrusion on the wall, sending his sprawling body into the gravel floor of the alley. The air in his lungs exploded out his mouth and his eyes filled with water, blurring his vision. He jerked a shaky palm to his face and tried to clear his eyes as he peered up into the bewildering sky, trying to catch his breath. He was just aware enough to hear the chugging of a tired engine as the Bentley rolled up next to him and stopped. A tall raincoat topped with a crumpled fedora stepped out, straightened its tie and leveled a grimy pistol at his quaking chest.
***TO BE CONTINUED***
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