THE GHOST RIDER

She squeezed him tight and he turned his head to the right, leaning it back slightly.

“I see a cop up ahead!” she said, over the wind and the big bike’s thundering power.

He did not, but then her sight had always been better than his, and was much better since the accident. He throttled the big Harley back.

They called him the ghost rider since the wreck, after the flaming comic book biker. He had truly been aflame and had the scars on his face and hands to prove it. Clipped by an oncoming car that was trying to pass a semi, the bike’s gas tank had exploded. Thankfully it had been near empty.

He had gone flopping down the highway like a rag doll set aflame. He didn’t find the nickname funny, but like all nicknames it stuck regardless of his feelings. He could still see, in his memory, the bike bouncing along beside him in a shower of flame and sparks. It was a year in the hospital and a year of physical training, before he straddled a bike again. A bike modified to accommodate a one legged man. Two years he could not have survived with out the love of this woman.

Around the corner of the highway he finally spotted the cop’s cruiser, partially hidden behind the decorative bushes between the lanes. He had no real beef with the cops but still didn’t like them. They had been less than helpful at the scene of the wreck. Had tried to blame the accident on him for reasons he was still looking into. He couldn’t let it go. Too much had been lost in that wreck.

He throttled it up hard and loud when the cop was well behind them and she pulled in tight against his back. It felt so good to be on a bike again with her. He had taken that feeling, and her, for granted before the wreck. Thought he had lost her for sure but she had been sitting at his bedside when he finally came out of the comma.

He relived those last seconds, again and again; saw through the flames on his own body, her tumbling along beside him. (Thankfully, his own body had blocked her from the flames.) Heard once again his own desperate screams and in a strange tingling way, his scarred flesh felt again its repeated contact with the pavement. He had slid to a stop, bloody, still burning, still cursing, and watched her slide to a stop beside him. He had thought he had lost her for sure. It had hurt more than the seared skin, torn leg, and bones through his jacket.

He had remained conscious, briefly, there on the pavement, and had not then re-awakened again for a month. Scaring the staff, (but not her) half to death when he lurched up in the hospital bed screaming her name, still seeing his last sight before blacking out at the scene of the wreck. Still feeling the horror and loss as the big bike came down and crushed her to death. Ghost rider indeed he thought, and she hugged him tight.

© 2010, Brian Behr Valentine. All rights reserved.

Brian Behr Valentine

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