Bicycle

Flash Prompt Writing #15 Write a story that begins and ends with a bicycle
10/7/15 11:00 pm…15 minute timer.  (350 Words)

She could hear the dry rapid click of playing cards stuck into the tires of the small boy’s bicycle as he sped by.  She watched him go, delighted with himself for making his bike sound so cool.  The exciting on his face, the wind in his hair. Watching him was like looking at a postcard of early last century, idyllic.

Her mood was more chaotic than her surroundings on that peaceful street where the sunshine streamed down.  The light a little too bright causing objects on the street to take on the flat look of a tin type.  There were very few shadows, the colors washed out.  She could close her eyes and feel the adrenaline rush through her veins, her pumping heart giving away her racing mind.

Where had that man come from?  Just moments before, before the boy had filled her world with noise, she had been alone.  The street normal.  But then the flash and the man standing right in front of the trash can.  She was certain he hadn’t been there just a few moments before, and yet there he was.  Bowler hat, walking stick.  She had thought hysterically that he might just break into a lousy version of Putting on the Ritz.  And then the boy, the sound of his tires on the pavement, the incessant clicking of the queen of diamonds in the back tire.  She had been distracted for an instant, but when she looked again, the man in the bowler hat was gone.  Nowhere on the street, either to the right or left.

As she scanned the street, trying to see where the man had gone, she could hear the boy returning from around the block.  She glanced toward him as he rounded the corner, same face, crumpled in determination now.  Doing his best to double his speed.  As he rode toward the trash can, another flash, and silence.  In the split second of her blink, the boy was gone, in his place a bowler, with a queen of diamonds stuck in the brim, perched on the edge of the trash can.