A Bike Life

• Amelia Davies-waddell, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2012

Humans don’t appreciate bikes! They leave us chained to metal racks and they just expect us to sit for hours! At least I am not chained to a metal rack, no I am leaning against a brick wall in a dusty grim alley way. My human leaves objects on me, I am not sure if all humans do. Anyway today it is a hat and excruciatingly heavy bag. The biggest injustice is that humans get all the credit for going fast when it is our work! I can hear footsteps, soft footsteps. I can just make out a figure in the distance, as he looms closer and closer, a greasy oily man with untamed hair is revealed. He is unshaven and dirty and holding a worn-out bike helmet in his hands.

Suddenly the man grabs my handles, mounts my seat and begins to pedal. I have no choice but to obey. He is pushing me harder and harder, this is dreadful. The streets go by in a blur, I think I see a park, but in seconds it is gone! Eventually we begin to lose speed. We come to a halt just outside an old shack.

He wheels me inside, cobwebs coat the cracked, moldy walls. He raises a wrench. I am immediately flooded with fear. What’s he going to do? He begins to twist the wrench, until my tires is off I am in intense agony! He repeats the same horrific process on the other tire, without my tires I am nothing! Once work on both is done, he replaces them, with country tires. He once again wheels me outside and we are off.

He rides me at a greatly reduced pace this time, providing some relief. But it was short lived, he picks up pace riding faster and faster, through the country. It is becoming unbearable, as he rides I hastily think of a plan. The plan I had concocted broke about every bike law, but what else was left? I ring my bell several times. He ceases pedaling.
“Was that my bike?”
Well of course not, how could I be his bike? The momentary break was over, he resumed his journey.

We eventually emerge at a house. It was a large, dark house, yet the rooms were illuminated with a fluorescent glow. It seemed strangely familiar. A young girl flies out of the house. She stops and lays her eyes upon me, she gazes at me for a moment and then looks at my captor.
“Daddy, why are you so dirty?, You must go and wash yourself before our bike ride in the country!”
“Yes, Lia”
Lia? But wasn’t that? Then it dawned on me. That was my human’s daughter. It was my human all along. I feel so very embarrassed!