I jumped on the back of the motorbike, welcoming a ride to my hotel, after a long walk across the city in the sticky wet air. The bike was an old Honda that looked as if Mel Gibson had driven it through forty miles of bad desert road to meet Tina Turner, dressed in snake skins, at the edge of a metal-wire gladiator dome. The man driving it smelled of gasoline and sweat, his clothes covered in dirt and oil stains. He wore shades and a scarf over his mouth. I held the handle on the back of the banana seat, clenching my knees against the steel frame.
The wide roads of the city were compressed with thousands of motorbikes. There was a stray car or bus here and there, but mostly motorbikes, arm to arm across the width of the streets – no matter the street, and tire to tire up and down, forward and back. Engines buzzed about like hornets streaming from their nest toward some doomed prey. Bikes zig-zagged around, jumping in front of one another, breaking, shoulders bumping – but mostly horns honking. 'Beep! beep! beep!' was a constant. The whining screams of horns echoed from all directions and from beneath the engine that carried me home. The street noise was like a line of pinball machines, squealing honks, long and short, bouncing off one another's wheeled rides like tetras walls.
When bikes approached intersections they road straight through. There were no traffic lights or stop signs or conductors to organize the confluence of hornets that swarmed from three or four directions at one another. The slender vehicles - motors and rubber steel frames with fleshy limbs - interspersed among the narrow gaps, seemingly clasping like the fingers of folded hands. Some seemed to transparently pass through others like ghosts into fog, emerging on the other side unscathed. The swaying and acceleration was all I felt, not knowing if a sharp lean to the left or right would tilt back momentarily, or meet with a crushing end.
After a ten minute sojourn I was released to stand again on the sidewalk, out of the way of the flashes of motorized bolts and pipes careening about like cannon balls in an artillery barrage. I counted the bills to pay and looked at my driver. He raised his shades onto his head, looking straight at me with two sockets of dark, empty, bottomless craters. He smiled at me, gazing past at some infinite space beyond. I looked about nervously and saw other drivers getting off mechanized steeds all around me. They all wore scarves and shades. They all stumbled about, feeling for the edge of walls - some tripping over cracks in the sidewalk cement.
I gave my driver the money and hurried away. The bikes swarmed past me, barking ferociously, building into frenzies as they approached intersections, corners and one another.
"Motorbike...sir, sir, do you need a ride? Motorbike!" yelled a man leaning against another Honda as I walked the last two blocks to my hotel.
YOU ARE READING
Wicked Prompts
Science FictionThis is a collection of short-stories and flash-fiction. Each narrative is complete and independent, and can be read in any order. Although varying in length, they are all relatively short, to present a quick and fun read, while you're on the go. Ea...
