From My Notebook

Part 11; Incident

The Bike Path Incident

On a day just like this, there was an incident, only few know of, and that no one speaks of. It happened on a normal Wednesday, one where you would wake up and not expect a thing. Of course, a thing happened, or else I would not be telling you this story.

A young looking woman of around 30 years hops onto her mountain bike, ready to bike her way to the school where she teaches. She eaves her home expecting a nice calming ride as usual. Well, if speeding down the bike path is your definition in calming. What she does not expect, is that she will be rudely interrupted on her way.

As she goes along her way, she sees a few familiar faces, people who she just saw around school or who she actually taught. She gets closer and closer to school, and just as she begins to see the sports fields looming in the distance, an angry dog comes running out of the bushes, stopping her from continuing for fear of running the dog over. The dog barks loudly, reminding her of something from her past. The dog seems familiar too, but she just can't seem to place it. She turns to her left and sees a new patch of graffiti: a porcupine, with spines a bristle.

The porcupine makes everything fit together. The pieces fall together and the puzzle is complete. The young woman looks back at the dog, and perhaps it was only her imagination, but she could swear she saw three distinct patches of holes in the dogs fur where porcupine bristles were pulled out. She runs to the dog she though dead, her mountain bike forgotten on the side, and hugs him. "Sam," she says, her voice catching in her throat. As she says the word, the dog begins to disappear from within her very arms. Sam's ghost is gone, the final act of love he needed from his once child owner completed, Sam can move on to his next life, untroubled and satisfied with his last ghostly memory of Amelia, the now grown up girl who once cared for him on the other side of the country. In the background, the porcupine fades away, although the memory of both this incident and every other happening with her dog, no matter how dumb he acted, is forever imprinted in her mind.

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So, Friday rule out the window, here's another story. It's a little vague because it's based on stories my english teacher told us this year, and so it's a whole lot easier to understand if you've heard the stories, but I though it came out quite well, so I thought I'd share it. The basics of the dog is that Sam sat on a porcupine three times and never learned his lesson, and well, he died so yeah... And then she's told us about how she zooms down the bike path on her mountain bike so the story just told itself there. Hopes you enjoyed.