Ghost Bikes. A very short story.

Ghost bikes is what they called them and why not? Surely some spirits lingered nearby, still punch-drunk and confused as to how in one instant you could be swimming through that joyous sensation of having the sun on your back and the wind in your face, pedaling faster not because you need to get there any quicker — what’s the rush anyhow? — but because the road dipped under the Metra tracks up ahead and damn didn’t it feel good to make that green light and cruise right underneath the shadow of that thing at a million miles per hour, hearing the click, click, click of the gears echoing off the walls and drinkin’ in a sip of that cool air that’s been hanging in the shade of the overpass all afternoon, but instead of reaching the other side, instead of bursting back into the sunshine, you ended up here in this in-between upside-down world where everything was faded and washed out like a bad Instagram filter only you couldn’t keep swiping to find a brighter one, a more vibrant one, one that made the sky seem bluer and brought the color back into your cheeks because it was too late and the color would never come back to your cheeks because now you’re dead.

Ghost bikes. They didn’t really belong to the ghosts, though. Nope, the real bikes were too busted up and mangled to use, even as a sad makeshift memorial, the crook chain twisted into a clove hitch, silver spokes unhubbed and flayed out like a patch o’ switchgrass, and the derailleurs…well in retrospect they might should have named that particular invention something different, something that didn’t portend being derailed right from the start. Nope, these bikes were stand-ins, imposters, monuments of a sort, painted ghost white with cheap Krylon — the matte finish kind, ’cause what’s the point of a glossy headstone shimmering in the sun like a jackass when someone died, after all — and chained up to a light pole or street sign or fence post with flat tires that aren’t going anywhere that’s for sure (and how sad is that?) along with a wreath of polyester hydrangeas, all gossamer and mildewy, strung up on the handlebars with twisty ties taken from a pack of dollar store trash bags, and I suppose this is a bit like leaving the trash out on the curb, isn’t it?

Ghost bikes all over the city, especially on Ashland cause that thing’s a friggin speedway and who in their right mind would steer down that stretch of mad taxis, end-of-shift bus drivers, delivery trucks who honestly couldn’t give a flying fuck about “How’s My Driving” — go ahead and call that number on my bumper and while you’re at it, eat shit and die, I’ve got a schedule to keep or I’ma lose my job — and even worse, Ubers not knowin’ how to drive but knowing just fine how to stop in the middle of the goddamn street so their passengers can swing open the doors without even giving a thought as to who might be coming up behind them, who might be on their way somewhere, to see someone, who might just have plans to picnic in Lincoln Park but now those plans are ruined, along with everything else. All the plans are ruined.

Ghost bikes and why not ghost guns or ghost pills or ghost cancers, and why not ghost cars lining the highways like a pale parade of white horsepower, jammin’ up the traffic year after year like a malignant metastasis, a whole fleet of ivory effigies adrift on the Styx, painted and posted up like some kind of profane cenotaph for the dead, reminding people and passersby day in and day out of the sheer inhumanity of it all, but not in the pleasantly abstract and compassionate way a skilled eulogist would speak it, more like the way a coroner would draft an autopsy report, with unsparing rigor and specificity (cause of death: the frail frame of the tiny bicycle was no match for the fiberglass cannonball inconspicuously listed as a “late model sedan” in the accompanying police report).

Ghost bikes presiding over their corners like albino pan-handlers, begging for sympathy or remembrance or caution or vigilance or maybe all of the above and every little bit helps, thank you — no donation too small — even if it’s simply steeling yourself to stand right by them as the crosswalk signal counts down instead of inching away, even if its just tightening your grip on the handlebars of that 10-speed as you glide past or even if it’s just a quick glance down at the plastic reflectors crushed into the pavement like sidewalk chalk, still catching the headlights of some cars if the angle is just right, even months after the accident, lighting up the intersection with a prismatic sparkle like invisible ink whispering the secrets of the dead at least until the salt trucks come round in November.

Ghost bikes they call them and how cruel? Do the deceased move on from the crash-bang to the ER to the morgue to the cemetery, or are they tethered to the place where they first woke up dead, watching over the scene that was once them but is now an all-out spectacle with blue and red lights flashing, paramedics yelling, yellow tape flailing in the breeze, fire trucks pulling up — and what for? It’s a bicycle accident and in fact a fire wasn’t necessary to snuff this one out, thank you very much, the distracted driver did that just fine all by himself — and the crowds gathering to look, but not look too long because that kind of scene can burn into your retinas permanently and even as you’re seein’ it you know you’re never gonna forget it until the day you die, unless you’re the dead one, floating over the whole circus that was once you, trying to figure out what’s the point of forgetting — or remembering, for that matter — anyway, because now you’re dead and didn’t that mean your future and present-tense privileges had been revoked?

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