Hitchhiker – A suspense thriller short story
Photo credit: Seemann from morguefile.com
It was reddish sunny winter evening. The one that inspire us not to be inside our home. I love bicycle riding in such evenings, especially when cool breeze flows through me while riding. I have even bought the best bicycle I can buy with ultralight weight and wide wheel and 18 gears.
After repeated try at doing exercise in the early morning and failing to do so, I at last had settled for this routine. I usually come back from office at around 5, change cloths, drink some juice or other liquid and go for a bicycle ride. Since our family have recently changed our home to a little bit outskirt of the developing city, the area was new to us. That gave me advantage of riding through relatively quiet and less trafficked area than usually dusty and polluted roads in the city. daily I would explore different path just to get familiar with the road around my house.
Everybody has some rules regarding bike riding, to brake or jump the bump, to brake or to curve, to give lift to some hitchhiker or not. I am very strict about not giving lift to anybody in the car. I have applied same rule to the bicycle too.
Hence, when the lady on the roadside asked for lift surprised me as it was bicycle and not some car. I could not pin point what but there was some different about that lady, may be color of her dress, or may be the way she was standing or something else may be. I ignored her and went ahead to the new road that was just built the day before.
As a newly rolled asphalt road it was quite pleasing to ride on it. but soon I lost my enthusiasm as that road ended just after 200 meter. I was surprised as why to roll a road when it is not going anywhere in the first place. I criticise the government for spending money on such stupid thing and doing work on wrong priority and headed to return to find some another road.
As I came to the place where lady asked me for lift, I was bit surprised to find that she too has changed the direction and was again asking for lift. Hitchhiking at its worst. Why a person want to go both ways ? anyway, I was too busy criticising the government for wasting my money, so I ignored her and went ahead. than suddenly It struck to me that she was not asking for lift, she was denying me to go ahead. Now I understood why she was signalling no when I went to that road. But why now ? Why she crossed the road and again denying the same thing ? “why should I stop ? is she my wife ?” I thought and went just ahead.
As I went ahead around 50 meter, same thing happened again. The same lady was there and denying me to go ahead. I got scared a little bit. How come she travelled faster than me ? and Whats her problem ? Any way I tried to ignore her and move bicycle closer to center of the road in order to avoid her. But the curiosity compelled me to slow the bicycle and look at her. That was the scariest face I have ever seen. She was probably a man. May be not. Both eyes were independent of each other. She was smiling at me. May be not. I couldn’t tell from her face. But I got really scared after that, and flee.
I was riding with all the efforts I could muster, really trying hard, but somehow I could feel the weight of my bicycle increasing. It was becoming harder to ride faster. I was breathing heavily. taking long inhale and exhales. inhale. exhale. inhale. exhale. The realisation came in an instant that the sound of inhale and exhale was not coming from my lungs but there was someone sitting behind my bicycle and was breathing heavily. I jumped, lost control of bicycle, fall flat on the ground, stood up and ran as hard as I can without looking behind.
After may be an age, but in actually less then 10 seconds, when I realised that no body was coming behind, I stopped to breathe and looked back. The scene I saw, I will remember for a life time.
Both lady were going together, on the bicycle, laughing at me and stealing my loved bicycle.
