‘Bicycle Boy’ by Mateusz Urbanowicz
The Wishing Map is a full-length fantasy that is being posted episodically at this site. To read the previous episode, click here. To read the entire novel, begin here.
Chapter One
“Zachary Zinn rode like the wind on his faithful steed, El Furioso,” Zack narrated as he pedaled. Zachary Zinn wasn’t his real name, of course, it was his alter ego. Zinn, a super-hero with a crooked grin and muscles like veiny boulders, disguised himself as an ordinary kid (he bore a striking resemblance to Zack). And El Furioso was the winged, midnight-black demon stallion Zinn had saved from Hell.
Zack had been drawing pictures of ZZ and Fury for two years. One day he’d publish his first comic book, and the rest would be history. But in the meantime, he was Zachaeus Elliot Dore, named for the shortest guy in the Bible.
To Zack, imagination was everything, and pretend was the fountain through which imagination sprang to life, but recently that fountain had sprung a serious leak, and now he was desperately trying to repair it. That was why he was pedaling so intently toward Minzer Reservoir. Laced with wispy upside-down clouds floating in sky blue water, surrounded by the green-souled Kleemuk Hills, Minzer Reservoir was truly beautiful. But that wasn’t why Zack was headed there. It was because he hoped to find kids younger than himself to play with.
For the skeleton in Zack’s cupboard was that he still loved to pretend—deeply, desperately loved it. But when you’re almost thirteen, the list of guys your own age that are willing to play make-believe starts getting painfully short.
Zack’s mid-life crisis had begun a month ago when his best friend, a middle school giant named Arman Artunian, left for Armenia. “I gotta go hang out with foreigners I’m supposed to be related to,” Arman had complained. And now Arman, whom Zack had never passed more than two days without seeing, was gone—for nearly four months. It might as well be forever.
Zack was lost in thought, his principal address lately, as he pedaled down Third Street past Mike’s Bikes: Sales and Service that hot June morning.
Which may be why he failed to notice that the normally cheerful one-storey blue and yellow building that housed Mike’s Bikes had just risen six feet off the ground and was beginning to twist and maw at the air like a voracious cinderblock shark.
It should not have been able to do this, but there it was, salaciously sucking in everything around it. ZZ and Fury would have come to the rescue, of course, if their creator hadn’t…
Missed it all.
φ
Thoughts: Some people are realists, some are dreamers. The world needs both, of course. For without the former, the present goes to ruin. And without the latter, the future never arrives. Which are you?
To read the next episode, click here.
Mitch Teemley 
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A dreamer here, and not a realistic one.
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Me too, Gary.
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Reblogged this on OPENED HERE >> https:/BOOKS.ESLARN-NET.DE.
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I liked it. Always liked good fiction writers that capture me right away. Of course they have to for me because I have such a short time to get myself interested in a book. I am currently enamored of C.S. Lewis’ never-met-mentor, George MacDonald. Just one phrase hooked me on page one of ‘The Highlanders Last Song’ “Far in the distance, where the mountains and clouds have business together, it’s aspect rose to grandeur.” Stuff like that. more of the bicycle super hero please. Jack
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Teenage me can relate to Zack’s “skeleton in the closet.” Don’t worry kids, when you get older it becomes socially acceptable to play pretend again!
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Yay!
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😀
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Thanks for asking, Mitch! I am a drealist. That’s a cross between a dreamer and a realist. Okay, I’ll stop trying to be witty with you. I could never match your level of snarky. Anyway, I’ve heard dreamers and realists compared to conservatives and progressives (on the political spectrum). Without progressives, few would push the envelope —with fresh ideas— to improve society. But without conservatives, the stability of our traditional values would be lost. Then there’s the moderates, like you and me, who irritate both sides.😆
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Yep, politically, I’m one of those irritate-both-sides types, David (a reamer?).
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I’m both a dreamer and a realist, and the two impulses are always fighting with each other.
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There’s a saying that thoughts have wings which certainly validates another saying, time flies. How easy it is to get lost in thought. I would say that its a real spiritual journey. Have a good week Mitch!❤️🍮🍮
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You too!
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Always the realist. I call it being pragmatic. But also a possibilitarian. Maybe that’s a bit of a dreamer with hope attached.
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I like that term!
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