Page 1 of Devil Inside

prologue: fixed gear

Jordan

Let me tell you about the day I died.

First pickup gets called in at—get this—7:58. The caffeine from my red eye has barely hit my bloodstream when my radio starts blowing up with a rush delivery. Some startup needs me to pony express a package down to Shockoe Bottom in the next thirty.

Not impossible. I just wish I could sit here with the Saddle Sores and sip what’s left of my double-barrel espresso. Get this day-old bagel down before kicking off my day.

So it goes.

The crew all meets up in Carytown. We chain our bikes together in a spinal column of fixed gears and hunker down on the curb for some quality pre-clocking-in time.

“First round’s on me,” I offer up.

“You shouldn’t have,” Deak says.

“What’s mine is yours.” Which is to say we’ve all got a lot of nothing. I definitely can’t afford anything in Carytown. All these shops are way overpriced. Chichi boutiques, home décor emporiums, fancy candles. This block of Richmond is for theSouthsiders who want to cross the James River, slip into the safest stretch of downtown, and shop till they plop.

Our bike crew is definitelynotCarytown clientele. Even the coffee is too expensive. Luckily, we’ve got Jenn—darling, angelic Jenn—hooking us up whenever she opens.

Betsy’s Coffee Shop is situated right at the corner of Cary and S. Auburn. Betsy always turns a blind eye to Jenn doling out the Danishes nobody else wants to eat. She’s got a soft spot for couriers. Who can blame her? We’re sweating charm out of every pore.

On the mornings Jenn opens the store, she’ll serve us all up a cup and hand out whatever didn’t get eaten the day before, as long as we tipsomething. We’ve become intimately aware of her work schedule because, well... we all need to eat, now, don’t we?

There’s four of us most mornings. Couriers come and go, depending on how many bones get broken—all in a day’s work—but when it comes to the true hardcore Saddle Sores, you’ve got me, Deak, Lysistrata, and Freel. We’ve been riding through Richmond for the last couple years, all of us working for the same messenger company—Hell on Wheels—divvying the city up into sections and delivering whatever needs dispatching that day. Hell of a lot faster than UPS. Fuck FedEx. These streets are ours.

We all meet in the morning, smoke a cig, down some fresh joe until our throats burn, throw bagel bricks at each other, hacky sack that shit for a bit before gearing up and go go going. The others never notice why I’m always the first to arrive when we meet at Betsy’s. The assumption is I’m punctual. The truth is, I’ve been waking up next to Jenn.

“Your friends still don’t know about us, do they?”

“Friends?” I muttered into the pillow, still not entirely present. Waking up is not a strength of mine, I’ll admit. The ache of the day carries over. Drains me. All that riding.

“Your bike buddies.”

“Bike buddies? What are we? Ten?”

“Sure act like it.”

Earlier this morning, not two hours ago. I was still half asleep, tangled up in her bedsheets, face buried in her pillow. She’s already getting dressed, a breath away from heading out the door. I’m not getting the message that I’m supposed to move my ass. Her roommates don’t take too kindly to unchaperoned beaus wandering about the apartment. Particularly ones who raid the fridge in everyone’s absence, draining the OJ in their boxers.

“You ever gonna tell them?” Jenn slips on a collared shirt. She keeps her ink where her sleeves swallow them up, a barricade of cotton tucking her tattoos out of sight whenever she’s at work, as if she has to hide them from her customers. Hide herself.

“What’s there to tell?” I rub my face, feeling that sandpaper scrape.

“Really? So that’s how you feel about me?”

It’s not like I’ve been purposefully keeping her a secret. Not entirely, at least. The truth is it’s hard to bring someone into this riding lifestyle who isn’t a lane drifter already.

I’m not about to get all mystical here, but I will say this:Riding is a way of life.

My life, at least.

It’s difficult to explain to someone who isn’t a part of this world. To most folks, we’re just a nuisance. People see nothing but a bunch of punks on their bikes, tearing through traffic. They don’t know what it’s like to feel the tug of gravity on their fixed gear, weave down the street through the flow of vehicles, drifting along all that metal, glass, and steel. Like riding with whales. The behemoths of the streets. Your pulse picks up and you know,you just know, you’re not simply riding your bike through the city... you’re gliding along the borderline between life and death, racing against your own mortality. The Grim Reaper’s at your back, chasing you down on his pale little pony, and you’re simply kicking his ass, blue ribbon-style. Bike couriering isn’t just a job, it’s the only way I know how to feelalive.

How can I share that with someone who doesn’t ride?

“I thought I was pretty up-front about what this was gonna be...”