\nI\u2019m seven when Mom gifts me Bicyclops, and Father calls me a stupid shit for giving my bike a name.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut my friend enjoys his name. Bicyclops is appropriate, because he has one eye, dead-center between the handles\u2014yellow with a gleaming eyelid he keeps shut around other people. The right handle is different, too: bulgy, enwrapped in purple cables, as if its plastic once boiled and froze in place.\n<\/p>\n
\nWhen I tell Mom about the eye, she presses it, producing a wheezing honk. She then presses the patch covering my own missing right eye, and says eyes and sockets don\u2019t honk, and that I better quit the creepy lies if I want to make friends at school.\n<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m angry at Bicyclops for hiding, allowing Mom to call me a liar, but I soon realize I\u2019m the fool. He is terrified people won\u2019t understand being different. Only I understand, because I know what that\u2019s like.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nMom once told me my right eye was taken as a toll. That gods lend souls to infants but they\u2019re never gifts. Sacrifice is necessary, and lacking money she offered my body part instead.\n<\/p>\n
\nBicyclops says it\u2019s hogwash. Life is not given nor borrowed. Life sprouts like apples on orchards and is stolen by hungry things for nourishment. I was the apple, Mom the orchard. Did that make Father the hungry thing?\n<\/p>\n
\nMy bike thinks otherwise. He thinks Father is like a gardener, trying to make Mom stronger by showering beer over her like watering a plant. And he beats her to make her bones snap and grow strong. These are the things Bicyclops tells me every night, when I sneak to the garage and lay by his cold wheels, allowing the click-click-clicking of his blinking eye lull me to sleep. The floor may be cold, and the smell of gas thick, but Mom\u2019s screams can\u2019t reach me here.\n<\/p>\n
\nWhen I ask Bicyclops why his right handle is different, he tells me about his previous owner, whose father was a gardener. Inspired by pruning branches, the daughter chopped the legs and arms from her dolls expecting them to grow stronger. They didn\u2019t. She enjoyed the abuse, but Bicyclops was too innocent to blame her. When she chopped off Bicyclops right handle with her father\u2019s shears, she ran away in horror from something Bicyclops couldn\u2019t understand. Poor bike had to nourish the sprouting handle on his own.\n<\/p>\n
\nOne night I ask Bicyclops, if pruning branches results in stronger ones, why has my eye not sprouted back?\n<\/p>\n
\nHe assured me the eye is growing, but it\u2019s still too small to feel. Like a tomato seedling, it throws off shoots that will ripen and bulge.\n<\/p>\n
\nI sure hope it does, but not as red and gross as a tomato. I hate tomatoes. I want it smooth and slick like a well-boiled egg.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nMom\u2019s eyelids twitch and lips quiver when I mention I\u2019m grateful she didn\u2019t buy some expensive soul-less bike but adopted <\/em>the discarded Bicyclops. Stupid me. Adults won\u2019t understand, they never do.\n<\/p>\n \nHow could I have known she didn\u2019t buy it? Now suspicion that my fantasies have truth in them turns to dreadful certainty, and she wants to get rid of Bicyclops, calling him unholy, satanic. I have to clasp my bike tightly to stop her taking him away. But I can\u2019t compete with adult strength, so I scream to the top of my lungs until she releases. She always buckles before my screams, because she wants to avoid gossiping neighbors.\n<\/p>\n \nBut there\u2019s no avoiding Father. He barges into the garage, demands explanation for disturbing his afternoon nap, and Mom points the finger at me. No, not at me\u2014at Bicyclops in my embrace.\n<\/p>\n \nFather calls her delusional, but to my surprise he doesn\u2019t hit her. He is amused, and grins at his own cruel humor: \u2018If the bike really talks, let\u2019s see if it bleeds, yeah?\u2019\n<\/p>\n \nMom retreats to the house, and I know not to scream with Father, because that always makes it worse. He yanks me off the bike, grabs Bicyclops by frame and saddle and shoves his foot between the wheel spokes. Nevermind how afraid I am of Father, I punch his leg to protect my friend. But a backhanded slap sends me sprawling on the floor, my tooth wounding my lip.\n<\/p>\n \nPushing with his leg, pulling with his arms, the rusty frame snaps in two.\n<\/p>\n \nAnd now Father\u2019s grin vanishes because his stupid joke turns to prophecy. The mangled bike gushes out viscous, sanguine liquid and Father panics and clumsily steps back, slipping on the pool of bike-blood. His head meets the floor with a gut-wrenching crack.\n<\/p>\n \n \nBicyclops might not be human, but he is a child like me, just more naive. Assuming the best in people, he still thinks Father pruned him to make him stronger. Why else would he sacrifice himself? A bike cannot understand adults that lose their balance.\n<\/p>\n \nHis saddle-half quickly wrinkles and smells like spoiled fruit, while the one connected to his eye grows again, the wounded pipe shoots out purple cables as muscles form in bubbles at the stem. But pruned branches need nourishment to grow strong, so I keep the garage door shut and Father\u2019s body tucked close to Bicyclops, so the cables can reach it.\n<\/p>\n \nMom visits the garage once and never again. She learned from Father to accept things that unsettle her instead of trying to stop them, which for once works in my favor.\n<\/p>\n \nI keep Bicyclops company at all times. This is a time for healing and he needs his friend. I\u2019ve pulled my mattress downstairs and let the slurping sounds of Bicyclops lull me to sleep at night as I watch the shadows of his growing muscles.\n<\/p>\n \nI smile, happy to see my friend healing. Happy my Father is of use to something positive for once. And happy to see my bike excited to try on new shapes. Because the pruned parts don\u2019t grow back quite the same.\n<\/p>\n In a cove of a Greek island, Akis was born a sane infant, but has since then grown to enter the chaotic world of adults—a choice he deeply regrets. Trying to gorge himself on this unlikely reality, he has lived in various European countries throughout his scientific career. He now studies biomedical AI, hoping there’s something less dystopian to come from this tech. His stories delve both into wholesome worlds and ones of extreme darkness. Read more from him in Apex, Dread Machine, Flame Tree and numerous anthologies. Visit his website for details: https:\/\/linktr.ee\/akislinardos<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m seven when Mom gifts me Bicyclops, and Father calls me a stupid shit for giving my bike a name. But my friend enjoys his name. Bicyclops is appropriate, because he has one eye, dead-center between the handles\u2014yellow with a gleaming eyelid he keeps shut around other people. The right handle is different, too: bulgy, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107948,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20133],"tags":[20134],"class_list":["post-140307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-50-winter-2024","tag-the-colored-lens-50-winter-2024","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107948"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140308,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140307\/revisions\/140308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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