The illumination from the streetlights was more than enough to see by, even after the intense electric glare of the subway station. But the addition of the subtle light of the full moon added a certain something to the night that Alex Johnston had always thought special, almost ethereal in nature.
Even now she marvelled a little at the way in which the moonlight seemed to erode the clean and ever so modern edges of the nondescript Yokohama street, eating away a part of the very real and practical nature of the architecture of concrete and glass with its natural beauty.
Alex walked from the entrance of the subway station to the edge of the kerb and had to shake herself out of contemplation of the moon and its light to check the road before she crossed. But there was no traffic in either direction, no sounds of any vehicle in the road.
If she was honest, there was so little sound at all that it lent more strength to the fanciful potency she liked to ascribe to the moonlight, as if it had blanketed the entire city and blotted out the noise and bustle that was more the norm and replaced it with simple silence.
She crossed the road, lost in the reverie of the moonlight and trying to use the calmness it inspired to wash away the frustration that her evening at work had created. Nothing more than she was used to if she was honest, a puzzled salaryman staring back at her from the other side of a desk, glancing down at a business card in his hand and then back up at her as though she had two heads. The agency was supposed to be clear when dealing with potential clients and explain that in the West her name was not exclusively masculine in nature for the sake of avoiding just that situation. But sometimes it just did not get done and then rather than deliver a tutorial of English as a second language, she had to deal with the fallout. The problem was only made worse by the fact that she was of Asian descent herself, which meant that many less modern Japanese men treated her with the traditional condescension reserved for their female compatriots.
But the appointment was over, she had made the best of a bad situation and she was on her way home in the moonlight, so the evening had not been a complete disaster.
Alex stopped a few feet from the other side of the street as a sudden noise shattered the calm silence of the night. It was the unmistakable screeching roar of a motorbike engine followed by the sound of tyres protesting at the forces grinding them down on the surface of the road.
The bike came round the corner of the intersection perhaps fifty feet down the road from where she was standing and at such a speed that it almost slid sideways into the frontage of the nearest buildings. It came so fast and in such a confusion of sound and speed that Alex had no time to react or even think about removing herself from its path.
One moment the bike was there, frozen in her vision and the next Alex was staring up at a random collection of concerned faces that hovered over her, exchanging hurried words with one another.
“Are you alright?” one of the faces that belonged to an elderly man asked her.
Alex nodded and sat up, her head spinning all the time.
“That crazy man came out of nowhere,” tutted a rather rotund woman, “we were worried that he had killed you!”
“No,” Alex performed a quick assessment of herself, “I think he just clipped me.”
The small crowd fussed over her for another ten minutes until it became clear that she was indeed fine, no one had noted the registration of the bike and in any event the victim was not keen to press charges. Once the potential of righteously indignant drama had passed, Alex was able to thank her flock of helpers and make her way to her apartment block that was no more than two streets away from where she had tried to cross the road.
A familiar sight on the forecourt of the apartment building and in front of the small row of garages that served some of its residents cheered Alex up and at the same time reminded her of the fact that she had almost been seriously hurt doing something so mundane as crossing the road. In all the time she had been living in the building, she could not remember a single day when she had not seen her neighbour from across the hall outside and tinkering with his beloved scooter.
As usual, Kanta was oblivious to her presence, wrapped up as he was in whatever small thing needed to be done to make sure his scooter ran perfectly. Alex smiled as he wiped a smear of grease and oil across his forehead in consternation and then groaned in dismay as he saw the state of his hand. Alex was under no illusion as to the fact that she found him attractive; he was handsome and sweet in a somewhat innocent way and far too caught up in his interests to be aware of the fact that a woman might look twice at him. Part of her wondered if there was anything else in the world that he was as devoted to as the maintenance of his scooter.
“It’s after eleven at night, Kanta,” she took great pleasure in the look of shock that crossed his face when he realised he was not alone, “shouldn’t you be in bed by now?”
“Not when I’m so close to nailing whatever’s making that damn rattling sound,” he rubbed his hands on his overalls and shook his head. “And never mind me, why aren’t you in bed?”
“So you’d like to know when I’m in bed?” Alex raised an eyebrow.
“What?” Kanta looked suddenly shocked and embarrassed, “No, of course not…I’ve never even thought about your bed, didn’t even know that you had one!” He grimaced as the reality of how stupid he sounded sank in.
“Just don’t stay up all night,” Alex laughed as she opened the door to the lobby, “you need your beauty sleep!”
That night Alex slept soundly and dreamed deeply of curving mountain roads and exhilarating speed, buoyed up on the natural high of adrenaline. She swept along the precarious ribbon of tarmac, the surface of the road so close that she could almost feel it brush against her cheek as she rounded one tight bend after another. In the true nature of dreams, Alex was never sure whether she was feeling the sensation of riding some kind of terribly fast vehicle or was supposed to be flying, unaided over the distances that she covered.
When she woke the next morning, the impression of the dream had faded like colours washed out by the rain, but they returned the next night and the night after that.
The nature of the recurring dream may have eluded Alex in her waking hours, but every night she thundered down the same roads and through the same mountain forests; and in those hours, nothing mattered but the road, speed and the freedom they brought her.
A month had passed, or perhaps four weeks when Alex found herself standing in front of the full length mirror in her apartment, locked in the eternal debate that most women have endured at one time or another in their time upon the face of the planet. That was of course the debate as to whether the dress that she had bought whilst riding a wave of bravado did or did not in reality make her look as though her virtue was far more easy than she would have liked.
The garment in question was silver in colour and could best have been described as a dress that did not come near the neck or the knee, but instead made a point of remaining as close to the waist as possible. At the same time it fitted very well and had someone other than Alex been looking at her reflection, they would have most likely commented that she wore it very well.
As it was, Alex was sure it made her look cheap.
But then she balanced her fears against the fact that tonight was the first date she had been on in months and at a time when her social life as virtually non-existent, could she really afford to be such a puritan when it came to what she wore? If it came down to contact with other sane human beings outside of work whilst looking everything was there on a platter and blowing it dressed as a nun, then she was going to be laid out on that damn platter with a big smile on her face.
She finished the outfit with a pair of black tights and high heels, fixed her makeup, tied up her hair and grabbed her purse before hurrying out of the door.
In the hallways she was greeted with the sight of Kanta chatting with Mrs Tokoro in a quiet, typically Japanese manner. Both turned at the sound of her door and smiled politely at her. The elderly lady said something that escaped Alex’s command of Japanese as it always did due to the fact that Mrs Tokoro had moved to Yokohama from one of the rural areas swallowed by the unstoppable advance of the vast metropolis that was Greater Tokyo and had brought her village’s particular dialect with her. Kanta translated as he always did, having explained to Alex in the past that his own grandparents had spoken a similar dialect when he was a child.
“Mrs Tokoro says that you are looking very…healthy tonight,” Kanta, as always was being diplomatic when wording his translation of the old woman’s comments. Alex had come to the conclusion that Mrs Tokoro tended to be more blunt with her comments towards the young foreigner as a result of an odd mixture of the common indulgence that most Japanese showed to the odd habits of those from other nations and the plain-speaking nature of life in the kind of small village she had lived most of her life in. Tonight she reasoned that Mrs Tokoro had seen the dress she was wearing and simply assumed that it was what a foreigner would wear under the circumstances and tried to comment that she was wearing it well.
“Thank you,” Alex nodded respectfully as the old woman returned the gesture.
“Ah,” Kanta went on, “she also kindly requests that if you are in later tonight, that you not play your western heavy rock metal so loudly.”
“Play my what?” Alex shook her head at Kanta as she made her way down the hall to the lift.
“I think Mrs Tokoro may be a bit confused, but some of the other residents have been meaning to ask that you try to keep the noise down a little at night,” he followed her to the lift, trying to keep his voice to a whisper. “Some people are starting to say that you are keeping them awake.”
“I don’t understand,” the doors to the lift opened and she stepped inside with Kanta right behind her, “I’ve been so tired these past few weeks that I’ve just collapsed into bed every night.”
“Perhaps you have left you television or stereo on?”
“I could have,” Alex considered the possibility, “anyway, tell them I’m sorry and I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“I will,” Kanta paused as they walked out of the lift and Alex made her way to the door, “there was just one thing.”
“What?”
“I would not have thought you were into motorbikes.”
“What does that mean?”
“Mrs Tokoro may be hard of hearing, but I’m not and I know the sound of an engine when I hear one. The sounds that I heard coming from your apartment were the sounds of a motorbike engine. I just would not have thought you were interested in watching something of that nature.”
“And you’d have been right!”
Kanta looked disappointed with the answer, as though he had been expecting her to say something else entirely. But Alex put it out of her mind as she made her way to the subway station.
The moon was full again and the moonlight back to spread its magical glow.
Alex still could not believe she had actually ended a date by pouring Miso soup into the lap of her supposed company for the evening. It was something that she had never thought herself capable of and while the recipient of the crotch scolding broth had more than deserved it, on one level at least it had been a waste of a good bowl of soup.
But he had deserved it; there was no doubt in her mind about that.
On paper it had all sounded well and good, another ex-pat, an acquaintance of a colleague who was according to all accounts quite a catch. In the flesh he had turned out to be an obnoxious character convinced of his own charms and carrying the unpleasant impression of an overgrown high school jock that had never really woken up to the fact that the real world was not interested in his moronic opinions and borderline racist views on the people of the nation he was a guest in.
The worst part was that he seemed to be under the impression that he was doing a favour to a charity case in sitting down to dinner with her and that she should be grateful.
Things might have been bad in her private life, but there was no way they were that bad.
So when the ever so polite waiter delivered the soup to the table she had steeled herself, put down enough to cover her part of the bill and simply tipped the contents of the bowl into his lap before walking out without taking the time to watch his reaction.
As she closed the apartment door she came to the conclusion that it was more gratifying to remember the sound of his surprised shock than the yelps of pain as the piping hot liquid seared his groin.
Alex dropped her purse on the table in the small hallway, kicked off her shoes and made her way into the bathroom to remove her makeup.
It was as her stocking-clad feet touched the cold tiles on the bathroom floor that she felt the first strange sensation of heat on the palms of her hands. She glanced down at them and saw that there was no hint of them being red from irritation and no sign of perspiration, but the sensation was still there and becoming more pronounced all the time. She ran her hands under cold water in the sink, but there was no relief from the heat she felt in them.
Suddenly Alex gasped in shock as what appeared to be a drop of silver liquid became visible in the centre of each palm. She glanced up to the ceiling, but there was nowhere the liquid could have dropped from to land on her upturned hands. When she looked back down the drops has grown into small puddles that were spreading across the skin of her hands as she watched. The oddest thing was that the liquid seemed to be welling out from the centre of her palms, as if it were emerging from beneath her skin. Soon the warm liquid had covered both of her hands, coating them like a surreal pair of gloves and started to creep up her forearms as well.
Rather than panic, Alex groaned in frustration.
Not enough that he has to be a damn idiot, she thought, but he has to spike my drink as well!
She was convinced that it was too late to make herself throw whatever the lowlife had doped her with up by drinking saltwater, but there was no way that she wanted to call an ambulance either. Afraid of answering questions about how she had come to be taking something that was making her hallucinate so wildly, Alex had no idea how the authorities would react to her predicament.
The only solution was to ride this thing out, though she had no idea of what to expect due to a very limited experience of mind-altering substances.
By the time she glanced back to her hands, the silver liquid had reached all the way up past her elbows where it had stopped for the moment. But the same was not true of her hands, there the liquid had begun to swell and shift so that it was covering her fingers, pulling them together into a pair of fists from which she could not release them no matter how hard she tried. At the same time she felt the liquid coating her arms becoming stiff and rigid, forcing both limbs to adopt a straight and unbent position.
A thin stream of liquid from both of her hands defied the laws of gravity and dropped horizontally towards each other to meet in the space between and started to twine together. The mass grew as it span and began to stretch out into a shape that resembled at first simply a lump, and then a plate or a pair of cymbals pressed together. Soon it became more and more defined and Alex was able to make out what looked like thin metal wires extending from the centre of the mass to the outer edge. From that same edge she began to see a black band emerge from the silver that encircled the whole of the outer rim of the disc.
As a pattern of grooves appeared on the black band, Alex realised that it was a tyre and the metal wires were spokes.
The disc was a wheel.
She was hallucinating that she had grown a wheel!
As the silver liquid formed a fender over the top of the wheel, break pads and other complicated mechanical parts that she could not have named, Alex marvelled at the strange things that the human mind could conjure up in an altered state. When the tyre of the wheel brushed against the sink, she almost laughed as she felt the cold porcelain as if she had touched it with her own hand.
But then she reminded herself that she had actually done that in reality as the wheel was really her hands after all.
It was that thought that sent a bolt of realisation through Alex; she might not have known much about getting high, but she was sure when you were the last thing that you were capable of were such clam and insightful thoughts as those.
Alex was distracted from the ever more complex nature of the thing that her arms were busy turning into by a sudden sensation, once again of heat, but this time from the region of her abdomen. Her transformed arms were unable to reach for the edge of her dress, but she saw that lifting it to investigate the sensation would have been pointless anyway as the garment was starting to shrink, as though it were being unravelled from reality and simply disappearing into thin air. At the same time it had begun to cling ever more tightly to her torso, as if it were becoming like a second skin. The dress ceased to shrink when it had come within an inch or two of the underside of her breasts, clinging to her as what now resembled a silver top barely able to keep her decent. Finally the stretchy fabric hardened until it became as thick and stiff as plastic.
Now that her stomach was exposed, Alex saw a jumble of complex, chrome coloured pipes and valves had emerged from her navel and spread out across her belly like a metallic spider web. As she watched the collection of metallic elements quickly grew in size and knitted together to form what could only be an engine. As the engine grew in size it also grew in weight and Alex was forced to at first bend over and finally descend to her knees.
As her front wheel touched the floor of the bathroom she pushed and shuffled forwards into the hallway, feeling the sensation of the change from tiles to imitation wood as much in the tyre and underside of the engine as she did in her stocking-covered legs.
No sooner had she managed to make it into the hall, Alex felt the same sensation of heat begin to emanate from her most intimate of parts, spreading to her buttock and forcing her to arch her back as much as she was able. Prevented from glancing back far enough to see, she only felt the changes that were taking place back there.
A skin of smooth, black material had emerged from the region of her crotch, stretching around her waist from both sides to form a belt that encircled her middle. From there it expanded to cover her lower back and buttocks like a pair of skin-tight shorts. The material stopped just below Alex’s buttocks and began to harden into a texture that looked to the naked eye to be soft and inviting leather. Alex felt the tightness of the material as it set and pressed upon her intimate regions, the warmth and liquid sensations overwhelming her for a moment. And then there was the bizarre but inescapable impression that the organs of her abdomen had also become affected by the process, somehow melted and softened enough that they yielded to the strange movement of the black liquid and shifted position to allow it to progress. Confused and freaked out as she was Alex was also sure that things that normally had a very familiar order in her underwear had been given a new arrangement.
Once the sensations from her posterior had calmed down, Alex was able to guess what had happened to her in that area. She did not need to see her reflection to know that the process had transformed her lower back and buttocks into an imitation of the leather upholstered seat of a motorbike. Where there would have been the simple affair of a cushion for the rider, Alex instead had the curve of her buttocks beneath the leather of the seat to serve in the same way.
Before she could come to terms with the realisation that she was now partially upholstered in what looked like black leather, Alex felt that same heat in her ankles and was almost willing the sensation to move faster as it crept upwards to her knees simply to get the thing over with. Soon her legs stiffened in the same way her arms had, but these limbs were set at something that resembled a forty five degree angle. She lost the sensation of her feet as something expanded out behind her and as she felt her legs lift off the ground she realised it was a rear wheel to match the front one.
Gravity seized her new shape and the bottom of Alex’s engine thumped onto the floor as her back arched and her wheels shot in opposite directions. But as if in answer to her plight, she felt a stiffening in her back and gasped in shock as her spine seemed to become rigid, pulling her errant wheels back towards her centre and lifting the bottom of her engine off the floor once more.
The rest of the changes that followed were only glimpsed by Alex as she wrestled with the enormity of her predicament. Runners and a frame grew from her chest to better support the weight of her body. Exhaust pipes crept along the side of her back legs. Dials and readouts emerged from between her shoulder-blades and a rear light emerged from her backside while twin lamps at the front sprouted from her breasts. Handlebars emerged from her shoulders and soon her altered body sported all the elements that would have graced a real motorbike.
Alex tried to move, but found that she could not shift any portion of her body save for her head.
Frustrated, she let out a grunt of annoyance that became a squeak of alarm as her engine growled in response and the mechanical elements of her body suddenly came to life.
The feeling was like nothing Alex had felt before in her life, as if a wholly new part of her being had sprung into being in that second. More than simply feel through the new parts of her body, she was able to control them as easily as she might normally have her arms and legs. But the most overwhelming element was the engine; Alex felt it purr, ripple and surge with a strength that was in no way part of a human sensation. There was power and speed in that engine and she could feel the potential running through her veins as it throbbed beneath her.
What, Alex yanked her thoughts away from the sensation of the engine, what am I doing cooing over how much horsepower this thing has? She shook her head. I’m a damn human motorbike for the love of god! At the worst I’m going to be dissected in some lab; at best I could be a novelty sideshow at a racetrack!
Alex decided that what she needed was help and there was only one person that she would even entertain the thought of seeking out.
Kanta was right across the hallway and there was a slim chance that he might do something other than freak out and die of a brain haemorrhage when he saw her, that was if she could get to him.
Her first obstacle was the front door. Alex had no idea how a motorbike was supposed to go about using a door that had been designed for a bipedal human being. So in the end she decided to throw caution to the wind and herself at the door.
Alex experimented moving herself backwards and forwards on her wheels, a little further and faster with each change of direction. She found that her balance was instinctive and the movement of her new wheels was as well.
Soon she was confident enough to make an attempt at the door, but at the last moment she somehow turned what was supposed to be a smooth roll forwards into a sudden charge at a frightening speed.
Alex pulled up instinctively to shield her face as she would have done had she still possessed what passed for normal arms. In response her body rose up onto the back wheel and the entire weight of her frame made contact with the door, which burst from its hinges and went flying off to one side.
The run of luck continued in the briefest of moments that it took for Alex to cross the width of the corridor as it was at that precise moment that Kanta chose to open his own front door to see what was causing such a commotion outside.
Without stopping, Alex shot past him and straight into the hallway of his apartment. She executed a wild swerve into his small sitting room and miraculously managed to come to a halt without smashing into the bookshelves and cabinets that lined the walls.
As silence descended, Alex heard the front door of the apartment close slowly and then there was silence save for the low purring of her engine and what she took to be Kanta’s breathing in the hallway.
“Kanta?”
Alex knew that there was really nothing that she could say to open the floor up for this conversation, but she had to start somewhere.
“Alex,” Kanta sounded like he was recovering from an impromptu hundred metre dash, “why are you in my apartment late at night and why…why, if I many ask, do you seem to be a motorbike?”
“Kanta,” this time when Alex said his name it was as the start of a release of emotion that ran out of her control, “I don’t know what’s happening to me…Kanta, I’m scared.”
Alex let out a sob that she tried to bite back, but then she was overwhelmed and began to cry in earnest.
Tears ran down her cheeks, but she was unable to wipe them from her face.
But then she felt the touch of a soft tissue against her cheek and looked up to see Kanta trying to dab the rivulets of moisture from her face.
“This is not some kind of television prank show, is it?” he asked her as he bent down to her level.
Alex shook her head.
“My parents always told me that foreign girls were strange,” Kanta shook his head, “but I see now that they had no idea.”
Alex laughed through her tears, appreciating the typically dry and subtle Japanese humour. Despite everything it had sparked hope inside her that Kanta had tried to comfort her and his joking meant that he was at least trying to come to terms with what had happened to his neighbour.
As he was drying her tears, Alex caught Kanta’s eyes wandering over her in what she took to be a mix of disbelief and fairly typical male addiction to the sight of the female form. Part of her supposed that she should be irate and yelling at him, but for the most part she was amazed at the capacity of the opposite sex to be distracted by such things even in these circumstances.
If Alex was totally honest though, there was another part of her that was secretly gratified in the strangest of ways that she had Kanta’s attention. There was the little thrill of knowing that she was drawing his attention to the lines of her body and the curves of her form.
For a moment it seemed that he would reach out and put a hand on the side of her seat nearest to him and she unconsciously willed him on…but then he stood and the spell was broken.
“Goodness,” Kanta let out a long breath, “I mean, I had heard the stories…but those were just, well…stories!”
“What stories?” Alex seized upon the mention of something that might be more than shock in Kanta’s statement.
“Ah,” he rubbed the back of his head, “whenever you get people together in groups they always start to make their own stories, like legends that they pass on and that grow as they go from one person to another. The mechanics and tinkerers that are into bikes have them as well. Rubbish, I thought, until tonight. There was one that started in these parts a long time ago, back when there were still villages and country roads around here. People say that the first person to own a motorbike drove it too fast and killed himself on the narrow roads and that his spirit still rides the streets on a full moon and tries to pass his curse on to another person.”
“Last full moon, “Alex shook her head in disbelief, “I was hit by a bike that came out of nowhere!”
“You don’t think?”
“What else could this be?”
“But it is just a story.”
“This isn’t a story,” Alex revved her engine in frustration, “I’m a god damn were-bike!”
“If that’s so,” Kanta bent down to her again, “then perhaps it is like the movies; perhaps you will turn back when the sun comes up?”
“We could just wait it out.”
“No,” Kanta shook his head, “people will have heard you, they will start knocking on my door and asking questions and if they see you I have no idea what will happen.”
Alex looked at him for a solution.
“You will have to ride away from here and return once you have become normal again,” she noted that Kanta glossed over the fact that neither of them had a clue as to whether she would return to normal with the rising of the sun.
“I can’t,” Alex glanced around, “I nearly ran you over going the few feet from my apartment to yours.” She felt colour rising in her cheeks before she managed to ask the question she knew was inevitable. “Kanta, will you ride me out of here?”
If she had coloured with the request, Kanta positively flushed. But then she saw a change come over him as if he had reached down somewhere deep inside and found a hidden resolve. Suddenly the awkward young man was replaced by a resigned and focussed one.
“Of course,” he said as if there had never been a question of the matter.
“One thing, Kanta,” Alex chewed her lip as she phrased the next question in her mind, “don’t take this the wrong way or think that I’m making more of myself than I should…but you ride a scooter, do you really think that you can handle…well, me?”
“That is irrelevant,” Kanta replied in his new idiom as a rock-solid and reliable male, “I have to ride you and I will.”
“Then I suppose you’d better climb on board,” Alex felt embarrassed to be saying the words, but there was no other way to put it.
“I have to say,” Kanta paused as he pulled on his leather jacket and scooped up a helmet from the floor, “if you’ll forgive me.” He fumbled in his jeans pocket. “Alex, you do make a strangely beautiful motorbike.”
Alex wondered if that was the single oddest compliment that any woman had received in the course of human history. But she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror as Kanta pulled on his helmet and made his way across the room and was forced to admit that he did have a point.
Her transformation had left her seeming to kneel on all fours, supported by her frame and wheels. But the shape of her body was very much intact and her curves and lines were very feminine as they had always been. Her breasts nestled in the plastic of her torso, the rounded leather shape of her buttocks were graceful and the tights that she had worn still covered her thighs below.
Alex supposed she really did make quite an impressive machine.
She was pulled away from her reflection by the weight on her lower back as Kanta swung his leg over her and gently sat down on the leather of her seat. Alex felt the suspension in her legs give under his weight and the pressure on the springs that she realised must be concealed beneath her skin. But on a more human level, she felt the weight and warmth of his body as he sat on top of her buttocks and his legs gripped tightly around her sides.
He put his hands on her handlebars and experimentally twisted her throttle.
The feeling was like nothing that Alex had experienced in her life before. She had found that she had the ability to operate her own mechanical functions pretty much by will alone, but this was something very different indeed. It was comparable to the difference between pleasuring herself and the act of making love with a partner with whom she was in almost complete synchronicity. When Kanta revved her throttle, he did so based on the long years he had spent immersed in the art of the mechanical tinkerer and the instinctive hints that he heard from Alex’s engine. He manipulated her throttle in a way that spoke to the rhythm of her body and made her engine purr like a satiated cat.
“We go down the corridor and into the lift,” Kanta stated in a matter of fact way, “it’s large enough to take a bike.”
“You’re sure?”
“I once thought about trying to sneak a bike up here in parts when I ran out of space in my garage,” Kanta sounded a little guilty at the admission, “I measured the interior to make sure it would fit.”
“What then?”
“Then we reverse out and drive through the lobby and out of the door as fast as we can without killing someone on the way!”
“But what if someone sees us?”
“We cannot get out of the building without there being a chance someone will see something, but if we are quick and do not stop then maybe they will not be sure of what they have seen apart from a mad man riding a motorbike inside the building?”
“I have to admit,” Alex sighed, “it’s the only plan I can think of right now.”
Kanta nodded and gingerly eased Alex forward and into the hallway where he stood on the edge of her frame and leaned over to open the front door.
“Ready?” he asked as he sat back down.
“Ready!” Alex nodded.
Kanta revved her engine and drove her out into the corridor as fast as he dared. Alex closed her eyes as they emerged from the doorway, but when there were no shouts of surprise she opened them and saw that by some miracle the corridor was clear. Kanta wasted no time and they sped down the corridor and reached the lifts in a matter of seconds where he hammered the call button in an uncharacteristically aggressive manner until the doors slid open and they shot inside.
In the confined space of the lift there was no sound apart from the ragged pulling of Kanta’s breathing and the sound of her own engine that seemed somehow to have adopted a similar tone edged with tension and adrenaline. The small amount of time that it took for the lift to travel to the ground floor of the building saw Alex momentarily lost in the sensations that being ridden had stirred inside her. Somehow the weight of his body pressing down on her was adding to the sense of balance that she had on her wheels and the feel of his hands on her handlebars was reassuring despite the crazy nature of her predicament.
Alex heard the lift doors open and Kanta throw her into reverse a second before they emerged backwards into the tiny lobby. Fate had smiled on them one last time as the space was deserted and they wasted no time in crossing the room and heading straight out through the doors of the apartment building.
Once they were on the road, Kanta steered through back streets and drove as fast Alex as fast as he dared along straight roads. She guessed that he was trying to balance the need to keep out of sight with the need to make it out of the urban sprawl as soon as possible. As they travelled the looming concrete edifices began to thin and Alex realised they were making for the outskirts of the city and the rural areas that lay beyond. Her knowledge of the local geography was woeful, but somehow she sensed Kanta’s intentions in his steering and simply knew where he was aiming to go.
Soon they were leaving Yokohama behind and making their way into the forested hills that lay beyond the city. Alex was suddenly reminded of her dreams, speeding along these roads on a wave of euphoric speed. So this was why she had not know how she was travelling on those roads, because she had no idea that in those flights of fantasy she was not riding a bike, but instead being ridden as one.
The experience was something that Alex had never expected in so many ways. Of course it was strange enough to find that you had been transformed into a human motorbike in the first place. But there were subtle elements of the experience that Alex could never have understood before this even if she had tried.
The most stunning, she found, was the fact that she felt oddly liberated by the whole experience in a way that would have made no sense to anyone else. She had become a vehicle in a mundane way and being ridden might have seemed like a demeaning experience. But that was not what she felt right there and then, instead she struggled to compare this feeling to a more commonplace relationship and settled on the experience of horse and rider. Some might have seen an equine as a beast simply forced to carry a man on its back, but there was far more to the relationship than they could understand. There was a bond between the horse and rider, a trust and understanding that allowed them to perform together as one. Deeper there was the need of the horse to run and run as its nature intended and the rider in his own way became a part of that need and its indulgence.
That relationship between rider and ridden seemed so similar to the feelings that she had experienced since Kanta began to ride her. She was not some dull and mundane machine that a man had simply sat astride and forced to carry him around. She was thinking, feeling creature that had honestly asked another to mount her. Kanta, for his part, was not a crude brute who had jumped on her back and bludgeoned her to his will. He was gentle, but firm with her and seemed to treat her with all the respect that he would have either a vintage machine, beautiful woman or as she was right now: both.
Rounding corners and hugging bends, their bodies were forced to move in harmony with one another as he steered and she responded. But more and more it seemed to Alex that their roles were merging into one as she learnt the subtle hints and signs of what Kanta would ask of her based on the lay of the road ahead. Soon the art of navigating the roads had changed to the degree where neither of them needed to wait for a cue from the other; they acted together and in perfect unison.
Alex almost laughed out loud as she came to the realisation that this was the closest she had ever come to having sex without actually…
She paused mentally as the thought somehow made her aware of the feel of Kanta’s member as he was sitting astride her. There was no embarrassment in Alex’s mind as she realised that he was very much erect and had been for quite some time. She also realised that she was not in the least bit worried about the fact, quite the opposite in fact. The feel of his weight, pressing down on her was something that felt so natural and so right that there was in that second no doubt in her mind.
“Kanta,” Alex somehow managed to sound loud and clear to him despite the wind whipping past them as they went, “go ahead, do it…you know what I mean.”
“What…I, Alex,” Kanta sounded like a man convinced that what looked like a one yard hop into paradise might be concealing a hundred foot drop into hell, “we will come off the road!”
Alex was at least relieved that did in fact know what she meant.
“I can handle the steering for as long as it takes,” Alex knew she was telling the truth, “If you don’t then I’m damn sure we’ll come off the road anyway!”
Kanta took one hand off her handlebars and made the best job he was able of unzipping his jeans considering the circumstances. Both he and Alex were going on instinct, but she was sure that based on the liquid shifting that she had felt in her intimate parts, the point of entry that they needed was close to the surface of the leather across the seat that was composed of her buttocks.
She was proved right as the black leather curves of her buttocks parted for Kanta and his member brushed against her own sensitive flesh between them. He needed no further encouragement and Alex felt his length enter her as far as he was able and remain there while his legs gripped her sides ever more tightly.
The feeling was like no sex that Alex or Kanta had experienced before in their lives. Suddenly they were both aware of the union from the position of the other. He felt the sensation of the road under his wheels, the throb of the engine beneath his belly and the weight of the rider on his back and inside him at the same time. She felt the warmth of the leather beneath her own skin, the thrill of the ride and the all-consuming desire for the graceful combination of feminine beauty and mechanical power beneath her.
As they raced ever further and faster into the night, Alex had no idea what the dawn would bring or what the future might hold for a woman cursed to become a motorbike with the light of the full moon. But she had been shown that there was at least the comfort and companionship inspired by the sheer physical beauty of the form she had been forced into and someone capable of loving who and what she was.
And love, she noted, was something that eluded even those who were not cursed to become a were-bike, so she was already ahead of the game on that count.