Bikeriders Serenade

A Whisper from the past

Austin stared down at his mother’s journal, the dim light of the bedside lamp casting a soft glow over the pages. His hand trembled slightly as he turned the fragile pages, feeling the weight of her words. She had written about everything—the days of hope, the nights of fear, her quiet moments of peace as she came to terms with her illness. After she passed, he had found this journal hidden in his office. And tonight, after years of avoiding it, he had finally opened it.

He had been reading for hours, the words swirling around in his mind, echoing the sadness he had buried for so long. He could still hear her voice, her soothing tone as she wrote down thoughts he hadn’t known she had kept hidden.

The world outside was still, the night air cool and silent. The house was quiet too. His family was asleep upstairs, but he couldn’t seem to find rest himself. Something gnawed at him, an unease he couldn’t shake.

He closed the journal and set it on the bedside table. For a moment, he just stared at the worn cover, his fingers tracing the edges of the leather. His mother had written in this so often, pouring her heart out in a way she never could in person.

With a deep breath, he lay back and closed his eyes, hoping sleep would offer him some reprieve.

---

The Dream

At first, there was nothing—just the heaviness of his eyelids, the quiet, rhythmic beating of his heart. But then, the air shifted. The room around him seemed to waver, the shadows growing long and strange. When he opened his eyes, the space was different. The bed had changed, or rather, the room had. The walls were taller, the ceiling higher, as if the house had been stretched out in some impossible way.

He glanced around. His mother’s journal was still in his hand, though it looked older, the pages yellowed and brittle. He felt the weight of it, though it seemed like a thousand years had passed since he’d touched it. The familiar smell of her perfume lingered in the air, mingling with something else—something heavy, like the scent of rain or the earth after a storm.

“Mom?” His voice sounded thick and far away.

The room was still, but outside, he could hear a faint whisper of wind, like the soft rustling of leaves. He stood up and walked to the window, but when he reached it, there was no glass, just an empty frame staring back at him. The sky outside was black, and the stars hung like shattered glass, each one flickering, faint, and broken.

Then, he saw her—standing just outside the window, bathed in the dim light of the stars. Her figure was hazy, like a memory seen through fog. She wasn’t wearing the clothes she had worn in her final days, but something simpler, something from the past. She was smiling, her hair flowing gently in the wind.

"Mom?" He said, his voice cracking.

She turned to him, her expression unreadable, as though she knew something he didn’t. "I tried to write it all down," she said, her voice soft but distant, as if it came from another world. "But some things... some things words can’t hold."

He stepped closer to the window, but when he tried to reach out to her, his hand passed right through the empty space where the glass should have been. His fingers brushed against the cold air, and he felt a strange tightness in his chest.

"I don’t understand," he whispered, his eyes never leaving her. "I don’t know what to do with it all."

She smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. "It’s not for you to fix, Austin."

The wind picked up, swirling around them. The scene shifted, the stars disappearing and the sky darkening even more. He blinked, and suddenly, he was standing in a field. An empty chair sat in the middle of the tall, swaying grass—her chair, the one she used to sit in on quiet afternoons. It was facing him, waiting.

Austin felt a pang in his heart. He took a step forward, but the air felt heavy, and the ground beneath his feet was soft, almost as if he were walking through sand. The flowers surrounding the chair began to wilt, their petals dropping one by one, sinking into the earth as if they were never meant to bloom.

"I’m sorry," Austin murmured. "I should’ve been there more. I should’ve—"

"You were here," her voice interrupted, coming from behind him.

He turned around, expecting to see her, but she wasn’t there. Instead, the ground beneath his feet seemed to shift, the field now becoming a familiar place—their old home. The kitchen lights were on, casting a warm glow through the windows. Inside, he could hear the faint sound of her laugh, echoing from the halls, but when he stepped inside, the house was empty.

The pictures on the walls were blurry, their faces distorted, as if time had eroded them into nothing. He saw her, and his younger self—so full of hope, so full of life—but they were just shadows of the people they used to be. The walls whispered, the old creaks of the house taking him back, but there was no one there to greet him.

"Mom?" He called out, his voice trembling. "Where are you?"

The laughter faded into the silence. His mother’s face appeared again, but this time, she was farther away, standing by the door with her back to him, her hair blowing in the wind. She didn’t turn around, didn’t look at him.

“I wish you were here,” he said, though his voice cracked with emotion. "I don’t know how to do this without you."

She didn’t speak, only stood there as if she were waiting for him to understand something he couldn’t grasp. And then, she began to fade, her form dissolving like mist in the night air.

"Mom, wait!" he called out, but she was already gone.

---

Waking Up

Austin’s eyes snapped open, and he gasped for air, as though he had been holding his breath for years. The room was dark, just as it had been before he fell asleep. The soft hum of the ocean waves outside the window was the only sound, the house still and quiet.

He blinked, disoriented, his heart pounding in his chest. The journal lay beside him, open to the page he had been reading. His hand reached for it, his fingers trembling as he flipped it shut. It felt heavy, almost too much to hold. He stared at the cover for a long moment, the words fading in and out of his mind.

It was just a dream, he told himself, just a dream. But the weight of it—the feeling of her being so close—clung to him like a shadow.

Austin closed his eyes again, trying to calm his racing thoughts, but her voice—the sound of her laugh, her words, the empty chair—remained in the space between sleep and wakefulness, a lingering reminder of all the things he never had the chance to say.