Two Bikes, One Red, One Silver

In their first appearance at Sunday Morning Transport, A.D. Sui takes us on a heart wrenching journey of survival and remembrance.

~ Julian and Fran, Oct. 12, 2025

For October, The Sunday Morning Transport brings you sparkling new stories by William Alexander, A.D. Sui, Alan Smale, and John P. Murphy. As always, the first story of the month is free to read.

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Two Bikes, One Red, One Silver

by A. D. Sui

Content warnings: violence, death, war

The bike spokes click-click-click, mixing with the drone of cicadas above—a sonnet on repeat. There’s something else there, a laugh, swirling in notes of music, but grasping this memory is as impossible as catching slick soap in the shower. The soap slips, suds growing. Yulia comes to.

Comes to in a modest red hut at the corner of tall woods surrounded by identically modest colorful dwellings, rooftops slanted, gardens stretched between the front doors and the fences. Whole town painted with Pymonenko’s hand, sun too bright, water too clear. All of it too real, freshly washed with rain that never once fell.

It’s been two weeks since the first disorienting day. She knows it’s been two weeks because she’s been counting sunsets and making notches on the kitchen doorway. Someone once told her that hanging on to time retains some control. Control is important. It staves off madness, whispers a voice she can’t quite place.

Yulia remembers not how she first arrived at the hut nor what it is she should be doing there, but the pantry is stocked and tea and instant coffee sit on the kitchen counter. The hole in her memory is a fair price to pay for this dreamlike existence. She’s built a routine now, another trick to keep herself orderly. She works the ache from her right shoulder, a deep, damp kind of pain. She gets dressed in a faded T-shirt and a pair of jeans that she launders every third day, and takes her coffee outside.

Each step into the garden rouses a trembling feeling, like she’s on the brink of falling into something turbulent and unbound, like she’s at the precipice of remembering an awful truth. But the feeling passes when she takes enough steps, and the ocean of memory recedes and she’s again in the garden with her coffee and there’s a butterfly perched on a sunflower, so it must be early fall and so nothing at all can be the matter.

Every third day a woman shows up at her gate.

Today she’s running late. Yulia hears the clattering of the bike from down the road but doesn’t peer out to see it. Each time, the visitor is somewhat a surprise since Yulia doesn’t know the woman but feels as though she does. The company is nice. The rest of the village avoids her, takes a wide berth of the house and never knocks on her door. She prefers it that way. She’s never been a sociable creature.

“Kind morning to ya.” A red bicycle pulls up before the front gate with a final death rattle. A flushed woman with an outgrown pixie cut swings her leg over and unstraps her backpack from the carrying box she’s got zip-tied to the back of the bike. “You’re up early.”

“You’re late,” Yulia says, and clicks the gate open, holds it out of the way while the woman runs her bike inside. Not that they had decided on a time, just that it’s later than the previous two and it’s got Yulia nervous. Time, routines—they’re anchors. Lose one and she’s already bumping around on the waves. There’s a casualness between them and Yulia finds the woman’s scent comforting; the mixture of sweat and honey does wonders on her nerves. She’d ask about where they met before, but a voice reminds her that asking too many questions can get her in trouble. Better to watch. Better to do the mending of her memory in secret.