Monday, May 4, 2015

The Rickshaw Mystery

I'd been to a bar in San Francisco, where a pretty brunette with long black hair had given me her phone number.  I hadn't asked for the number--she just gave it to me.  I arrived home and fell asleep about 2 a.m.  An hour later I awoke to a scream from the street below of "Hurry!"

I ran to the window of my apartment in time to see a rickshaw being pulled by a teenage boy.  The inhabitant of the rickshaw was a young woman leaning forward in her seat, screaming "Hurry!  We only have five minutes left!"

The vehicle seemed to be breaking all known laws of physics.  The rickshaw's wheels struck sparks on the street, and it left neon trickles in its wake, as if it were approaching the speed of light.

And then it vanished.  There was nothing about the incident in the newspaper the next morning.  I would speculate that not even Cliffs Notes could unravel the mystery of the speeding rickshaw from the night before.  We live in a world teeming with the mysterious, and sometimes there just aren't explanations for things we see and hear.

I did call the brunette, however.  She was a mystery that was solved.  She was a good kisser, and we eventually got married and had children.

~William Hammett

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