The first time Samantha Lancaster saw the Ghost Biker, she was on her way home from Sarah Kawazu’s funeral.

The streets felt heavier that night, the air soaked with rain and regret. Her best friend, gone—crushed by a delivery truck on a road the city promised to make safer years ago. Samantha couldn’t stop replaying Sarah’s last message: “There’s something you need to see. Meet me tomorrow. It’s important.”

She never made it.

Now, cycling through the same streets that had stolen her friend, Samantha noticed how dark the bike lanes were, how jagged the pavement felt beneath her tires. At the corner of 11th and Pine—the crash site—she stopped. Her breath came in sharp bursts, the sting of loss catching in her throat.

That’s when she saw it.

A white bicycle. Ghostly pale, luminous under the hazy streetlights. It moved silently through the rain, slicing between shadows like a blade. Samantha froze. There was no rider. Or maybe there was—a figure blurred by the downpour, indistinct, almost spectral.

She blinked, and it was gone.

---

The next morning, Samantha’s editor tossed a stack of papers onto her desk. “Cycling deaths are spiking. Think you can spin it into something that sells?”

Her hands trembled as she flipped through the reports—accidents, injuries, fatalities. A dozen faces stared back at her from grainy photos, lives snuffed out in the blink of an eye. And all of them, according to witnesses, had seen the same thing: a white bicycle.

The Ghost Biker.

Whispers of the figure had been circulating for years—an urban legend, a warning to cyclists and drivers alike. But Samantha wasn’t chasing a ghost. She was chasing answers.

And Sarah’s death had made it personal.

---

Samantha’s investigation led her to the underbelly of the city’s cycling community—a tight-knit, scrappy network of messengers, advocates, and late-night riders who saw the Ghost Biker as both savior and curse.

“He’s a vigilante,” one cyclist told her, his voice tinged with reverence. “Keeps people on edge. Makes them careful.”

“He’s a murderer,” another countered, showing her the scars on his leg. “Chased me into oncoming traffic. I barely got out alive.”

The deeper Samantha dug, the more contradictions she found. The Ghost Biker didn’t fit neatly into any box—hero or villain, real or supernatural. But one name kept surfacing: Alex Stone.

A cycling advocate, Stone had died five years ago in a horrific crash. The city had blamed him for running a red light. His friends claimed otherwise: a faulty intersection design, ignored safety warnings, blood on the city’s hands. His death had sparked protests and reforms.

Reforms that never came.

---

One night, Samantha followed the rumors to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town, where she found a makeshift memorial: a white bicycle mounted on a pedestal, surrounded by candles and photos of fallen cyclists.

“It’s not him, you know.”

The voice startled her. She turned to see an older man leaning against the wall, his face weathered, his eyes sharp. “Alex,” he continued. “The Ghost Biker. It’s not him. People just want to believe it is.”

“Who is it, then?”

The man shrugged. “Maybe it’s no one. Maybe it’s everyone.”

Samantha frowned. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one that matters.” He gestured to the memorial. “You think this city cares about us? About them? They’ll let us die until someone forces them to pay attention. That’s what the Ghost Biker is—attention.”

“By scaring people? By causing crashes?”

The man’s expression hardened. “By making them see the blood on their hands.”

---

The final confrontation came on a foggy stretch of road just before dawn. Samantha, camera strapped to her chest, pedaled furiously after the Ghost Biker, who weaved through traffic with an ease that defied logic.

She pushed harder, her lungs burning, until the fog swallowed them both. When it cleared, the white bicycle was waiting at the end of the road, its rider dismounting slowly.

“You’re chasing the wrong story,” the figure said, removing their helmet to reveal a woman—grizzled, defiant, her face lined with grief and fury.

“Who are you?” Samantha demanded.

“A warning.”

The woman stepped closer, her voice low and venomous. “Every crash you write about, every life lost, it’s because this city let us down. I ride because someone has to remind them. You want the truth? Write that. But don’t call me a killer.”

Samantha’s hands shook as she aimed her camera, capturing the woman’s face, the battered white bicycle, the bloodstained pavement beneath their feet.

---

The article broke the city open.

“Ghost Biker Unmasked: The Fight for Safer Streets” became a rallying cry. Protests erupted, cyclists taking to the streets in droves, demanding accountability.

But the Ghost Biker vanished.

Samantha couldn’t decide if she felt relief or regret. She kept cycling, though—through rain and fog, past memorials and freshly painted bike lanes. And sometimes, in the quiet hours of the night, she thought she saw a pale figure in the distance.

Watching.

Waiting.

Because the fight wasn’t over.

Author’s Note: This story is a reimagining of an earlier version (found here: https://maddfictional.com/2024/09/16/ghost-biker/). While the first version experimented with absurdist and surreal elements, this new telling takes a more traditional approach. Though I deeply appreciate bizarro fiction as a genre, I felt I could better serve this particular piece through conventional storytelling techniques.