Fizzy.
Chapter 2, part 2
Morrison scrunched across the wet gravel between the main house and the barn to where he sheltered Joe the Lion. The bike was neither leonine nor made of iron, but he always heard those echoey opening bars when he beheld his beloved machine, and once it was warmed up and out on the road it was Fripp's guitar licks that conjured his ecstatic release and so that, as they say, was that.
It's Monday. Slither down the greasy pipe, so far so good, no-one saw you...
But it was a beautiful autumn morning and riding away from the house was like slipping off a heavy coat. So he took the long way round, over the bypass and away from the river, out through the beech woods and on to his favourite stretch that swooped and bobbed and begged to be indulged and Morrison obliged with pleasure.
And he sang at speed as the fields flew past and the drystone walls bounced Joe's low roar back at him and he was as happy as a pig in shit.
The red 850cc V-twin Moto Guzzi was an anomaly in Medway's car park as much as its owner was in the staff room. Motorbikes were for rockers and greasers and other attention-seeking juveniles, and a leather jacket was certainly not the approved attire for a sixth form tutor and head of department. Not that Morrison aligned himself particularly with motorcycle culture, and neither did the bike fraternity in those parts, such as it was, align itself with him. Joe the Lion was Italian and therefore open to suspicion in a way that, strangely, the big Japanese machines were not.
It was only once he'd shut down the engine and hoiked the bike up onto its main stand that he was aware of a screeching cacophony coming from across the car park in the upper school bike sheds. Blue smoke was pouring out from the roof vents and inside someone was murdering a cat with a two-stroke lawn mower.
Morrison hastened across the tarmac and pushed his way past the gaggle of blazers at the entrance to see a scrawny youth popping a perfect wheelie on a souped-up 50cc moped. He watched as the rider dropped onto two wheels at the far end of the shed, executed an expert burn-turn then revved back up onto one wheel for the return. Morrison stepped forward and stared down the miscreant, forcing him to brake quickly and kill the screaming Fizzy (but only after a final flick of the wrist and wilful last burst of blue smoke whiing! rrhing-a-ding-ding!).
Woodlouse, the spoiled shit. Who else?
Alan Woodhouse parked his toy Yamaha, pulled off his helmet and yomped over to his teacher like the brazen bastard Morrison knew him to be.
-What do you reckon, sir? Cam? Sir Cam? Good, eh? Does a hundred, sir! Cam. Unrestricted!
Morrison turned and glared at the gathering of fourth- and fifth-year spectators who suddenly made themselves scarce, drifting away with the thinning blue smoke over to the main school. It was thing he’d started years ago, the first-name thing, but it was only for the upper sixth, and right now he regretted it.
-Cam? Have a go if you like!
Actually, thought Cameron, he wouldn’t mind a go. They were alone. He walked over and crouched down to examine the puny single cylinder of the FS1E.
A hundred, my arse.
He beckoned his student over, and when the lad squatted down beside him, he surprised himself by shoving him hard into the still-hot moped, clattering the thing to the ground quite satisfyingly, spilling fuel onto the hapless, upended Woodhouse.
-Bloody dangerous things, bikes. You should watch yourself, Alan.
Seven Fifty Four is a literary experiment, a serialised novel released in 500-word episodes.