The small pool of saliva that had leaked onto Megan's pillow woke her up as her engine kicked from a quiet murmur to a momentary strong vroom.
The half-second delusion of the "motorcycle-taur" ended as she propped her upper body up to see that she was still fused with her favorite motorcycle. She sighed as memories from a few hours before came rushing back - of her ride home and of the strange state of her mother and friend.
At the very least, she mused, that whole part in which her mother turned her engine off had been just a dream.
Taking off her blanket, Megan, with some difficulty, pushed herself and her motorcycle body off the mattress she lay on and caught it with her tiny kickstand legs in its upright position. Stretching her arms and yawning, she soon turned her attention to the door to her house - there was a great deal of commotion coming from it.
Revving her engine, Megan had just begun her attempt to drive up the short flight of stairs to her house when the door gently opened. Momentarily blinded by the bright kitchen lights, the young woman couldn't make out much of the strange, multi-limbed figure - until they turned on the lights.
The individual stuck out their six identical arms beckoningly.
"Oh hell yeah - You're awake! Give me your hands Meg, I can help you come up." The beautiful face warmly spread to reveal a toothy grin. "Hell man, everyone was wondering if you were okay!"
Megan did not reciprocate the individual's kindness and, with a disgusted frown, sullenly backed herself off the first two stairs with a series of rocky thumps.
"Taylor . . ." She scoffed with disdain, turning her head away as she bit her tongue. "I see you didn't get hit too hard."
In Megan's eyes, the sole source of her torment had come to mock her once more. A former friend before the concept of popularity struck in 7th Grade, Megan's affinity for what were perceived to be more "masculine" activities, as well as her growing attraction to the female gender, were activities and secrets Taylor had exploited to fuel her rise to becoming accepted by the "in-group." Megan had always been a stoic and stubborn lone wolf, was an introvert from day one of high school, and regularly found comfort in spending time fixing vehicles, and testing out her tuned-up bike. She never hit back, always ignoring every blow by her tormentors. But years of teasing, the constant "harmless pranks," and the new rumors about her that spread every month had slowly began to pierce her hardened hide. Judging eyes and cold demeanors were things that Megan slowly had a harder time ignoring as she continually recognized how no one in the school ever sought her company.
Her suppressed anger had slowly begun to boil over as the pranks escalated - a missing exam score, a crack in her softball bat, a bent exhaust vent in her motorcycle. Megan finally exploded one day in the last semester of her Senior High School year, when a prostitute was paid by Taylor's group of friends to make a TikTok video in which she faked to have slept with the stoic mechanic.
Megan received a suspension for dislocating Taylor's jaw with a wrench before enduring juvenile detention for 18 months. Now two years into college, the young woman never thought she would see her nemesis ever again.