I Saw the Light

 Every now and then I write something just because I feel like it. Tonight, I did just that. A little Black Hills twist. (for Jackson)

Driving west out of Rapid City at night feels like space travel must feel. The sky is blacker than anywhere I’ve ever been, but the stars burn brighter for it. The Milky Way hangs overhead, indifferent, reminding you how small and insignificant you really are.

By the time you hit the Badlands, it doesn’t feel like Earth anymore. In the moonlight the terrain looks lunar — bleached, jagged, wrong. Deeper into the Black Hills, on the back roads, the darkness turns absolute. No cars. No lights but your own. You drive careful out here. Too many critters, too many things that don’t move until it’s too late. I’ve seen what’s left behind on the road — shapes, stains. I tell myself they were animals. Most nights, that’s enough.

The Black Hills close in on you. Thick pine canopy, branches knitting together overhead until it feels like the sky is pressing down. First time I rode through here was thirty years ago. Me and a buddy, dumb kids from Ohio, riding to Sturgis, thinking we were hardcore highway tramps. What a joke. Just a couple of white-trash punks running from the only hell we knew.

Being "bikers" made us feel special — right up until we met the real ones. To them, it wasn’t freedom. It was business. A lone rider could lose his life and his scooter as fast as he could make a friend. Depends on luck. Depends on demand. Weekend warriors were almost worse — matching leathers, official gear, trying to “bro” you to death or pick a fight. Either way, things could go sideways fast.

Drugs were always part of it. Pot, meth, whatever paid. Guys like me always need money, so I moved things from one place to another. I’ve made this run plenty of times. But tonight feels different. The air feels...alert. Alive. That’s what’s got me uneasy.

Then I see the lights.

At first, it’s just a glow behind the treetops, like stadium lights ten miles off — except there ain’t a stadium anywhere near here. Sometimes they flare bright, then vanish, swallowed by the night. Then there are smaller ones. Sharp. Fast. Zipping across the sky before snapping out of existence. One, then two, then three. I’ve done my share of bad drugs, but I’ve never seen lights move like that.

The road snakes tighter through the hills. I keep my eyes forward, but I’m watching the sky from the corners of my vision. I feel watched. Cops? Feds? Some new kind of surveillance? I’ve always traveled at night, always careful. Plenty of time built in. If I get busted, I’m dead either way — prison, or bikers looking for what I lost. So, I stay focused. Hands steady. Eyes on the road.

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No lights for half an hour. I tell myself I imagined it. Just nerves. But the silence feels wrong. Too still. Too clean. Even for the Black Hills.

I’m thinking about space again — what it must feel like drifting through nothing — then the engine sputters. I ease toward what I hope is the shoulder. Roads aren’t well marked out here.

Before I can step off the bike, I hear it.

A hum.

Not from any one direction — but every direction. The air vibrates, like it’s been tuned too tight. Then the lights come on.

Not headlights. Not floodlights.

Everything lights up all at once. White. Blinding. As if the night itself has been peeled away.

And then I see it.

It’s enormous.

© 2026 Michael C. Metzger