Mr. Spark

Adam cycled faster and faster through the rain to get home. He’d come to realize his stepmother resembled, more and more, the stepmothers in the Grimm book his mother had bought him last October, just a few months before she died. His new stepmother Lydia treated him as an idiot to be suffered (and sometimes ridiculed), no matter how he tried to please her. Salt to the wound, she allowed Ned to do anything he wanted, and she’d cover up for him no matter what he what he did or said. It was so unfair; it didn’t help that Morris seemed to prefer his adopted son to his own son. Adam was no expert on how the world worked, but he thought Morris would do almost anything to avoid angering Lydia-the-Witch.

A note plastered on the fridge (“We’ve gone to the Miller’s for dinner, food in oven”) told him the rest of the evening would be his. He cared not where Ned was, the little prick was probably in bed playing with himself. He ate some lukewarm potatoes and skipped out the door; there was a carnival in town!

The four dollars in his pocket would get him on at least two rides and enough to purchase some candy cane or chips. He’d use the rest of the time to people-watch, one of his favorite pastimes. At the ticket booth, a little blonde girl screamed for more tickets, her parents mortified by the shrill request. The Cox twins, the major tyrants of his school, jostled to get a better place in line for the rollercoaster. Down by the Haunted House ride, a small argument had broken out between two men. He moved through the crowd to get closer to the conflict, he wondered if a fight would break out. As he did, one of the men looked him right in the eye. It caught him off guard, for the man had very dark eyes, so large as to give him an exotic countenance. A tailored green coat, quite unlike anything he’d ever seen before, and a pair of jet-black pants completed the look. The other man seemed quite drab and common in comparison.

The two men parted soon thereafter, but Adam felt as if the green coat had won the argument. No longer interested, he moved across the parking lot towards the exit for he’d checked his Timex and realized he needed to get home before Lydia returned. 

Just as he reached his bike, a large hand touched his shoulder, the thick wrist covered in green wool. The man in the green coat looked down at him, his face holding a strange smile, his hair seemed to cover the top of his shoulders now. He hadn’t noticed this before. Adam was barely able to concentrate on what the man was saying for the man’s hands were covered in thick black hair. The thought of how hairy the man must be without his clothes on burst into his mind and he could think of nothing else. 

“Look at the sky young man, those storm clouds are about to unleash, and I’d hate to think of you biking through the rain on this little bike. And no lights on your bike, that’s not safe! Let me take you home, my trunk is quite large enough to contain your bike. Why go home wet?” 

Perhaps because Adam had never bothered to listen to Mr. Davidson, the school Principal, drone on about the dangers of getting into strange cars he realized this was something too exciting not to try. He mumbled a “yes” and followed the man across the parking lot. The minute he saw green coat’s car he knew he’d made the right decision. The large and sleek car seemed to glow under the parking lot light, it’s color a mystery – somewhere between dark blue and purplish black. Even parked, the car seemed to give off a feeling of speed, excitement, and something inchoate, yet possibly dangerous.

“Wow.” He hadn’t meant to say this audibly.

“Yes, it is amazing. Wait till you sit inside, you won’t believe your luck. This is a 1958 Facel-Vega, from across the ocean.” As he said this, green coat opened the passenger door (from the other side!)

“Get in young man. Oh, by the way, folks call me Mr. Spark. What should I call you?”

He started to say, “my name is Adam,” but for the sheer beauty of the car’s inside – leather and wood grew everywhere - he found himself speechless. Shiny dials, a myriad of large and small, covered every inch of the dash not covered already in wood. Adam tried to imagine owning a car as beautiful as this. He no longer cared about getting home before Lydia and Morris returned, he’d give anything to stay in this car forever.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go home now?” How had green coat known what he was thinking? “Be sure because if we travel further it will change your life.”

“Can we go for a ride, just for a while?” He desperately wanted to touch the man’s hairy hand as it covered the shiny wooden gearshift. He felt his had move towards the man’s hand as if under its own concurrence.

“Go for a long ride with me Adam, and you can touch me anywhere you want, hmmm? Are you game for it? Does that interest a curious young man like you?” The man took his silence for an affirmative, the teeming hair on his hands moved down across Adam’s cheek towards his neck. It felt so good, yet his brain screamed, “No!”

And just at that moment he realized it was too late. He felt himself growing smaller and smaller, his youthful mass now slipping into the seat itself; it’s smooth yet remorseless surface pulling him downward, downward, through the leather, stuffing and springs, down into the very metal and bones of the car itself, as it had to so many young, inquisitive boys before.