Sparks

by David Quantick

  “I told you,” Jeff said. “I can’t do it because I’m a vegetarian.”

  Just then a sheet of flame shot up from the upstairs window of the house behind them and knocked out the glass.

  “Timer switch,” said Jeff.

  Duncan looked up. He could see Sparks running about, trying to put out the flames on his burning bed with an equally burning duvet.

  “You had a bacon sandwich in the cafe,” he said accusingly.

  Sparks was a bit shaken up by the fire and the pig’s blood. A lesser man, in fact, would have been shaken up enough to take the advice on the wall and stop, but Sparks had a stubborn streak. This was partly why Alison had gone, and partly why he had never had a proper job, believing shirts and ties to be Satanic in some way (and ties to be a literal symbol of restriction and oppression), but it was also partly why Alison had liked him, and why he was able to continue working at a job that would have depressed one of those vicars who favour the tambourine and the chirpily-rewritten Bible story. Sparks was tenacious, often to the point of pointlessness, but if two extremely thin men were going to come into his flat, burn his waste paper basket and then his bed, and write things on his wall in blood, just to make him give up doing what he was doing, then Sparks wouldn’t.

  However, the blood and the fire and the overturned chairs and the left-on computer did make him think a little, and instead of leaping out of the house and into action, Sparks decided to consider things a bit more fully. Not much more, he told himself, he wasn’t Professor Brainstein, but a little bit, just to bolster his own confidence.

  Sparks went downstairs to the kitchen, which like the rest of the house was very unransacked. He made himself a cup of tea, put some milk in it, smelled the result and poured it down the sink. Then he got a glass of milk, drank half of it before he realised the cause of the tea smelling was probably the milk, and poured the milk down the sink. Finally, after some thought, he got a can of lager from under the sink, sat down at the kitchen table and made himself a list.

  The list was the longest thing Sparks had ever written that didn’t end with the words “please come back”.

  How much danger am I in? it began, and went on…

  What happens if I meet myself?

  How can I avoid going to worlds where there’s no Alison?

  Why do I end up sometimes in the same place and sometimes in a different one?

  What’s this password thing and why sometimes do I need to talk to a dentist and other times not?

  Why are all these worlds only a bit different? Why haven’t I been to a world where it’s just monsters or monkeys?

  And, after a few moments’ thought…

  How long can I keep doing this before they get really annoyed and do something properly bad to me?

  Sparks put his pen down. He felt better already. He looked at his unopened lager, put it back under the sink, and went into the bathroom, where he suddenly jumped in alarm. The bathroom had also not been touched by his intruders but, as Sparks learned when he caught his reflection in the mirror, they had made him up like a clown.

  “That’s it,” said Sparks, annoyed. He hated clowns.

  Sparks got dressed and went to his office. He turned on his computer, went online and clicked onto the Random Life Generator, which he had bookmarked under NATIONAL TRUST HOLIDAYS to fool any intruders.

  The usual threats and noises came up, skulls raced to the front of the screen like inquisitive skull fish, if there was such a thing which, Sparks supposed, somewhere there was, and then the mass of text appeared and it all resolved itself. The first phrase on the screen was:

  TODAY’S WORD BALUSTRADE OPERATING ENTRANCE WASHINGTON DC 476 SMITH AVENUE DUTY OFFICER M LIPS

  Sparks briefly contemplated flying to America and saying “Balustrade” to a complete stranger, but he would never have got there in time and, besides, he could barely afford to go to the shops, let alone Washington DC. He waited for a few sites to pass, one of which was in Warrington, wondered if he would have to hitch to Warrington, and then the letters rearranged themselves:

  TODAY’S WORD BALUSTRADE OPERATING ENTRANCE LONDON 96 MARSH ROAD E4 DUTY OFFICER J PATTERSON

  This was much better. Sparks wrote the address down and was on his way out when he had a thought. He went into the kitchen and made some crisp sandwiches for when he got there in case the food was toxic, or nasty. Then, because it might be cold, he put on some gloves and stuffed an old ski balaclava into his pocket. Better prepared for every eventuality than not, Sparks thought to himself as he walked up the road to the bus stop, eating his crisp sandwiches.

  Sparks was, however, unprepared for 96 Marsh Road. It was a pub, the smallest pub Sparks had ever seen (and over the years, he had seen many pubs, some tiny and some enormous). There was barely room for a door between its two tiny windows, while the pub sign, as it swung from side to side, was in danger of harming the occupants of 94 and 98 Marsh Road when they leaned out of their windows, which they probably did from time to time to refill their pint mugs from their beds. The pub was called The Grand Old Duke of York and was, Sparks supposed, about the same size as a duke.

  Sparks pushed open the pub door and went in. The pub was, un-Tardislike, as small inside as it was out. It consisted of a small counter and a small table with three chairs round it. These chairs were each occupied by an old man, and none of the old men were talking to each other, probably because they were blind drunk. In the corner of the room was a broken door marked GENTS. There did not appear to be a ladies’ toilet; Sparks supposed that none had ever been needed.

  Behind the bar, a young man with a T-shirt that said YOU ARE A TWAAAT was polishing the grime back into some pint mugs. Sparks approached him.

  “Yuh?” said the young man, making no attempt to put the mugs down or even point either of his eyes at Sparks.

  “Are you J Waterman?” said Sparks.

  “Nuh,” the young man snorted, apparently stunned and contemptuous that anyone could make such an elementary mistake. He turned his back on Sparks and, before Sparks could vault the bar and rip the young man’s head off his shoulders, shouted “Boss! Someone to see yuh!” into a hole that might once have been a dumb waiter. Then he turned back into his unpolishing.

  Sparks stood at the bar, wondering what would happen now. Then a voice shouted back through the hole, “Send him up!” The young man winced as though he had been interrupted in some great mathematical task and jerked his head at Sparks to indicate a door beside the bar that said PRIVATE. Sparks opened the door and went upstairs. There was another door, which he opened, and behind it was J Waterman. And J Waterman, Sparks realised with slight horror, was also J Singh, giant dentist from the Edgware Road.

  J Waterman was doing something with a crossword puzzle, and had not registered Sparks’ presence yet. Sparks hurriedly pulled on his balaclava and, just in case, his gloves.

  “Hello,” he said in what he hoped was a disguised voice.

  Waterman or Singh or, for all Sparks knew, Mister Kippers, BA, but he was bloody tall either way, looked at him.

  “Why are you wearing that balaclava?” said J Waterman.

  “I’ve got mouth scabs,” said Sparks, hoping that his reply would be so unpleasant as to put J Waterman off.

  “Let me have a look,” said Waterman, to Sparks’ horror, “I’m really a dentist.”

  “They’re outside the mouth,” said Sparks.

  “Oh, well, that wouldn’t be ethical,” said Waterman, disappointedly. “Did you want something?”

  “Yes,” said Sparks. “Balustrade.”

  “This way,” said Waterman, still sounding disappointed. He pulled a mat off the floor to reveal a big hole.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said to Sparks.

  “Pardon?” said Sparks, as one would.

  “Take off your clothes,” said Waterman. “And put them in this bag.”

  He held up a large plastic bin liner. Sparks thought Waterman looked a bit determined, so he st
ripped and put his clothes in the bag. Waterman looked happier, but not, Sparks was both relieved and disappointed to notice, in a kind of happy to see Sparks’ fine nude frame kind of way.

  “Did you bring a towel?” Waterman said. Sparks shook his head and Waterman sighed. He gave Sparks a horrible towel that felt like cardboard, tied up the bag of clothes and indicated the big hole in the floor.

  “Jump in,” he said.

  Sparks jumped in.

  OW!

  And so on.

  Sparks, having left his own world by jumping through the floor, entered the other world at some speed and as he hurtled towards the ground, he wondered what might be below him, and if it might be rocks. By great good fortune, it wasn’t rocks. It was water. In fact, it was a lake. Sparks sank like a stone wearing gloves and a balaclava, rose again with some furious paddling, and struggled to the surface. Trying to both breath and tear the balaclava off filled up a few seconds of his life, but soon, with some furious water-treading, Sparks was able to see that he was fairly close to shore. Then he had an extremely worrying thought; as he had surfaced in the middle of a lake, he might have some difficulty finding his way back. He looked around for a landmark. There wasn’t one, obviously.

  “Oh, bugger,” said Sparks. He had no idea what to do now. However, he couldn’t tread water for the rest of his life, so he decided to swim towards land and have a think.

  As he swam, Sparks had a further horrible thought; what if he had arrived in some sort of prehistoric world where man had never evolved? If this was the case, he thought, not only would he be trapped without any human company, but also there was little chance of phoning Alison up and asking her out for a drink.

  Land loomed close, and Sparks began worriedly climbing a small mudbank to the shore. He stood up, and peered optimistically back at the lake. To his astonishment and relief, he could see a slight haze over the part of the water where he had surfaced, like a localised fog, which resembled a misty window that someone had rubbed with a finger. Sparks tried to make a mental note of the haze’s location, realised that he couldn’t, and sat down instead to open the bag and dry himself with the insanely scratchy towel. He could only hope that the haze would remain visible when he returned.

  Dressed again, Sparks stood again and had a look round. The lake was surrounded by unkempt grass, scrubby trees and thorny-looking bush. Sparks was just wondering if he had arrived in a primitive world when he backed into something hard. It was a large metal pole with a small metal sign attached to it. MUNICIPAL RESERVOIR the sign said. KEEP OUT.

  Feeling perversely regretful now that he hadn’t been plunged into a prehistoric hell where he would have spent all his time trying not to step on butterflies, Sparks could see that he was in fact in a part of North London that he recognised, just up from King’s Cross Station in fact. He hid the bag and the abrasive towel under a bush and set off to find a phone box.

  As he walked onto the Pentonville Road, another large sign caught his attention. This one was much bigger than the reservoir sign and had lots of bright colours and big boggly letters on it. What caught Sparks’ eye mostly about the sign, though, was what it said:

  ISLINGTON WELCOMES BEARS!

  and there was a little cartoon of a very frightening-looking bear being welcomed by some people as though it was an old friend returned from a long sabbatical teaching media studies in Italy, rather than an enormous deadly lump of teeth and muscle that would stun you with its bear breath and then rip your lungs out before getting bored and going to sniff some beehives.

  Sparks thought this was a bit strange, and wondered why Islington, or anyone other than a ringmaster or a zookeeper, would welcome bears anyway, and why, if it came to it, Islington was welcoming any bears in the first place. And then, ten seconds later, in what Sparks thought was an uncanny coincidence but obviously if he’d thought about it wasn’t, there was a lot of screaming from the car park of a large nearby hotel, and a very large brown bear came roaring out with murder in its eyes and blood and cloth on its claws.

  Then Sparks noticed two things. One, nobody was attempting to restrain or even shoot the bear and two, it was coming straight at a woman standing in the car park. The woman appeared to be, and in fact was, Alison.

  Part Two

  ALISON

  Alison had spent most of the morning standing in line in a supermarket. She felt terrible. The line wasn’t moving. It wasn’t ever going to move. Everyone in front of Alison appeared to have warehouses of food, forests of vegetables and estates of cans. Alison had a basket with a can of Diet Coke and a banana in it. The man at the front was trying to pay with a credit card that the checkout girl had never seen before. She called the manager. He had never seen one before either.

  “Have you got any money?” the manager asked.

  “Yes,” said the man. “But I want to pay with this card.”

  The line groaned. People sagged. Alison’s basket got heavier. Alison moved her basket to a different hand. It made no difference. The man at the front with the exceptional credit card was holding his ground. A woman in front of Alison swore briefly and walked away, leaving her heaping trolley in front of Alison. She pushed it away and it rolled off into a large man’s backside, denting it briefly. The large man glared at Alison. She moved forward.

  Now she could see the till more clearly. It was covered in meat products and sugary drink bottles. Next to the checkout girl was some sort of electronic display. It ought to have been flashing up price totals and whirring with the sheer joy of capitalism. It wasn’t. Instead, a message in spindly electronic letters was idling across it.

  For want of something to do, and not having a machine gun, Alison peered at the message.

  goodbye hope, it said. It scrolled off and said goodbye hope again.

  Alison couldn’t believe it. She was also deeply unsettled. Supermarket slogans were normally more optimistic than this. They said things like COME BACK SOON! Or BEARS ARE MAGIC! But there it was, again and again. goodbye hope. Alison could take it no longer. She dropped her basket and walked quickly out of the supermarket.

  It’s an electronic display, she thought, you shouldn’t take these things personally. But she did.

  Alison set off for home. It was a sunny day. Somewhere in the world, fierce men with moustaches were being very nice to bears. And, somewhere else in the world, they weren’t. Life was like that. She heard a noise, and turned. Behind her was the source of the noise. Behind her was a bear.

  A snarling, stinking heap of fur and claws will tend to make an impression on anyone standing near to it. Alison turned and saw the bear and her expression melted from fear to sheer terror to complete horrified understanding that she was about to die.

  While Alison was experiencing all the bad emotions in a short space of time, Sparks was searching for a weapon. Improbably, he found one in the form of a large waste paper bin. Equally improbably, when he threw it at the bear, it hit it in the head, knocking the bear sideways and covering it in McDonald’s boxes and half-eaten Thai green chicken wraps (it was a nice part of Islington). The bear stopped being about to kill Alison and stood there for a second, looking stupid, even for a bear. Then it discovered that it was covered in food and staggered off to lick itself.

  Alison sat down on a nearby low wall and Sparks found he was feeling very shaky. He had never attacked a bear before, even while drunk at the zoo. He was also still a bit shocked to find Alison – or at least a parallel Alison or a version of Alison or something – so easily. He wondered if she was surprised to see him. Perhaps in this world he was dead

  “You’re dead,” said a voice next to him.

  “What?” said Sparks.

  “You’re dead, mate,” said the voice, which belonged to a man in a red T-shirt.

  “Did you see what he just did?” said a woman to another woman. The other woman nodded.

  “You can’t do that,” said the man.

  “He must be foreign,” said the woman. “They do that t
here.”

  “Yes,” said her friend, a late entrant to this, and possibly any other, conversation. “Foreign.”

  “In this country,” said the man, speaking slowly and loudly, “We don’t do that.”

  “Don’t do what?” said Sparks. “Stop bears attacking people?”

  “He’s not foreign,” said the woman.

  They thought about this for a moment.

  “Let’s kill him,” said the other woman, and to Sparks’ further astonishment the two women and the man began to close round him, clearly quite intent on doing him lots of harm.

  He was about to make some sort of complaint about this – “Don’t kill me”, that sort of thing – when Alison stood up.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I know him, I think.”

  “What do you mean, you think?” said the man, clearly keen to get on with killing Sparks. “You either know him or you don’t.”

  “Let’s kill him,” said the other woman again. She was not an indecisive woman.

  “He’s been ill,” said Alison.

  “No excuse,” said the man, but disappointedly, as though he was acknowledging that it wasn’t OK to kill the unwell, no matter how many bears they had attacked.

  “I’ll take him to the police and sort this out,” said Alison.

  “I’m not going to the police,” said Sparks.

  Alison gave him a look that he found very familiar.

  “Oh yes I am,” said Sparks.

  They walked down the street together and then Alison turned left, sharply, into an alleyway and, after he had shown no signs of following, yanked Sparks in with her. Then she yanked him again, this time into a small yard full of huge metal bins on wheels.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said.

  “Pardon?” said Sparks, as was often his inclination.

  Alison said it again, but this time didn’t wait for a reply.

  “Is this one of your look-at-me mind game things, Sparks?” she said, so at least Sparks knew that he wasn’t the only Sparks here, in fact was clearly pretty similar to the other Sparks, as the other Alison had also been prone to asking him questions containing phrases like ‘look-at-me mind game things’.