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Sparks Fly	By : SheliakBob Category: S through Z > Universal Horror Movies Views: 944 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own "The Man-Made Monster" nor the characters from it. I do not receive any money for the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Sparks Fly
- 1
SPARKS FLY
“Tonight the ladies of our Upsilon Pi sorority will be hosting an informal dance with refreshments, to be followed by a hayride and bonfire, for their invited guests. Sounds like a full moon full of fun for some lucky guys and gals!” ---Woodham State College Daily Woodchuck

“So, basically, you sit on a pile of hay while someone drives a wagon around a bunch of farm utility roads and country lanes. I don’t get it. What’s the big deal?”
Daniel gave his pal Patrick a long, pitying stare.
“You’ve never been on a hayride, have you Pat?”
Patrick shook his head.
Daniel sighed.
“Okay. Let me spell it out for you. You sit on a pile of hay with a pretty girl next to you, for an hour or so. At night.”
Pat continued to frown and think too hard.
“Okay, okay! You have carnivals and amusement parks where you come from, right?”
City boys. Dan shook his head.
“Yeah.”
“With dark rides? Like the ‘Tunnel of Love?’ It’s like that. Only longer, and it don’t cost you nothing.”
“Oh. Ohhh!” Realization dawned on Pat’s face, followed by a healthy blush.
“Eureka!” Shouted Dan, laughing. “I think he’s got it.”
They both laughed as they walked up to the barn, which was decorated with a sheet painted with the Greek letters Upsilon and Pi along with a lot of stars and flowers.
“And what’s the plastic flower for?” Pat waved the aforementioned decoration around like a miniature sword.
“It’s supposed to be a daisy. It’s your ticket to get in. The Upsie girls get so many to hand out as invitations to their guests.”
“So, it’s an ‘Upsie Daisy?’”
“Yep.”
They both laughed some more and stepped into the line with the other young men waiting to be let into the bar. Their friend Chester Duncan Price III, Chet, was already in line and waved them in ahead of him. There were grumbles and a couple of shouts as they slipped in near the front of the line. Chet, who was wearing his plastic daisy tucked behind one ear, blew kisses and waved at the protesters.
“Woodchucks!” He yelled.
The grumbles were drowned out by the reflexive shouts of “CHUCK! CHUCK!” that answered him.
“Never fails.” He whispered to his friends conspiratorially.
“You’re a card, Chet.” Dan said.
“A Joker.” Pat elaborated.
“Well, I’m definitely wild!” Chet agreed with a laugh. Chester Duncan Price III was almost freakishly tall, at six foot seven, and just as freakishly thin. His father ran a dry goods chain in the Midwest and had been embarrassingly successful. This combination of factors meant that Chet could get away with just about anything this side of murder, and he knew it.
“Hey, did you hear the radio on the way up here?” He asked.
Chet was a Journalism student, much to his father’s annoyance, and was an absolute junkie for updates.
Pat and Dan shook their heads.
“We listen to music, like normal God-fearin’ folk, you crazy scarecrow.” Dan joked.
Chet frowned but let it go.
“Well, tonight’s the night they sent Dan McCormick to the Electric Chair.”
“Who?”” Asked Dan.
“Dynamo Dan, the Electrical Man.” Pat chimed in. “Y’know, the guy who confessed to killing that professor.”
“Right!” Said Chet, face lighting up. “Right! Only, get this, they couldn’t electrocute him! They gave him the juice three times and he just soaked it up.”
“Get out of here!”
“It’s true! He killed a couple of guards and busted out, too.”
“Wow. That’s crazy!”
Chet was going to go on, but the barn doors swung open and it was time to hand in their Upsie Daisies and go meet the girls.

“So, tell me about this girl the two of you are trying to stick me with.” Pat whispered.
“Hey, don’t blame me! It’s all Elsie’s idea. I’d let you suffer in solitude all year, if it were up to me.”
“I stand corrected. So. Spill!”
Dan grinned like a fool.
“Well… Her name’s Betty. She’s a brunette. Literature major. A little stocky, but stacked like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Unh hunh.” Pat’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “And she doesn’t have a boyfriend?”
“Not exactly. Not anymore.”
“Unh hunh.”
“Oh, don’t be like that! She was seeing this serviceman most of the past year, but he got transferred out and she hasn’t heard a word from him since. No calls, no letters, nothing.”
“How long’s he been out of the picture?”
“Three, four months now.”
“That’s not good.” There was a trace of creeping enthusiasm in Pat’s voice.
“Exactly. She’s been moping around ever since, all books and studying and never going out. This is the first time Elsie’s been able to talk her out of her room.”
“Sounds like the lady is in need of consoling.”
“Exactly!”
“Okay. I can do this.”
“Now, you be good to her. She’s a nice girl with a broken heart.”
“Who’s going on a hayride with a guy she’s never met.”
“I said nice, not prissy. ‘Sides, she agreed to come here and meet you. You’ll have to swing the hayride on your own, Sport.”

“So. Tell me about this guy the two of you are trying to stick me with.” Betty said, sipping her spiced cider and shifting from foot to foot.
“Hey, don’t blame me! This is all Danny’s show. He’s determined to get this pal of his out of his shell. He’s a nice guy, but terribly shy. If it were up to me, I’d let you take Orders and get thee to a Nunnery.”
“Cute. So, what’s the deal?”
Elsie grinned a wicked grin.
“Well, he’s tall but not too tall. Dark hair and blue eyes. Studies History and Medieval Lit and stuff. He’s a complete bookworm, just like you.”
“Thanks.”
“Kind of heavy, but in a square-shouldered solidly built kind of way, not a gutful way. And he has a smile that is to die for gorgeous!”
“Maybe you should date him, yourself.” Betty said, a little doubtful.
“Believe me, I would. If I could talk Danny-Boy into sharing.”
“You are… awful!” Betty nearly choked on her cider.
“Shh! Here they come. Try to be nice.”
“I am nice.”
“Nice nice. Not nice, you boob.”

The girls spotted them from across the barn. Elsie was on tippy toes waving energetically. She was wearing a dark skirt, daringly short, and a white buttoned blouse.
“She’s a nut.” Dan said affectionately. He waved back.
Pat had met Elsie before. It would’ve been hard not to. She and Dan were practically grafted at the hip between classes. She was petite with dark brown hair, almost black. She wore sharp bangs across the front and tight curls around the sides and back. With her pointy little chin, button nose, and teeny little mouth that always reminded Pat of Clara Bow, or perhaps Betty Boop. The two words that immediately came to his mind to describe Elsie were “elfin” and “naughty.” The girl had a wicked sharp wit, a cute chirpy laugh, and eyes full of mischief. He would be totally in love, if Dan weren’t his pal.
The first time Pat met Elsie, she was chewing gum and giggling. Dan said she was a Music major, that she played clarinet, and that tonguing the woodwind reeds had taught her how to do “incredible things” with her tongue.
She purred like a jungle cat, all gleaming eyes and knowing smile and said, “You have no idea, Danny-Boy. Not yet, you don’t.”
Danny had half-choked on his soda with a rare blush blazing across his cheeks.
Pats ears burned like they’d been set on fire.
Elsie just laughed at the both of them and dragged them out for a picnic with beer.
Pat liked Elsie. He was a little afraid of her, but he liked her like the dickens.
“She’s a pip.” Had been his deadpanned verdict.
Pat had never seen the girl with her before.
Betty was taller, with a rounder face. She had a faint dusting of freckles on her cheeks that Pat immediately thought was cute. Her hair was lighter than Elsie’s, more of a chestnut with honey-brown highlights. She wore it very long and straight, tied back in a floppy ponytail that fell halfway down her back.
Dan had described her as being a “little stocky” but Pat would’ve said “well-rounded.” Very well rounded. He hadn’t been kidding when he said she was stacked. She had big, heavily rounded breasts that seemed on the verge of busting free from the fuzzy gray sweater she’d tucked them into. No skirt on Earth could have hidden those hips. Pat felt sure that the twitch and roll and bounce thereof would prove to be powerfully hypnotic.
And that’s when he realized that she was completely aware of his scrutiny. He suddenly felt as if his thoughts had been so loud that everyone in the room must have heard them.
She raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question, a bemused smile on her lips.
Pat’s ears burst into fiery heat.
“Told you so.” Whispered Dan with a smirk.
“Hello, Ladies!” Dan said loudly. “This is my pal, Pat.”
“That’s Pat.” Elsie whispered none too quietly. “He’s the one I was telling you about.” She practically bounced on her toes as she spoke.
“Hello.” Betty said, glancing demurely at the floor.
“I’m Pat.” He half-stammered.
“So I’ve heard.” She couldn’t suppress the smile that quirked at the corners of her lips. She almost felt sorry for the poor guy.
“I’m Betty.” She said, sliding her hand out for shaking.
“Elizabeth?” Pat asked. Instead of shaking her hand, he took it gently between his own. Her hand practically vanished, folded between his. She couldn’t help but notice how big his hands were and her heart skipped a beat inside of her chest.
Steady there! She thought to herself. No silly stuff, now.
“Beatrice” She confessed with embarrassment. “It’s an awful name, an old lady’s name.”
She pronounced it “Bee-ah-triss.”
“Not at all!” Pat said quickly. “It’s just that people haven’t been pronouncing it properly. It’s much more musical in the original Italian. Bay-uh-tree-chay. It’s a good name for you, I think. Seems like a normal everyday name at first, but it’s full of music when you get to know more about it.”
Pat spoke quickly, in a bit of a rush, but there was a guiless sincerity in his voice that just melted her inside.
Dan and Elsie exchanged quick, excited looks and conspiratorial grins.
“Smooth.” Dan whispered.
Elsie giggled silently, hand pressed over her mouth.
Betty heard her anyway.
With a bit of a “you win” sigh, she took Pat by the arm and steered him away from the would-be match-makers.
“Let’s go get some cider and you can tell me more about this music inside thing.” She led him toward the refreshment table.
Pat couldn’t help taking a quick peek and decided that he’d been completely right about the hypnotic power of those hips.
“Tell me, Pat. Have you read anything about Italian love sonnets?”
“One of my hobbies, actually. How did you know?”
She leaned into his arm, just a little bit.
As soon as they were safely away, Elsie let out her giggles and did a quick little prancy-dance, jumping in place like a pogo stick.
“Oh, I love it when I’m right about something!” She squealed.
“That’s why you’re such a happy person.” Dan said a bit laconically. “You’re always being right about things.”
“Ooh! Very nice. Someone’s on their toes tonight!”
She dragged him out into the center of the barn, determined to dance some of her nervous energy away.

So Pat and Betty stood by the refreshment table, sipping their cider and chatting about unimportant things; their teachers, favorite authors, the kind of music they liked, where they grew up, and what their parents did for a living. Pat had two little brothers that tormented him at home. “They’re like a pair of little yappy dogs, I tell ya’!” Betty had a big brother who left home as soon as he was able and a half-sister she’d never met. She laughed at his jokes and he didn’t laugh at the things she was excited about. They both laughed at Elsie and Dan’s Swing antics on the dancefloor.
Pat was just beginning to really relax when suddenly Betty grabbed his shoulders and let out a piercing squeal.
“This is my all-time favorite song!” She bubbled. “We have to dance to this one!”
She dragged him out on to the floor, allowing no protest or hesitation.
Pat listened to the singer’s mellow croon, thankful that at least it was a slow song.
“Is that Johnny Mathis?” He asked as he gingerly took Betty’s hand and slipped a hand round to lightly touch her back.
Betty shook her head.
“No. It’s Larry Raines and the Strawberry Moons. I always thought he sounds a lot like Johnny Mathis, but Elsie would never agree with me.”
Pat listened to the lyric while shuffling carefully with his armful of Betty. His mouth was dry and his ears were on fire, again.
When we’re dancing like this
Lips so close, almost a kiss
Oh, Baby. Sparks fly!
Yeah, Baby. Spaaarks fly!
“Y’know, I’m not made of glass.”
“Hunh, what?”
Betty smiled at him.
“You’re treating me like I might shatter at any moment. You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to break.”
“Hunh? Oh. Sorry.” He mumbled.
“You can hold me, y’know. It’s actually sort of expected.”
Despite himself, he had to laugh.
“It’s just that, well, I’m kind of nervous.”
“I know. It’s okay. I am too, a little.”
Pat pulled her in a little tighter and felt her move against him. Her heart was beating like a drum. He could feel it through the tips of her breasts against his chest. He breathed in and smelled the lily and vanilla scent of her hair.
Oh yes, Mr. Raines. Sparks certainly do fly! He thought to himself.
Nearby, Elsie and Dan swayed together, his head turned sideways and lying on top of her hair. They both watched their friends dancing for the first time and smiled.
“You’re a genius.” He whispered into her hair.
“I know.” She whispered back.
She closed her eyes and purred in his arms.

With the red sun dipping behind black hills, night was slowly falling and the hayride was ready to begin. Three long open wagons heaped high with straw pulled up in front of the barn. Each was pulled by a pair of horses in harness. The animals had done this a hundred times and were calm despite the whoops and shrill shouts and laughter as the college kids poured onto the wagons. Their ears twitched and occasionally one would snort as if in amusement.
Dan picked Elsie up by the waist and easily lifted her above his head and plopped her on the pile of hay. Betty set her hands on the edge of the wagon, prepared to lever herself up onto the bed.
Pat stepped up and started to give her a boost.
“That’s okay, I can…”
Elsie cut her off with a bug-eyed glare and a chopping motion of her hand.
“…use a little help. Thank you.”
Pat hoisted her up, hands to either side of her hips, which wound up at eye level a few inches from his face. The boy’s eyes went wide. He had a loopy grin on his face when he started to climb up after her.
Betty looked at Elsie, who gave her an innocent look in return. She let out another “you win” sigh and leaned forward.
“My turn, let me help you.”
She grabbed his arms at the biceps and tugged with all her might. Pat heaved up over the side and spilled into her lap. There were giggles all around.
Couples snuggled together and nested down into the hay. There was a constant chatter of excited voices. The nose-tickling smell of dry hay filled the air. Someone sneezed.
The wagon’s driver clicked at the horses which began to plod forward. The wagon lurched and rolled down the dirt lane ahead of it. The wagon bed bounced and jolted, creaking wheels turned slowly. A chorus of cheers and “hoorays!” rose from the excited passengers.
The sorority chaperone accompanying the wagon sighed and opened her flask. After a long, scorching draught, she screwed the cap back on. It was going to be a long night.

The haywagon rolled along a deeply rutted dirt road that wound about the hilltops, dipping sometimes to plunge through a dense thicket of woods. Most of the time the road clung to the crest of the hills with empty fields spilling downhill to either side. Little wooden shacks dotted the farmscape, their sagging roofs and dust-smeared windows lending a touch of rural Gothic to the scenery. The sun was down, but the Western sky still blazed orange and red. The sky overhead was gray, dimming slowly with black clouds creeping in.
Young couples whooped and squealed with each bump. Hay was piled a couple of feet deep all round the wagon bed, but with each jolt Pat was reminded that there were hard wooden boards beneath. Several of the riders sang camp songs, voices jittery with the unevenness of the ride, like a record bouncing under a phonograph needle. The air was electric with excitement, anticipation that greater thrills lie ahead with the deepening gloom.
Chet sat behind Pat and Betty, swaying like a Bedouin riding a camel-hump across the desert. His girlfriend sat half in his lap, leaning back against his chest with a sleepy little smile. She was a completely conventionally pretty blonde named Christine. The other girls called her Chrissy, but Chet called her “Kissyface,” which she tolerated with a docile grace that convinced Dan and Elsie that she was totally, deeply in love—with Chet’s father’s money. Chet was prattling on about the McCormick case and the murderer’s dramatic escape while “Kissyface” dreamily watched the fields roll by.
“What’s that?” She asked softly, pointing to a hilltop across the way from their own. Headlights flickered up to the top of the hill, flashing through unseen trees, then dipped down to wash across the fields below. Many dark shapes, rendered tiny by the distance, scuttled about. Soon flashlights clicked on and a wave of bobbing lights spilled down the far hillside. Somewhere, over there, dogs were barking.
“Probably the manhunt searching for McCormick.” Chet replied excitedly. “The prison’s not far from here, is it?”
“Don’t even joke like that!”
“But I wasn’t joking.” Chet protested.
Kissyface reached up and pinched his lips shut with her fingers. She pulled his face down to hers, by the lips, and planted a very competent kiss upon them.
“Gentlemen, Ladies, duty calls.” He murmured before falling silent.
“What’s going on back there?” Called the chaperone’s voice.
Not quite dark enough yet.
“Woodchucks!” Chet yelled.
“CHUCK! CHUCK!” Came the shouted reply.
The hayriders broke into a rousing chorus of the Woodham College fight song.
Satisfied that she had done her duty, the chaperone unscrewed the cap of her flask and gave herself a generous reward for her vigilance.
Pat laughed and sang with the rest, but he couldn’t quite tear his eyes from the line of lights bobbling across those distant fields.

The haywagon dipped low into a dark wooded hollow. Fog was starting to rise from a creek running along the bottom. The wagon rolled through the rising fog, splashed across the shallow creek, then lurched upward again, trailing white streamers of mist. A dank chill clung to the wagon until it was back high up on the hilltop.
“Look!” Betty said, pointing across the field below them.
The stars were out now, along with a bright full moon. Silvery-gray light bathed the field. High grass stirred and rippled beneath the breeze. A lone dark figure could be seen striding across the field. Whoever it was, he stalked purposefully, quickly, with long stiff strides. His arms were held rigidly against his sides, his head was down. It was too dark and he was too far away for any features to be seen. Only a light gray blob of a face was visible, but that seemed unnaturally pale and, thanks to some trick of the moonlight, looked faintly luminescent.
“Why in the world would anybody be hiking alone in the dark all the way out here?”
“Dunno…” Murmured Dan, apparently too distracted to speculate.
“Haven’t a clue.” Panted Elsie with a soft snicker.
Betty sighed.
“Nice night for a walk, I guess.” Offered Pat.
“Unh hunh. Gives me the creeps.”
Betty shivered and hugged her shoulders.
Dan jabbed Pat with the toe of his shoe.
Pat leaned in and put an arm around Betty’s shoulders.
“For warmth.” He assured her.
“Unh hunh.”
But she made no effort to free herself from the half-embrace.
It really was getting chilly, after all.

The haywagon rolled along, rising and dipping with the swell of the hills, like a ship on a dark sea riding the waves. The mood on the wagon became quieter, somber with the breathless seriousness of young love. The songs they sang became sad folk songs, ballads of tragic romances filled with desperate longings and unspoken desires. The night was warm when the wind wasn’t blowing, just chilly enough to encourage cuddling when it was. Couples fell silent and snuggled deeper into the hay, murmuring, whispering precious secrets in each other’s ears. The stars in the sky above wove their ageless magic of fascination and promise.
The chaperone smiled and chatted with the driver. She felt warm and mellow and full of benevolent neglect. Her flask was nearly empty, with just a swallow or two sloshing around in the bottom, reserved for any emergency that might arise. She remembered being young and was content to drift through nostalgic memories while her young charges crafted sweet memories of their own.
Pat felt distinctly uncomfortable.
He had no idea what to say or what he was expected to do, what he was forbidden to try.
Betty seemed content to sit in the hay, knees drawn up with her arms around them. She looked at the stars and breathed the fragrant night air and appeared to be completely at ease with Pat’s arm around her shoulders.
Pat’s mouth was dry from singing along with the others. His pulse was racing. He felt oddly certain that he was wasting valuable time, that something precious was slipping away from him. But simultaneously, he was comfortable with the way possibilities were building between Betty and himself. He didn’t want to do or say anything to ruin the pleasant quietness between them.
He turned to ask Dan a question but abruptly decided otherwise. His mouth, open to speak hung silently for a second, then snapped shut.
Dan was lying on his side in the hay, looking down at Elsie with a tender smile and hungry eyes. His hand slid past an unfastened button on Elsie’s blouse and spread flat across her breast. The movements of his fingers, slow and circular, rippled under the cloth.
Elsie was flat on her back in the hay, eyes closed, lips open just a little. She was breathing hard, her brows knit with concentration.
“Ah-HEM!” Coughed Betty.
Pat blushed furiously and spun back around. He gave Betty a wide grin and an exaggerated “Sheesh!” look, rolling his eyes.
Betty laughed softly, covering her mouth with her hand.
Elsie giggled behind them.
“Mmm-hmm.” Dan murmured unrepentantly.
Pat and Betty sat together in silence and watched as the wagon rattled through another patch of woods. Branches arched overhead, blotting out the moonlight, plunging them into a brief, total darkness.
Pat felt like he was about to burst.
“Do you hear that?” Betty asked abruptly.
Pat listened but other than soft sighs and rustlings from behind them, he heard nothing at all.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Yeah. That’s my point. Listen! All the birds and the crickets and such have gone quiet.”
Pat listened again. She was right. The steady background of the night-singers was gone. It was eerily silent.
“That’s kind of creepy.” He whispered.
“Listen!” Betty whispered again. “There’s something moving in the woods.”
The crack of dry twigs, the rustle of a body pushing through brush, came from somewhere below them, further down the wooded hillside. But there was something else too. A low crackling sound, a buzzing or sizzling, like bacon cooking.
“What is that?”
There was another loud crack, then clearly audible footsteps, coming up the hill. A dry tingling smell filled the air, something cold and crisp that suggested a summer thunderstorm.
“Ozone.” Dan said suddenly from behind them.
“In the middle of the woods?”
“Listen to that sound. It’s like the hum of high tension powerlines.”
A pale blue-white light flickered between the trees. It flashed then was gone, then appeared again just for a second a few feet uphill from where it had been before.
For a moment, Betty saw something that looked like a ghost’s face staring at her from between two tree trunks. It was chalk white, luminous with a pale blue-white light. Dark lines creased the face. The eyes and the mouth, open in a tense grimace, were black holes in that glowing visage.
She gasped. Her chest was too tight for a scream or a shout.
The horses nickered uncomfortably and pranced nervously. Their ears were pricked up, their nostrils flared as they drank in an unfamiliar scent.
The driver seized the reins tightly and clucked reassuringly to the horses, which were growing ever more alarmed.
Abruptly a nightmarish form lumbered out from among the trees, hands stretched toward the driver. It was a man, a tall, solidly built man wearing gray prison clothes that were ripped and torn in a hundred places. The man’s face glowed with a fuzzy nimbus of electrical energy. He wore a mask of churning blue-white plasma that crawled and swirled over his features. Lightning pulsed, strobed, beneath his skin, turning his flesh nearly transparent in staccato flashes. A look of unbearable misery, of sorrow and desperation, but also of anger, was engraved deep in his pale face. His eyes glittered but at the same time looked flat and glassy, like dull marbles with sparks trapped inside them.
This Electrical Man stumbled forward, grimacing, waving his arms toward the driver and the horses. He seemed to be trying to flag down the haywagon, perhaps looking for a ride.
Instinctively the driver raised his whip in defense.
The bizarre, crackling, buzzing figure lurched forward a couple more steps.
The driver lashed out with his whip, which proved to be a fatal mistake. The instant the tip of the whip touched the Electrical Man there was a bright flash that ran up the length of the whip and surged through the driver’s body. His body went stiff. He seemed to leap up with a spasmic jerking, then the electrical charge exploded out of his head. His eyes burst, splattering boiling ichor in streams from their sockets. Sparks geysered from the empty sockets and from his open mouth and from smoking holes that burned through his scalp. The arm holding the whip swelled up and split open like an over-cooked hotdog.
The shower of sparks landed on dry hay, which immediately burst into flames.
The crack of the lightning-like discharge and the sudden flare of fire behind them panicked the horses. They reared and bolted, dragging the burning wagon behind them.
The Electrical Man half-turned, raising his hands toward the horses. Maybe he was trying to fend them off, maybe he was trying to halt their panicked rearing. What happened was the discharge of more sparks from his fingertips, electrical streamers that charred black gouges across the horses’ flanks.
They screamed and tried to gallop away. The wagon bounced and rattled behind them, tilted sideways, then rolled over, spilling riders and flaming hay down the hillside. Still yoked to the wagon by their harnesses, the horses were dragged over and fell as the wagon rolled. Horses and wagon rolled down the slope in a tangle of legs and tackle, crashing through brush and flattening small trees. Wood splintered, legs broke, the horses screamed in terror and agony. Hayriders were set ablaze then broken as the heavy wagon rolled over them. Flaming debris was spilled in a wide swathe behind the tumbling wagon.
Pat and Betty were thrown forward when the wagon first lurched, as the fires flared up behind them. As the wagon sped past the Electrical Man, he reached toward them with helplessly gesturing hands. There was a crack and a short bolt of electricity leapt from his fingertips to Betty’s body. For an instant she was silhouetted by a feathery electrical halo. Her body jerked spastically. Her back arched sharply, throwing her chest upward, her breasts pointed toward the sky crowned with crawling blue sparks. Her head snapped back hard against her shoulders. With her arms raised in a pugilistic cramp, fists tight, she fell from the wagon, fell hard and twitched, her legs kicking uncontrollably. She let out a guttural, stuttering groan then slumped into silence.
Pat was bounced from the wagon as it tilted sideways and nearly landed on top of her. He’d reached for her when she fell but couldn’t quite catch her. The fingers on his left arm, which had been wrapped around her before the jolt of the wagon pulled them apart, caught the edge of the electrical charge running through her body. They blistered and turned black in an instant. The shock numbed his whole body so he barely felt it when he hit the ground, hard. He heard the wet crunch of his leg breaking, but felt only cold and numbness. He rolled several times coming to a stop almost next to where Betty’s body twitched and squirmed on the grass.
Dazed, Pat turned and tried to see what had happened to the others. The flaming wagon was still rolling down the hill, dragging the screaming horses with it. Bodies were strewn about along with heaps of fast burning hay. Several dark figures stumbled over the hillside.
One of those figures was Elsie. Her hair, heavy with hairspray, had gone up like a torch. Her clothes had caught fire and burned furiously. In seconds the fires burned themselves out. Her scalp was bare now, blackened with seeping red cracks. There was a black crusty hole where her nose had been and streaks of blistered black streaked her cheeks. Her eyes were wide and round and glassy from shock.
She stumbled past Pat without seeming to see him at all.
“Dan…Dan…where are you…Dan…” She whispered hoarsely as she passed him. The clothes on her back had been torn or burned off leaving her shoulders, back and buttocks bare. That skin was unmarked by fire and was pale white. The little white socks and black shoes she wore had been untouched by the fires and seemed oddly pristine, shuffling over the grass.
Pat shook his head to clear it.
The tall figure half sitting up with broken legs and arms sticking out at odd angles toward the top of the hill might have been Chet. It looked like a crushed spider now. He couldn’t recognize any of the other black forms lying sprawled out over the slope. Few of them were moving at all.
A blonde sat on the grass, untouched by fire or electrical burns, rubbing her skinned knees. Kissyface. Chrissy. Christine. Pat couldn’t know it, but Chet had scooped her up and thrown her clear the moment the hay had first caught fire. She would survive with barely a scratch.
“Betty.” Pat whispered.
His head cleared slightly as the first waves of pain from his injuries began to hit.
He crawled back to her.
Betty lie on her back, eyes wide open staring at the sky.
He shook her arm, wincing at the crackle of static when he touched her.
“Oh no.”
He pulled himself up and looked at her face. A look of shock, of terror, and of great sorrow was frozen on her face. The tip of her tongue protruded from her lips.
Choking back a sob, he leaned forward to give her the kiss he’d been aching for half the night.
There was a sharp snap, a flash of blue spark, as he pushed her tongue back into her mouth with his own. Her mouth was hot as scalding water. That seemed odd. For some reason he thought she should feel cold, though she had died only minutes before.
The lyrics of her favorite song came back to haunt him.
I know that you’re the One,
Cause there’s lightning on your tongue.
Oh, Baby! Sparks fly!
He thought he should weep, but he was too shivery and numb to do so, yet.
Footsteps nearby.
He looked up.
A tall, gray figure loomed over him. A ghastly white face with glittering eyes looked down at him. The face spasmed and grimaced. A tic pulled at one eye. It extended a hand toward him, then pulled back just as Pat felt the hair on his arms and head begin to rise. It doubled up a fist and shook it at chest level.
“Go ahead. Kill me too.” Pat growled. “There’s no point going on from here. Finish it, you monster.”
The figure grimaced again. A snarl or an expression of pain?
Pat didn’t care.
Dogs barked in the distance. Men were shouting somewhere far away.
The Electrical Man looked over his shoulder, rasped gutturally, then cast about for a direction to flee.
“I hope they kill you, you monster!” Pat shouted.
He picked up a stone and threw it as hard as he could.
The rock struck the Electrical Man on the shoulder, though he showed no sign that he even felt it.
The Electrical Man stalked away, legs stiff, arms jerking back and forth at the elbows as he pushed through brush and thickets, disappearing into the dark woods.
“You should have killed me too.”
Pat slumped down, head against Betty’s still breast.
Then he started to cry.
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Sparks Fly