in this episode: the angry man & captain sparke

Sensitive content warning: Multiple categories: Substance abuse, Physical violence, gore, or abuse, Suicide or self harm.

The angry man is why they called me up.

Yeah, that’s why I think they did, at least.

You see, I’m a hero of sorts.

They call me Captain Sparke, or the Great Hero, yeah, that’s how it is. I have lots of powers, you see. Bright blue vision and fear-sensing, yeah, that’s some of it, except nobody feels fear here anymore.

That is except for this fateful day, because, of course, as they tell me so they said, it was because of the angry man.

He was plouncing through the streets of New York like a gibbon just stretched of his jail doors free, yeah, at the zoo, pried those iron bars wide and yanked them and then he thundered through them, no pressure, no effort & no fatigue, and also, yeah, too, his teeth were covered in tomato sauce. Yeah, that’s how it was, this loping, groping, gaping man, with scar tissue all about his mouth on either side like he’d had a fucking gag on, yeah, and the damned teeth. Those teeth covered in blooded blood not damned tomato sauce, sorry, ripping with it. It pooled at the sides of his lips and caressed them with little beads of pure, diamond delight. Yeah, anyways, and he glared at me with that bright blue glare, and I knew that things were bad, and I was in danger, yeah.

Because here’s how it is.

Some days I’ve been young, yeah, and, so, since the days I’ve been young, or as well, as long as I can remember anyways, nobody’s felt fear no more, and no anger, too.

Here’s an example;

Jeffrey was at the green light and then some asshole slammed his gears shut up in the metal machine box ahead of him, steam bursting out like that, and he seethed thorough his teeth and sucked him in. He swung up a fist to beep the damned horn and then it dissipated yeah, like so much steam, and he felt it much better.

Like it was all so much better. It was alright that that man had cut him off, yeah. Everything was dandy-great.

Anyways I was met eye to eye with that angry man, that bastard with the scarred lips, and I knew it was different because the fear was there, and more than that, the anger, too. I stared at the red flesh of his swollen gums and those crooked, nasty yellow teeth and I wanted to rip into them, to bite them, to tear them diseased flesh pits apart and chew his teeth like putty and spit them out as gum, yeah, roll them between my fingers and place them on the bottom of an damned park bench, those damned park benches with the advertising signs.

And so like any good man I reared forward, swung my fist, and connected it with his jaw, this naked damned man who loped like a monkey and stood with a list and took a damn piss on everything good, because well I don’t know if it’s damn related but everything’s been mad today.

I think it’s account of this damn angry man. Anyways, I was stood standing over him, I was, and I used my next superpower my Big Metal Lug blow, and swung it up and slammed it down on his skull, cracked it like an egg, you see, cracked it again and again until it poured out like one too. Those damned bastard and their cracked-egg heads, yeah, and that’s why you don’t get so angry, man.

Anyways, it was about then that those funky men in their strict black suits and thick plastic black glasses and along with them the police folk in their WELL-oiled overalls and their fine rips pleated jean jackets came to stand with me, and looked disgruntled but strict, yeah, disappointed, looked around, feeling, and but they respected my authority.

“Great job, Captain Sparke,” One policeman he said, chewing with purple teeth on some dumb-fuck nerve fiber and I watched it spark and crunch, and he signaled to the black suits to drag that dead guy off, and with two fingers from him to the other policemen got them to assist, us and all of them, too. The first policeman made sure I was watching, bright red eye contact-like, and his beady piggy-like eyes, and then raised his hand and said “About that?”

“There, folks,” said one of those damned men in the damned black suits, and raised two fingers, “It’s his fault!”

And I roiled back and watched as a random sort of guy, yeah, walking down the streets and who looked way out of sorts, and like a baby’s load of emotions had dead dropped on him with a thunderbolt, all in the past few hours, yeah, into the placid mind of an adult, was motioned to by the man-in-black.

“And it’s all his fault!” the man-in-black screamed, and so it was then that the other police men and also those damned men in black all said “MOVE! MOVE-MOVE!” and went towards him, and dragged him off, like, and I thought that this was all very strange, when they shoved him into some sort of clanker car’ n’drove off-like.

Anyways, a few hours or so all was right in the city again, yeah, because I got home to that place that I live, the place that was full of purple light and cars screeching and great cardboard walls, and looked out over the view like I was on top of the city, yeah, like a grainy sort of view like a bad old flicker-screen, and felt not many very much at all.

And a few sort of other adventures happened, then, my fellows chaps that I supposed now you won’t want to concern yourself much with.

It was after a few much more of those angry men come out, and the times that I myself was angry, that we all were really, and the damned red light of the world came through, that that next thing was it. But anyways, don’t worry about that much, not right now, no.

It was much later that my second point of concern came up, yeah that was what it was, it was when they had me (Captain Sparke), the police they didn’t, they called me in I think to expand a search into this damned old illegal factory full of ‘em.

Full of ‘em I don’t remember what, no, full of shit maybe, doesn’t matter, but here I was crawling through the damned tunnels like muck like sewers and sludge, yeah, when I came upon the next of the damned old rooms, yeah this was a no the factory sort of thing I was looking for.

Anyways.

After traipsing through these damned halls for a while and all the doors opened on their own from me, for me, yeah, like I Was King with a welcoming bright blue rectangle of light, yeah well then it was that I saw the damn cages, all of them, fuck.

The bloody men, man, the angry man, he was everywhere. There was so many of them. They were curled up, screaming, and screaming their damned minds out. Because each one of them was wired up, yeah, coils of segmented snakes of metal coiling way up into the ceiling, fused into their nerves, man, wired into their goddamned weakened scoliose spines, oh there were so many of them, and yet. That wasn’t the last of it.

They all seemed centrally to be wired up to a big ol’d tank, and as I walked up to it, My eyes I caught them all up wired up to and with another man, and I stared at him. He had, he did big old pleading eyes. I think I recognized him, and damned I think he recognized, me, I really think he did.

Help me, those eyes screamed, oh god please help me, help.

And I felt it, in him I really did, he twinged as I ignored him, and I kept on, yeah, and then I stared at him, gritted my teeth, and tried something, I really did.

I threw myself at some damned old wires, yeah, ones with bursts of electricity, zap-sip-zapping right on up them endless jungle climbers, and he jolted, he really did, and I didn’t, I felt no fear at all, I didn’t because that’s why I’m a hero, I felt no pain and no fear not any of them. So maybe I really am a hero that is Captain Sparke the Hero that’s what they call me, Captain Sparke.

Well, I had an idea in my head now. I cut him loose, I did, I really did, and tore off his damned thing and looked at the blood.

This HOR-rible, horrible feeling began to sink into my chest. And the damn red lights, the damned red lights of it all returned.

I eased up slower and faster, longer and shorter, I felt big and small, I did, as he limped off. And I came up to that big tank, and then I saw him, I did, I really did!

The angriest man, the angriest of all , his face so tired form all of the contortions that it was muscle all tight and almost bonelike, yeah, like it had damn near calcified, and some striations here and there, and yet. And still yet, it moved, it contorted, it twisted, it wrinkled and writhed up all in on itself, and his whole body writhed like a QUESTIIN MARK, LIKE A SNAKE.

Every damned thing the others did he did tenfold, and he was the angriest man, because, I think, I tell you, he felt all. His eyes were flickering lightning, like, soulless sparks, a mechanical machine, a figure pushed beyond the pushing point, you see.

And so it was that I used my next power and cut him loose, he writhed, spasmed, and slammed himself down the hallway. He moved unnatural, his moves damned grotesque; like a cannibal like a machine like a ballerina in reverse. He writhed, he did, a beautiful kind of beyond-knowing.

I don’t think the police will thank me for this one, I don’t think they will at all. I thin they’re apart of it. I think they’re a part of why I’m me. I think mauve, all of it.

With that in mind, and because they wouldn’t be giving me my usual blue sparks, I pulled the boom-stick to my head and popped it.