Stories of the Untold...

Last of the Sparks

My name is Aaron Sparks. Back in February of 2008, I decided that I needed a change in my monotonous life. Whether that change would come in the form of a new job or a new toothbrush, I didn’t know. I was never the most adventurous person. I’ve always found it difficult to veer away from my comfort zone, and the limit of my existence usually depended upon which book I was reading at the time. It took me a while to realize that most of the happiness in my life was derived from works of fiction, from stories I often found myself lost in for days at a time; I was an avid bookworm – as miserable an expression as that is.

Once I realized my true outlet, I immediately knew what I wanted. I purchased a small shop, quit my boring job, renovated the building and transformed it into a bookstore – I had never been happier. The next two years were the best of my life; the store had become a huge hit with the locals, my perspective on work had been completely altered, and I was feeling genuinely happy for the first time since my childhood.

It was during the winter of 2010 that she walked into my store. She stepped inside out of the snow and approached me with a large bin-bag. Etchings of age covered her pale face and hands – she must have been at least 80 years old. Slamming the bag on the counter, she simply said, “These are for you.”

I looked inside the bag to find a selection of some of the greatest novels ever written.

“Why?” I asked, confused. “Do you want money for these – or some kind of book trade?”

“No, they’re yours to have,” she said. “Take them.”

A feeling of unease swept over me as I stood in the woman’s presence . Her dirty grey fringe slightly concealed her face as a cold gaze met my vision.

“Are you sure you want me to have them?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you rather sell them?”

“No. I have no use for them, or for money.”

“Okay… thank you. What’s your name?”

“Lucy.”

She departed from my store shortly after muttering her final words.

I found it all too strange that somebody would give away such great books for nothing, but I suppose some people are just nice. I made my way home that night and took the books with me so that I could go through them. I piled them up on the table and was surprised to see that all of them were in fantastic condition. A couple of them seemed to be first editions and others were versions that I had never even seen before. It took me a moment to realize it, but the novels that I was looking at were not as I had remembered them to be.

The first book that I picked up was The Green Mile. On the front cover, there was an image of John Coffey smiling and holding two dead, naked girls; I opened it up and flipped through the pages. In this version of the novel, he was in fact guilty of the rape and murder of both children. I made my way to the end of the book and read through the execution scene. All of the officers who had originally grown to love John Coffey in the original novel were now laughing uncontrollably and screaming racial taunts as he was being executed. My eyes had seen enough and my stomach had felt enough, too.

The next book I picked up was The Catcher in the Rye. The artwork upon the front page seemed to be of a dead body splattered on the street, as seen from an aerial perspective. I flipped through the book until I reached Chapter 14. After Holden Caulfield speaks of “messing with the idea of suicide,” he suddenly breaks down in tears and jumps from the window, cracking his skull on the pavement below. The book abruptly ended after that.

I then picked up Lord of the Flies. The defining image on this novel was of a large child with the face of a pig; he was covered in blood and surrounded by decaying corpses. After thumbing through a few pages, I reached a point of the story in which Piggy is described as being “non-human, vicious, and a hungry animal.” A chapter or so later, Jack insulted Piggy, which led him to lose his temper and rip Jack apart. Piggy then proceeded to kill and eat the rest of children. The remainder of the book was the same line repeated over and over.