Sparks: An Inferno Prequel

by Yolanda Olson

  “Well, how old were you when you had me?” he asks, shifting on his feet.

  “I was about twenty,” I reply, raising an eyebrow. “Why?”

  He shoves his hands into his jean pockets and glances away from me. “And how old was he?”

  I wrinkle my nose in confusion. I don’t understand what kind of information he’s looking for and he’s damn good when it comes to beating around the bush—too good for my liking sometimes.

  “He, who?” I ask, raising an eyebrow curiously.

  “My dad.”

  “Oh. Um, thirty-five, I think.”

  He nods and takes a deep breath before he walks over to me and stares at the map.

  “Where to now, Magellan?” he asks, a small smile on his face.

  “Wherever we want to go. See anything that looks good?” I reply, resting my head on his shoulder. Luke is a tall boy, much like his father, and he dwarfed me when he turned about twelve. Puberty shot him up the rest of the way and it astounds me that he’s not done growing just yet.

  He puts an arm around me as he leans closer to the map and runs a finger down the list of places closest to where we’re standing.

  “Nah. This all looks kind of boring. We can go to the beach, though. The sun is almost gone so there shouldn’t be too many people there.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I reply softly, as I pull away from him and we loop our arms together again. Luke seems to be slightly less apprehensive about being outside, and I’ll let him lead me anywhere he wants to go right now if it’ll make him happy.

  I just want my boy to know that he’s loved—I want him to feel it as much as he feels the obvious desolation of only having one parent and not knowing much about the other. This isn’t the first time he’s asked me about his father, and while his question took me off guard, I have a feeling it holds some kind of personal relevance to him.

  Maybe one day, he’ll tell me what it is.

  On the boardwalk near the beach there are some small bars, a few outdoor diners, and multiple paths that lead to the sand. Luke seems a bit overwhelmed because he expected a ghost town of sorts, and to be honest, so did I.

  We settle on one of the smaller diners with outdoor seating because it seems to be the least populated of all of the buildings surrounding us. Since I’m not very hungry, I order a small bowl of ice cream and he orders a club sandwich. Our server moves quickly and seems to be completely frazzled by the amount of people out tonight, which makes me smile.

  She can’t be much older than Luke—maybe two or three years, and she seems to have a good head on her shoulders. I find myself wondering if my son would be interested in getting a job at a place like this, but the way he’s picking at his sandwich tells me otherwise.

  I also wonder if he notices our young server stealing glances in his direction. She’s mostly frazzled because of the crowd, but I can tell that part of her nervousness comes from his presence. I know it because it’s how I would act when his father would come to visit with me.

  “She is pretty, isn’t she?” I ask him once she’s out of earshot again.

  “Huh?” he turns his eyes up toward me as he finally takes a bite out of his sandwich.

  “The girl serving us, silly,” I reply with a laugh before I lick my spoon and dip it back into the bowl.

  Luke shrugs as he leans back in his chair, “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her yet.”

  I shake my head at him and lift another spoonful of ice cream into my mouth. The world could come tumbling down on his head and he would still be trapped somewhere in his own thoughts without even noticing the destruction around him.

  “I have seen that guy over there that keeps staring at you, though,” he adds quietly.

  Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes internally. When I was a young girl and first told my mother that I wanted to join the convent, she told me that I was too pretty to waste my life on my knees praising anyone except a man that would return the favor. She wasn’t being cruel, she just wanted me to make sure I knew that I was equal to anyone that walked the face of the Earth and she wanted me to know my worth. She wanted grandchildren and since my brother had cancer when he was a teenager, the radiation treatments left him sterile. It was up to me to fulfill her dream and I wonder if she would be proud of me now—even if the way I went about becoming a mother was completely unconventional.

  “Take a look,” he says, nodding almost imperceptibly in the direction of my admirer.

  I sigh and lean back. I reach up and pull my ponytail tighter, glancing over to where Luke motioned toward and almost fall back out of my chair.

  “We have to go,” I say to him once I regain my bearings.

  Luke nods as he folds his arms across the tabletop. “Yeah, I thought he looked familiar.”

  I get to my feet quickly, almost knocking the chair down, and reach down for my son’s wrist.

  “We need to leave. Now.”

  “I’m not done with my sandwich yet,” he says, pulling out of my grip. “And I may want to take a look at the waitress now that you’ve mentioned how pretty she is.”

  I want to walk away and leave him, but I don’t know if he would be able to find his way home. I don’t want to abandon him here because I see an old ghost, but I don’t want to face my past right now either.

  “We’ll come back tomorrow night. Let’s go,” I say, putting my hands on my hips.

  Luke looks up at me and a strange smile plays across his lips. “You look so adorable when you’re angry. I try not to laugh, but sometimes I wonder if you’d be capable of making me do what you want me to do.”

  “Please,” I hiss at him. “We’ll take the fucking sandwich with us, but I want to pay this bill and go before …”

  “Before?” he asks, glancing over in the direction of my ghost again. “Oh, here he comes.”

  I’m horrified—wishing the Earth would open up and swallow me whole, but I know that’s not how things work. A wish is nothing more than a hopeful sentiment that rarely ever travels where it should.

  “Hello, Taylee,” my ghost says in a frosty tone.

  I jump, not realizing how close he had gotten already, before I turn to face him, a huge smile forced onto my face.

  “Father Moore! It’s been years since I’ve seen you,” I exclaim. I clear my throat to remove the sudden falsetto tone it’s taken on and sit back down in my chair. “Would you like to join us?”

  He glances down his nose at Luke who’s now sitting back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, eyeing him dangerously.

  Father Moore holds Luke’s glare with an even stare of his own before he slowly shakes his head.

  “No thank you. I just thought I would come over and say hello since it’s been so long,” he explains with a tight smile.

  I begin to wring my hands nervously as Father Moore looks me up and down with an un-approval I haven’t seen since I first told him about Luke’s father.

  The loud scrape of a chair brings me back to the moment and when my son drops an arm around my shoulder and pulls me protectively close to him, I let out a small breath of relief.

  “Mom, is this the priest? The one from your old church?” he asks in a mischievous tone.

  “It is. Luke, this is Father Moore. Father Moore, this is my son, Luke.”

  Father Moore extends a hand toward my son who shakes his head and waves him off.

  “There’s no need to pretend we like each other, mister,” Luke says evenly. “Actually, I’d be much obliged if you got the hell away from my mother and maybe shove that nose up your God’s ass where it belongs.”

  “Luke,” I hiss at him, giving his leg a swat. He smirks at me, tightens his grip, and turns his attention back to the shell-shocked priest. I’m sure he’s heard quite a few things in his day, but I don’t think anyone has ever been quite as harsh during their first talk with him.

  “I should have known that anything that fell out of your womb would be as rotten as the man that put it in there,” Father
Moore says, before he turns on his heel and stalks away from us.

  “Come on, I’m bored with this place,” Luke says, walking back to his plate and taking one last bite of his sandwich before he heads to the register.

  “How did you recognize him? The priest, I mean?” I ask Luke on our walk back home.

  “From the pictures in that box at the bottom of your closet,” he replies, scratching his chin.

  “Wait a minute,” I say, pulling him to a halt. “What are you doing snooping around in my room?”

  I’m angry that he’s admitted to being a snoop, but not angry enough to punish him over it. He’s just a curious child and always has been, though I will have to set some rules for him now apparently.

  Luke shrugs and looks down at me. “Sometimes when you’re gone, I miss you and I go into your room because it smells so much like you. I’ll take a nap in your bed or I’ll just look around and see if maybe I can figure out what you were like before you had me. I know it sounds weird, and I’m sorry for poking around in your shit, Mom, but it just makes me feel better until you finally come home.”

  I’m taken aback by his explanation. I’ve never known him to have a warm bone in his body for the fifteen years he’s walked on this damn planet, but he always manages to say the sweetest things when it comes to me. It’s almost as if he knows that I need the kind words to keep me going day in and day out.

  “Don’t go in my room anymore without my permission, okay?” I say to him, looping my arm back through his.

  “Sure thing,” he replies, pulling his arm out from my grip and wrapping it around my shoulder. “You know, I’m not scared of much in this world, but I think the only thing that would do me in is not having you around. I know I don’t say it a lot, but I love you, Mom.”

  “Oh honey,” I sigh. “I love you too. You’ve always been the perfect son, in your own way, and I know that we’ll be okay. No matter what happens between us—we’ll be okay.”

  The rest of the walk home is silent, and it doesn’t seem to bother him anymore than it does me. Luke will make some woman really happy someday and I can only hope that she’ll treat him the way he deserves.

  I didn’t realize I had left the bedroom window open and my room is chillier than the weather outside. I wrap my arms around myself and with a shiver, walk over to that side of the room and lower it until only a small sliver of the breeze can come in.

  A heavy sigh escapes me as I turn around and look at my closet. I wonder what Luke was really looking for in there, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it had been some kind of neatly stowed away memory of his father.

  It makes me sad to think I don’t have anything I can give to him that would be a token of the man because he seems to becoming more and more interested in as the days go on—even if he doesn’t ask me about him, things like poking around in my room tell me as much.

  I decide to not think about it right now, although I make a mental note to try and see if maybe I can find him online tomorrow somehow.

  A son should get to know his father and I only hope they both feel the same way.

  Tomorrow, I’ll make this right. I don’t care what I have to do, but Luke will know who his dad is and maybe I can convince them to meet up.

  I pull my tank top over my head and toss it onto the floor, the sweatpants following shortly thereafter. I have the same feeling washing over me that always does when I think of his father and I don’t have the will to fight the urge tonight.

  I walk over to where I left my veil earlier and for the first time in a few months, I place it on my head, pushing my hair beneath the thin fabric. I walk over to the mirror and look at myself.

  A woman still lost in the hopes of a young girl’s dreams that were shattered when I broke my sacred vows. But the one thing that will make me feel better is already at the forefront of my thoughts.

  I turn to the side and look at my body. Slender, short, and taught—the same way I’ve always been. Mom once told me that if I had long legs, I could have easily been a model, yet as I turn my body back toward the mirror and stare into my cold, blue eyes, I keep telling myself that I’ve done the right thing with my life.

  I did what I wanted to do—I joined a convent, I did my best, and some pre-designed plan decided that I was destined to become a mother instead. I have a beautiful, caring son who loves me and would never abandon me like his father did, and I couldn’t ask for anything else.

  I let my eyes wander down my reflection as I reach back and unclasp my bra and shrug out of it. Even at my age now, my breasts are still perky and full which makes me smile. It’s one less thing about getting old that I won't have to worry about right now.

  My eyes are giving me an accusing stare as I wallow in the pride of my body and I have to look away. Pride is one of the sins that Father Moore always preached vehemently against, and in the quiet moments when I’m pretending to still be a chaste nun, I always manage to fall headlong into that damnable emotion.

  It doesn’t matter.

  This is about me right now. It’s about how I feel and what I want to do to remember the man that gave me the precious gift that’s more than likely perched in his bedroom window watching the moon slowly drift across the night sky.

  I force myself to face my own accusing stare as I reach a hand down and open the top drawer of my vanity. Inside, hidden away in a black felt pouch is one of the only things that really holds meaning to me from my days in the church. I look down as I pull the pouch out and give the drawstring a tug, revealing a set of beads inside.

  I pull out the necklace and drop the pouch back into the drawer, slowly pushing it closed as I turn and walk back toward my bed. This was the rosary that Father Moore gave me when I made my vows and just holding it makes things seem as simple as they used to be. I miss those days for the most part, but I wouldn’t trade my son for them if that were the only choice I would be given, and I know it is.

  I lay down on my bed and set the rosary on the pillow next to me. For what I’ve done, I already know that my soul is condemned for all eternity, but for what I am about to do, I welcome the Hellfire.

  Closing my eyes, I think back to that moment so many years ago when I was in his arms. I think of how his hands gently caressed my skin and how he hungrily reached for my panties, pushing them aside and how he began to rub me.

  I suck in a shaky breath as my hands do the same. I allow myself to be swallowed by the memory from time to time, and I play out what happened between us because it’s one of the few things that makes me feel alive anymore.

  My body is shaking as I begin to gently circle the tip of my finger around my bud over my underwear and arch my back slightly off the bed. I remember the way his fingers moved, and I move mine the same way, bringing a pool of desire against my cotton panties.

  Even though his fingers touched my skin, even though they moved with purpose and skill, I’ve never been able to find the will to touch myself the way he did, so I always leave my panties on.

  The feeling, however, is tantamount to what I felt when he circled his finger faster and faster, kissing my bare neck and whispering what he wanted to do to me. How he wanted to taste me completely and lick away the juices before shoving his dick into me.

  My breath is coming in heaving gasps now as I continue to rub myself. I want nothing more than to experience the hands of a man on my body again, but until that moment happens, my own will have to do.

  I squeeze one of my breasts tightly in my hands as the heat of my finger starts to bring forth the euphoric release I’ve been searching for.

  My mound is engorged, and the heat of my core is becoming almost too much to bear. Just when I think I can’t take anymore, my body becomes rigid and I can feel the orgasm take control over me. I bite my lip as hard as I can as to not cry out or make any noise.

  And when it’s over, when it’s finally done, and I open my eyes again to look at my rosary and beg for a silent forgiveness, I see the figure hiding behind the cracked doo
rway.

  Luke apparently watched the entire thing.

  After I’ve cleaned myself up, I turn the light off in the bathroom and linger in the doorway for a moment. I’m not entirely sure if this is something he’s willing to talk about, but I know it has to be done. I’m not too worried about what his reaction will be honestly, I’m more embarrassed than anything else.

  I take a deep breath and decide to just talk to him. I don’t know what to say, but I’m sure the words will come when I need them too.

  Walking down the hallway, I stop when I reach his door and gently knock.

  “Honey?” I call out. “Can I come in?”

  I hear some rustling inside, he tells me to give him a minute, before he finally opens the door and peers down at me curiously.

  “What’s up?”

  “Can I talk to you for a sec?” I ask, wringing my hands. Luke sighs and crosses his arms over his chest. He’s eyeing me critically because he knows what I want to talk about, but finally he grunts, nods, and steps aside.

  I walk into the dimly lit room and sit on the corner of his bed while he lingers by the door. He’s looking for an easy way out in case this becomes too uncomfortable of a conversation for him to have, and I don’t blame him. I think I would have died if I had caught my mother fingering herself.

  “Are you okay?” I ask him softly.

  “Peachy. Is that it?” he responds.

  “You know it’s not,” I reply with a little force behind my tone. “I want to make sure that you’re okay with what you saw. I mean, not okay with it, but that you’re okay. Up here,” I say, tapping the side of my head.

  “Mom, it’s not like I haven’t watched porn before. I jerk off every now and then too, I just don’t dress up and make a show out of it,” he replies with a heavy sigh.

  Interestingly enough, I think this talk is making me much more uncomfortable than it is him.

  “Well, okay,” I say getting to my feet. “I just wanted to see how you were doing and I’m sorry you had to see that.”