The Episodes of Sparky & Banes

Sparky is a former scab pro-wrestling referee—who is unaware of this fact—with a unique sense of fashion (based loosely on his real world counterpart who really is a pro-wrestling referee).  Banes is a washed-up and depressed drunken gambler with a speech impediment and is very aware of this (based loosely on his real world counterpart who really is washed up and depressed).  They're two of a kind, working on a full house, just looking for a good time.  Like birds of a feather they stick together, and this is their story:

SPARKY AND BANES:  Episode 4 - “Enter the Freak:  Part One” – 6/26/03

Sparky trotted down the street in delight.  "Do do do do," he sang. 

Today he skipped any mysterious introduction.  There was no 'man in the iron mask', no 'shroud of secrecy', and no 'boob looking for a mackinaw'--Brian was on vacation as far as Sparks knew.  Although no icon in the nation's spotlight, Mike Sparks was far from being unknown to the public around him.  In fact (in fact!!--to please my parenthetic critics), Sparky's short stroll down the road had been the direct cause of nearly a dozen accidents.  Luckily, there were no casualties.  Unluckily, those 'lucky' few would have to live with the image of this strange...and oh so hideous...man's face forever melted into their minds.

There was one vehicle though that stuck out in the tangled mess of potential insurance collection, due largely to the fact it looked like it had no insurance.

"POP!" yelped the exhaust pipe as corroded metal bounced off the pavement.

"Go go go!" yelled a man as he held fast to a rifle, and stood fast in the back of the pickup.  He wore a blue apron stained with butchered meat and his driver looked to be very much under the influence.  It wouldn't have made sense to anyone had they not already been preoccupied with the events involving air bag inflation, brake failure, and beautiful bastards anyway.

"I'm a scaaaaab!" Sparky bellowed, sending another unsuspecting (yet vomiting) victim into a cement wall.

No one understood any of this besides another suspicious vehicle coming out of the tangled mess of car accidents and hemorrhaging.  It was a yellow van, taped over in places to cover the advertisements of its previous owners.  Somehow, it had come out of the bumper-to-bumper flames unscathed.  A reasonable (in the screwed up, far out world of reason in that that is the Episodes of Sparky & Banes) suggestion would be that they had simply not laid eyes on the being of impending doom that was Sparks.  For some reason though, they were driving right along, adjacent to him.

As Sparky passed a wave of traffic, he turned a corner into clearer (and so safer) streets.  The van followed.  After another street corner went by, Sparky noticed a flash of light, like that of a camera, inside of the van.  It was the same van that he had seen that morning when he had started out from...wherever scabs come from.

Sparks decided to test the vehicle, only feet away from him now, to see if it was following him.  He pulled a sort of crossover maneuver (crossing over with John Edwards maneuver), leaping from one side of the sidewalk to the other suddenly.  The van, for some unknown and pointless reason, swerved in the street as well, to match him.  Sparky went back to his regular pace, watching the vehicle in the corner of his eye.  It was a small Matchbox school bus.  He plucked it out and threw it onto the sidewalk behind him.

"My that was awfully uncomfortable," Sparky stated.

Someone, later that day, would trip on that small Matchbox school bus, and slip, and fall, and die.

Sparky sang a funeral theme in a high, ear piercing fashion.  Because it felt like the thing to do.

Sparks again tested the van's progression as if it amused him.  He stopped suddenly.  The van's tires skidded to a stop.  Sparky inched forward.  The van mimicked him.  Sparky leaped into the air, tucked his legs, and did three back flips, then paused and did three more forward, regular...flips.  He landed in a bound, arms out, legs shoulder width apart.  The van was gone.  Sparks waited though, and heard something.  He watched the van sail back towards the earth.

"Geez," said the driver.

"I hate that you say geez," his passenger replied.

Before it caught their attention, Sparks was in a dead sprint up the street and already turning the corner.

The driver punched the gas (actually bending down and punching the petal) and followed.

Around the turn it looked like a war zone--a WWF Warzone.  Again cars were piling up and flames mixed with metal mixed with blood.  Certain Degenerates of X (as if they were ever called that) accompanied a group of black men dressed in leather jackets and 80s Hip-Hop attire, smashing car windows and collectively crotch chopping a man who seemed overly excited about butt holes.

"The king of rock who?" said one of the hip-hop jackets.

"Aaaahhh!" a man in red spandex Speedos screamed in reply to the talk of butt holes.  He appeared to be in the zone.

There was one such spot, those in the van noticed, where a man (or a monster, some might say), clad in red and black flamed spandex himself, stood in front of a flaming wreck and just pointed.  He would stop from time to time and nod then, well, go back to pointing.

"MY GOD KING!  HELL IS HERE!  HELL ON EARTH!  HELL, FIRE, AND BRIMSTONE!  MY GOD KING, HE'S ON FIRE!!"  The screaming man wore a cowboy hat and bathed in a brewing pot of barbeque sauce.

The two in the van looked out their windows like small children at Disney World.

"Ha ha Pinocchio," said a small, green cricket in a top hat, sitting on the dash of the van, and, by the queerish way he spoke, perhaps challenging Pinocchio to a duel.

"Ha ha, now the score is 355 to 56!" exclaimed a small boy tied up in a potato sack in the back of the van and apparently voiced by Hailey Joel Osmond.

A man sat in the shadows of a corner along with him.

"Seventeen, eighty, fifty-three, fif-fifty-three!" he said, caught up in something else.

As the two drivers (now both sitting in the driver's seat obviously) looked out the window, a sweaty Canadian man ran up and glared in.  "You may have beat me once," he said, "and you may have beat me twice bu-"

"Skip," the one in the passenger seat (now back in position) said and gestured, as if pressing a button.  The man outside the window didn't know what to do, but looked quite, very sad, and backed up off the road.  As he stepped onto the sidewalk, a bald man tackled him and punched the air roughly a few inches above his forehead.  The world of pro-wrestling had apparently escaped into the 'real' world.

"FISTS AND FIRE!  MY GOD KING, FISTS..." J.R., the announcer, trailed off as he sunk, gurgling beneath the surface of the bubbling BBQ.

"What am I thinking?" asked the driver.

"That the best wrestling commentary trio ever would be made up of Vince McMahon, Jim Ross, and the guy responsible for recording random lines from Tazz in WWF Smackdown for the PS2?" his companion answered, almost automatically.

"Take it a step further."

"That the best commentary ever would come from a foursome of Vince McMahon, Jim Ross, the voice of Tazz, and Reggie Theus?  ...with complimentary hip hop riffs from Bob Elliot!"

"Now think NBA Jam."

"HE'S ON FIRA, TAZZ!!" they imagined Reggie exclaiming.

"I hea'... BOOM SHAKALAKA!" Tazz would answer.

The driver turned around, reaching for a stick on the floor as the van swerved into the other lane, causing more chaos.  He picked it up and poked yet another body inside a potato sack.  "Say it!" he demanded.

Silence.

"SAY IT!" the other yelled.  They waited for a moment.

Still nothing from the bag.

The man who had been counting in the corner got up and began kicking the bagged body.  "SAY IT YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH!  SAY IT!!"

"...the People's Elbow..." the one in the bag finally said, with a Brooklyn accent, and in a voice that sounded more like a recording.

Everyone in the van laughed with glee, including two body bags and the cricket on the dash.  Still giggling, the one in the passenger seat grabbed the poor cartoon character and chucked him out the window.  Everyone in the van laughed.  Everyone besides the man in the corner, who had gone back to counting.

Back on task, the van continued up the street, in search of a scab.

At the end of the street, the mess continued, but they seemed closer now.  There were still those in the act of experiencing the horror.  Ahead, Sparks was leaping onto the hoods of passing vehicles, screaming and making faces (or simply revealing his own) to the people inside.  Evidently Sparky had forgotten about his stalkers when he leapt out of the turmoil and onto the windshield of the van, waving his image to all passengers and howling like some sort of Hollywood dinosaur.  For someone who had always believed that really he had dashing good looks, he seemed to be getting caught up in everyone else's view--his true ill-favored countenance.

Sparks stopped himself and the flames started to die down.  He noticed his potential victims weren't in a shock of terror but instead more of a state of relieving pleasure.  They seemed more in awe than in shock.  Sparks sneezed and the passenger actually had to hold the driver back from licking the glass on the opposite side of the mucus.

Sparks tried to slide down off the hood indiscreetly but before he could make it onto the ground the two in the van were on him--literally--like a certain Chris Katan ape-like, humping character on Saturday Night Live.

"Bah!" said the driver.

"Bah! yelled The Rock," ...yelled The Rock, in the third person.

"...seven...eleven...seven..."  The counting man in the corner missed his own cue.

As Sparky tried to cry out, he held himself and instead made a quiet whimper.

"Aw!  The smell!" cried the passenger.

"Now that's what The Rock's cookin'," said The Rock as he walked away and reached into a bubbling mess of barbeque and pulled out J.R. by the hair of the hat.  They then left and went to working on a new recipe.

The two from the van (now minus The Rock, who had been their muscle) held a foul smelling Mike Sparks down and threw another potato sack over his head.  "I'm a foul smelling fellow," he said simply, in a muffle.

His man handlers picked him up and carried him to the back of the van.  He didn't struggle as his body was paralyzed from the bowel movement.  They got to the back and swung him, back and forth, to the count of three, and let him go, sending him flying into the back of the still closed doors.

"Whoa whoa whoa!" the passenger called out.  "The most important cargo in the history of kidnapping and we run it into a steel door?"

"A STEEL DOOR!" J.R. repeated, leaning out the window as he and The Rock drove by.

"Burr..." The Rock added.  They continued on to their cooking destination.

Sparks sat up, a bag still over his head, but seeming very handsome after his collision with the door.  "Whoa whoa whoa," he also said, sounding very handsome now as well.

The driver opened the door, striking Sparks in the side of the head, surely making him hideous again.

Sparky hit the floor of the van with a thud.  The back doors slammed shut and Sparks rolled back into them as the van began moving.  He started to recover from the bowel troubles and tried to raise himself up.

"Three...th-three...thr-three-ee...EEEE!" the counting man continued.  "Aw screw it!" he said, apparently quitting with a loud crunch sound.

"Hello Brian," said Mike as if it was nothing, pulling off the potato sack.

"Hello Mike," Brian replied, nibbling on the stick of his Tootsie Roll Pop that the capturers had lured him with.

Mike pondered the torture his friend must have gone through, knowing very well the problem he usually had in counting to three.

The van bolted forward and Sparky and Banes crashed into the back doors yet again.  Through a small window they saw numerous police cars swing a corner and give chase, answering automatically to Sparks' capture.  The van sped up and somehow left them in the dust, easily.  'It was going hella fast' the police reports would say.

Sparks got up on his knees and crawled towards the front.  He suddenly felt drowsy.  Banes had already dozed off himself, drooling excessively, and snoring like he was suffocating on his own air passages.  The drivers must have released some sort of gas to put the passengers to sleep.  As Sparky began to nod of himself, he noticed both the driver and the passenger had both collapsed in the seats, apparently releasing the gas through the entire vehicle.  Before Sparky did collapse though, he noticed they had set the cruise control.  They could rest easy.

The van approached a sharp turn and did, in fact, make the turn.  It would seem that it was hella smart as well.

*        *        *

Mike Sparks awoke to darkness.  He was sitting down, but couldn't move.  His wrists burned from the scotch tape that held him--a single piece on each--but the rest of his body felt strangely comfortable, and silky smooth even.  He also smelled better now, better than he ever had.  He smelled like flowers...spring fresh...

A spotlight flashed on in front of him, blinding him for a moment as his eyes couldn't adjust to the bright light.  He squinted and slowly raised his vision, looking over his body.

Sparks was wearing a silk dress, blue, with pink and yellow flowers.  He recognized it from the Martha Stewart collection now on back-row clearance shelves at about every K-Mart store left in the country.  On his feet he wore small white booties, white buckles, lace, and all.  He also appeared to be wearing women's pantyhose (unlike those men's pantyhose), but that didn't seem very strange as his leg hairs pierced the material and stuck out from place to place as they usually did when he sported the stretch leggings.

On his head, Sparky's hair felt pulled and forced around, as if sticking through a hat.  He fought the light and looked up at what was the brim of a white hat--a white spring bonnet in fact.

"Where am I?" Sparky uttered.

Three loud clamps echoed in the darkness and electricity whirred through three more spotlights as they flashed onto Sparky.

"WHY AM I SO DAMNED HANDSOME!?" he screamed in reply, feeling he had to reply with something.

"Do you know where you are?" asked a voice behind the light.

"A fashion show?" Sparky snapped sarcastically.  Another spotlight came from beside him and lit up a row of seats along the wall.  In them, tied up, the cast of the Golden Girls obnoxiously bobbed their heads back and forth in support of the punch line.  The spotlight switched off and they disappeared.

"Do you know who you are?" another unknown voice asked.

"Now what in the hell kind of question is that?" Sparky yelped.  "I am... I..."  Sparks trailed off as though something was bothering him.  "I don't remember."

Again a spotlight lit up the wall beside him.  The girls were gone and in their place was a bearded man, standing, unshackled, laughing loudly with his head back.  He had a wad of clearly fake hundred dollar bills and was dressed in a striped red and white cashier's outfit from some restaurant.  He wore a nametag that simply said 'Ted'.  He kept on laughing, even when he disappeared with the light.

"Everyone has a price," snickered one of the voices.

"If it's money you want-" Sparky started.

"You have none," a voice replied.

"Jewels, gold, precious stones and metal..."

"You have none to offer."

"TREASURE!"  Sparky screamed.  "PIRATE GOLD!  X MARKS THE SPOT!!"

The voices didn't answer, probably disgusted (or perhaps intrigued).

"WISHES!  I WILL GRANT YOU THREE WISHEEEESS..." Sparky whaled and trailed of as a loud gaseous belch escaped his backside.  He wheezed in conclusion, resting himself from the climax of sort.  "What do you want?" Sparky whimpered again quietly.

"We want you, unconditionally.  We want you around at every passing moment, to chronicle your every passing moment, to chronicle your every act--your existence.  And to throw things at if we're irritated by something.

"But why?"  Sparky looked down at his dress.  "Is it because I'm a beautiful bastard?"

"That's one of the many reasons."

"Well you're no spring chicken yourself!" Sparky combated, as he usually would, not listening to the answer.  He couldn't have seen them anyway.

"No," a voice answered, "you're the spring chicken."

"I am?  ...well yes I am," Sparky said.

"In fact.  You've always been known as--THE SPRING FREAK!" one of the voices said dramatically, failing miserably, laughing loudly, sounding very much like a black heart, and deceased, Canadian Pro-wrestler.

"Yes...the Spring Freak...I remember now..." Sparky muttered, even though he didn't.

Behind the light, those behind the voices were doing all they could to hold back their excitement--and surprise--in how well Sparks was cooperating.

"But...I remember someone." Sparky added.

"Remember?" a voice said, worried, obviously questioning the success of their brainwash.

"A man with a mustache...I can't remember his face though."

The voices sighed, relaxing.

"He was ugly as hell, that's all I know," Sparky said finally.

The sighs were swallowed suddenly.

"Would you have any Grey POUP-on!?" a new voice screeched, making ear drums bleed.

The spotlights went out in front of Sparky and a singly, large, bright light flashed on, lighting up the place where the lights had come from before.  Two shadowed figures stood just out of the light.  In front of them, standing directly in the circle of light, a man in tuxedo and top hat, with white gloves and a cane, tapped his brightly polished shoe obnoxiously.

"You!?" Sparky said, shocked, assuming he should react this way.

"Me?" the man answered, bobbing his eyebrows.

"I know you...but who are you?" Sparky asked, nearly in tears, holding onto his bowels, perhaps for a rainy day.

"Who am I?" the man repeated.  "Who ain't I?" he replied.

Sparky just stared, unaware that any other man would have chewed his arms out right then and tried to choke the man in the top hat with their bleeding stubs.

"D-dini," the man said simply.  Unable to speak correctly even in a moment like this.

"Dini?" Sparky asked.

"Did I stutter!?" the man yelped.

Sparky sat silently, and ugly.

"I am Dini!" the man exclaimed.  "The great Paul Dini!"

"No..."Sparky said.  "No.  No!  ...NO!" Sparky screamed, for really no reason besides a fitting attempt at drama before the abrupt cease that is-

TO BE CONTINUED...