Chapter 1: The Drive

I came up with this story while riding on a train... How very JKR of me... :-)


Three gloomy members drove along a dark costal village one hour before sunrise. Their 1947 car’s headlamps shone down the unfamiliar road. The villagers who’s homes lined the streets stayed shut inside with furnaces hard at work against the morning cold.

In the front seat of the car was a man named Archibald Acherson. Archibald Acherson was the gloomiest and dullest of drivers (In fact he was so dull, I don’t think I’ll mention him again, at least not in this chapter). He was wearing a golfer’s cap, which covered his receding hairline, a gray cardigan, and everywhere he went he left a peculiar smell of juniper bushes.

Archibald never spoke, but occasionally he let out grunts and groans such as “Dreadful weather,” “Smoking Smither-bits,” and every so often he’d even shout out “Poppycock!” causing his over sized, hairy nostrils to flare out to mammoth proportions.

Sitting across from Archibald (Yes, yes, an apology to you. I mentioned Archibald again when I said I wouldn’t) was the lady of the car: Francesca Adredfa Melzenheimer Borewax-Arsnonwether the Second. (Now, please don’t make me say her name again, for it is a dreadful name that would make this book 10 pages longer if I continued on with it, and I’d rather like it if we could simply agree to call her Famba. Besides Famba suits her better).

Gloomy old Famba sat upright in her seat with a smug look on her face pretending to admire the village homes. She sat up waving her lace fan upon her brow, which scowled with disagreement. She didn’t use the fan to cool herself off, she used it to show how digusted she was with the upkeep of the village’s terraces. With her other hand Famba sat primping and polishing her mink stoles and her plurality of polished pearls.

But sitting behind Famba, far tucked away from the view of a person who happened to be walking down the street, was a small boy. Curled up next to the door was, Tura, a ten-year-old boy who just didn’t fit the scene.
Tura was dressed but in a thin shirt, pants that touched his shins, and a pair of long tube socks that went right up to his knees. He sat in the car looking quite bored, because he was just that: Bored. But like most children who go on road trips and who become bored, Tura didn’t ask to play games, nor did he attempt to imagine what he could be doing outside of the car. Because in this car everyone knew that game playing was strictly forbidden, and imagining things would most definitely cause him to be swatted by Famba’s frilly fan.

The three gloomy figures rode through the village in silence as the car puttered up a long hill. Then, as though from nowhere, a large housefly flew up against the window. While this wouldn’t seem interesting to most boys of ten, Tura found great delight in that small bug. Tura sat up. He watched as the fly bounce off the top of the car and down the side of the car. Obviously the bug had realized that the old Ford wasn’t a party place for a bug, so she was attempting to get out of the vehicle. The little fly zizzed and zazzed across the window. Tura smiled in delight, at last something to occupy his mind. But what happened next changed delight to dismay.

“What’s that noise back there, boy?” Famba turned around as though she had heard a fun go off.

“What’s that, ma’ma.” Tura replied trying hard not to look at the fly.

“I hear some sort of whizzing, wuzzing or buzzing. You know what I think about noises.” Tura squirmed in his seat to sit up properly. Famba hated when Tura couldn’t sit properly.

“Oh, yes ma’am. I know right well.” Tura said in his meek voice.

“What is it!?” Famba insisted.

“Beg your pardon, ma’am.” Tura said with a slight crack in his voice, “It’s just a little bug. A house fly, I think. She’s trying to get out of the car.”

“Why on earth did you let a bug in the car, you scallywag?”

“But I—“ Tura tried to tell Famba that he couldn’t have let the bug in because all of the window levers and door handles had been removed from the backseat so he wouldn’t try to jump out of the car.

“No buts about it young man. Now do it…”

“But I—“ Tura knew what was coming next.

“Don’t make me force it on you.”

“Fine.” There was no turning back now. He lifted one hand to smash the bug.

“Ah ah ah. Not this time.” Famba said with a gleam in her eye, “No no no, you need to learn to swallow your words. You know what to do. Now, scoop that pest with your second and third finger.”

The boy let out a shudder. With both of his hands (his left doing the scooping and his index and middle finger of his right doing the pushing) he pushed the little bug into his left palm.

“Very good.” Famba said with a grin, “Now do it, or you’ll just make it worse on yourself.”

In a brief moment he thought in his mind, “Sorry little girl.” And with one swooping motion he took the bug and shoved it in his mouth, swallowing it whole. He could feel it zizz and zazz down his throat, but there was no escape for the bug, Tura gulped it down and felt the little bug fall down his throat toward the depths of his stomach.

“I told you Archibald (It’s Famba’s fault, I didn’t mention Archibald, she did). These children just need someone who can hold them accountable. It’s a shame he can’t be more like Williburger’s son. This one’s such a marmot of a thing.”

Tura was use to being called fancy names for a pest. But really, he wasn’t sure that he really was pest, in his mind he wasn’t so bad. He had the occasion where he would disobey and start imagining things; sometimes he would even imagine things in his sleep (Famba said this was a clear sign that “he was troubled child”). But for the most part he did was Famba told him to, because if he didn’t he’d have to cut Archibald’s toe nails, rotate all the light bulbs in the home, or when he was really being naughty (thinking of things or being imaginative) he’d have to pick out the weeds in the garden with his teeth. But all this was normal to poor Tura, because he didn’t know of any other life, he wasn’t even allowed to go to school.


(That's all for today... More to come this week... Sorry I couldn't figure out how to make the paragraphs indent.)