THE CAR WITHOUT HANDLES

Mark was a 16-year-old boy and lived in Washington with his parents and his sister Sara. He was very intelligent in fact wanted to study and commit to find a good job in the future and be able to help his family financially. Unfortunately he was often teased by his classmates because his family was poor and could not afford to buy designer clothes.

For this reason he did not talk to anyone and as soon as school ended he immediately returned home by bus.

One morning after finishing school sad went quickly to the bus stop because of the heavy rain. The minutes passed but the bus did not arrive and it continued to rain a lot.

Then he thought that this delay was caused by the long traffic that there was.

Mark continued to wait for the bus for a long time until an hour later a beautiful black car stopped in front of him. The car window slowed down slowly and a man appeared inside it. He had gray hair, a beard, he wore prescription glasses and a blue scarf because it was very cold.

He smiled and said, “What are you doing here all alone boy? Come on in, I’ll take you home.” Surprised Mark thought about it for a few minutes. Then he decided to accept because his mother would worry, since at the time almost no one had a phone, he could not warn her of his delay.

He got into the car and sat down in the back seat. The man told him to sit down next to him, but the boy thanked him and told that he was fine.

Mark immediately told the man what route to take to get home and it seemed that he already knew the destination. Minutes passed and the man began to ask questions to the boy such as what he liked to study, what subject he took the highest grades, what job he would like to do and if he had friends.

The boy answered his questions very quietly and was very happy that he had met a nicer person.

Unfortunately, they were stuck in traffic for about ten minutes while the man told Mark that if he wanted he could take him to school and then bring him home. Mark told him that he would think about it because this way his family would save money on the bus pass because his parents they didn’t have a car.

In the end Mark decided to accept because he would not see his classmates so often.

At one point while they were stuck in traffic Mark saw the bus and suddenly decided he wanted to reach it. He tried to open the car door next to him but there was no handle. So he immediately went out of the other where he was while the man yelled at him what he was going to do. Mark closed the car door and told him: “You were very kind but first I have to ask permission from my parents, tomorrow if you want to wait outside my house and I’ll let you know what they decided.”

And ran in the rain to catch the bus.

The next day Mark did not see the man and neither in the days after. Mark was sad because his parents agreed because they knew the man very well, he was their neighbor.

Six years later, Mark was sitting on the sofa and on  television was interviewed by a prisoner who was asked why he had removed all the car handles.

He replied, “One day a boy managed to escape from my car even though there was only one handle and I could not kill him because it was too fast. From that day on I decided to remove all the handles.”
Then it was revealed that the man had killed more than thirty boys.

THE END

Story created by Aurora Murati