Sarah and Mr Acer

The guy next door had always seemed a bit strange. He didn’t leave his house for work every day, which made me wonder how he got the money to survive. He had glasses that magnified his eyes like a bug and hair that always stood on end like he had recently been running his hands through it. When he did come out of his house he would say weird things like “passion is coming along nicely,” and “I’ve almost cracked fearlessness.” I would just smile, nod and walk away.

My brother said he was ‘a character.’ That is definitely not how I would put it. But, being the youngest girl in the family, I was ignored. He scared me a little. I had problems with sleeping, meaning I would hear him late at night, running around and shouting to himself. There would be strange electrical sounds and weird lights that flashed through the gap in my curtains.

As far as I knew he lived alone, which explained why no one told him he looked like he’d stepped out of the eighties. Possibly the eighteen eighties. He wore these old fashioned suits, with waistcoats and pocket watches and everything. They were threadbare and patched in places, but I’d never seen him wear anything else.

One day, he held a garage sale. This itself was so normal it shocked me when I was told.

“A garage sale?!” I asked, dropping my toast back in the toaster and running to the window.

“Like, with old bikes and crappy old junk he found in his attic?” I stood on my tiptoes to try and get a better look.

“Language, Sarah!” Mom chastised. “But yes, that’s the general idea. Why don’t you go over and have a look? Instead of ripping my curtains off their hooks.” I let go of the curtains I was yanking aside and ran to grab my converses.

I was one of the few people wandering towards the tables, but I attributed this to the fact it was only half eight on a Sunday morning. The tables seemed to be covered in bottles of different coloured liquids. This guy is beyond strange, I thought to myself. He clearly didn’t understand what a garage sale actually was.

Now close enough to read the labels, I stopped dead. ‘Passion’ read one label. The liquid inside was a deep scarlet and looked as though it was swirling inside. I shook my head and moved on.

‘True Love’, ‘Lucky’, ‘Mind-Control’. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This guy was more of a wacko than I had thought. Shaking my head, I turned to head back to normality and bumped into the resident weirdo himself.

“Hullo!” He cheered waving energetically, as though he wasn’t less than a foot from me.

“Erm, Hi, Mr. Acer.” I shifted uncomfortably.

He lowered his voice conspiratorially and said “ I told you I’d almost cracked fearlessness, Betsy!” He grabbed my wrist and dragged me over to a table on the other side of his lawn. He pointed proudly at a bottle of deep gold liquid that glittered in the sunlight.

“Taa-daaaa!” He picked it up and held it out, puffing his chest forward in pride.

“Erm, that’s great.” I coughed uncomfortably.

“Isn’t it?!” He sighed happily. “How’d you like to try some, Betsy?”

“Er,” I was old enough to know that strange men offering you drinks is never a good idea. But I’d also been taught to be polite and I had no idea how to politely tell him no.

“Here I’ll give you a sample,” he said. He patted his pockets until he found a small test tube with a cork. Carefully, he filled the tube with the liquid gold and pushed it into my hand with a wink.

I walked away as fast as I could, only remembering the bottle in my hand when my back was against my bedroom door. I tossed it onto my dresser and left it there.