Stephen King I Have a Story Plot For You

Today was a surreal day, in that I felt like I was living inside a Stephen King story and I brought my son along for the ride.

It all started with a hot summer day as dawn broke the horizon. We were expecting 34 degrees Celsius today, similar to the day we had yesterday.

My son had promised to mow the lawn this weekend, as it was scruffily long and clouds of mosquitoes were disturbed with every foot fall through the grass. Not a pleasant experience.

As yesterday — Saturday — was also a 34 degree day and it was still 31 degrees at 6pm, my son told me he’d rise early on Sunday morning and mow the lawn before the bulk of the heat set in. Early on a Sunday meant 8am because by law, you weren’t allowed to make any noise before that time.

Good to his word, my son rose this morning, prepped the mower, which included filling the tank full with petrol, started the mower and preceded to cut the grass.

As we have a large block and it’s predominantly grass, it takes about 1.5 hours to mow.

Another reason behind an early start was my son and I had plans to go on a three hour drive today and we needed to be back in time to feed our cats.

So when I knew my son was close to finishing the lawn, I started to get ready for our outing. I’d just finished bathing and got dressed, when I noticed my son waving his arms at me through the front lounge-room window.

I let myself out into the heat — already 31 degrees by this time — and approached my son, only to hear him say, “Mum, the mower won’t turn off.”

He still had the front verge to complete but his face was glowing red from the heat, and he was attempting to turn the mower off so he could come in and get a cool drink of water. Sweaty and dehydrated, he was getting concerned because the mower was still running, although he had pulled the lever into the off position.

Doodoodoodoodoodoodoodoo (key in the scary music from any Stephen King movie).

I tried the on / off lever, simultaneously revving the mower and then pulling the lever back to off, where the bloody thing sat quietly idling…….not silent like it should be.

My son made the decision to continue with finishing the verge and then we both hoped it would come to its bloody senses and power down when requested.

But no….it was not playing the game.

I knew enough to know that if I removed the spark plug boot from the spark plug, the motor would stop. So armed with my insulated pliers I pulled and twisted and pushed and turned but that boot was not giving up the connection, no matter what I tried to do.

Doodoodoodoodoodoodoodoo (heighten the scary music from any Stephen King movie).

The damn mower was possessed, I’m sure of it.

I tried everything I could think of.

And before you ask, please note, this model of lawn mower does NOT have a fuel tap, so I couldn’t take the easy fix by just turning off the tap, thereby starving the possessed beast of fuel.

I scooted next door and asked my neighbour for help. I mean, all a girl needs is a man, right?

Hahaha, my neighbour knew less than I about lawn mowers because he couldn’t even tell me where the spark plug and resulting spark plug boot even was. I had to show him but even his superior strength saw that bloody thing holding on with all its might.

It was at this time I came to the realisation that all I could do was let the mower burn through the FULL tank of fuel my son had fed it just that morning.

That shouldn’t take long, right?

I mean it had taken my son 1.5 hours to mow the lawn, plus we had been trying to exorcise the demon possessing the machine for the last half an hour, so we wouldn’t have long to wait before it ran out of fuel, surely!

I took the mower around to the back yard in an attempt to get it as far away from my neighbours as possible, as I was sure they were already cursing the noise interrupting their relaxing Sunday after two hours. I placed it in the only tiny piece of shade in the yard, shade just big enough to cover the mower, turned the revs up to full bore — it’ll run out of fuel quicker that way, won’t it? — and left it to its possessed delight.

Two hours — I repeat — two hours later, the beast finally fell silent.

Oh, glory be!

Who’d have thought one small tank of fuel could last so long?

So, it goes without saying, we had to cancel our plans for the day because that beast of a machine stole half of our Sunday and we were both hot, bothered and extremely frustrated, to say the least.

I’ve dealt with lawn mowers that wouldn’t start in the past but……..this is the first time I’ve experienced a lawn mower that refused to turn off!

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Originally published on Medium