Cliffside Parking

The side door of the van felt heavier than usual as Wynn twisted the handle and unlocked it with a loud metallic clank. He was exhausted, his tired eyes squinted at the sight around him, adjusting to the cold, dreary environment nearby. Another day, another night. No one but himself and the van.

A pit stop seemed appropriate, as his latest field trip to earth–his earth–took longer than anticipated. A familiar "ding dong!" chimed along with the creaky hiss of sliding doors as Wynn ambled into a dilapidated convenience store. To the cashiers and patrons, it'd seem as if they were opening and closing on their own. A faulty sensor, surely. It was easy to dismiss a haunting when you were a pit stop rather than a Gothic house or historical landmark.

It was always the most rundown 7/11s that were open this late. 2am. Pre-witching hour, but still late enough for plenty of shady or eerie things to take place. Wynn paid little mind to the truckers and late night travelers buying snacks or energy drinks and floated (a power he was using more frequently) past them. Through them. Normally he found it rather funny to see them shiver and look around with that puzzled look on their often otherwise tired faces, but he wasn't quite in the mood for hijinks tonight. 

Arriving at the long row of clear glass doors with refrigerated beverages on the other side, he floated along the many rows until he came across his usual – cream soda. The kind that came in glass bottles. The real stuff. Wynn filled his pockets with the bottles, paying no mind to the clinking of the glass as he did so. Satisfied with his bounty, he walked around the remainder of the store, grabbing chips, sweets, and a few hot dogs that were surely past their 4 hour holding time. Thankfully, the ghostly nature of his being allowed him to walk right out and back to his van without being seen, but the sounds of the bottles and crinkling of plastic food wrappers turned a few heads on the way.

Dejectedly finding himself back at his familiar abode, he slid open the side door, sat himself down with his legs hanging off the side, popped open a soda with his key, and tried to decompress. He'd been in this city for days now looking for leads, clues, signs–anything that could point him in the right direction to solve his personal mystery and escape the purgatory of the unknown. But after all this time he wound up empty handed. Again. 

As he lamented over his lack of findings, his eyes drifted to a puddle in the decades old asphalt near his feet. It was likely from the nearby automatic car wash--the ones that tended to scratch your car as much as they cleaned them. Sipping his soda, he looked at his warped reflection in the murky water. Warped was right. It'd been a whole year since he'd graduated and he looked and felt exactly the same. You'd figure the end of 50 years of being a super senior would've resulted in…something? A beard hair, at least??

Taking another swig, he thought about high school. His friends that were graduating soon. The ones that had big plans. The ones planning for a future where they got older, wiser, and could leave their adolescence behind to get "real" jobs and start families. It made him sick to his stomach. 

A familiar choking sensation got caught in his throat as his mind began to wander--mulling endlessly over being left behind by those he cared about. He'd already lost people once after dying. He wasn't ready to do it again. Wynn, caught up in the malignancy of his own thoughts, gripped the edge of the side door next to him to steady himself. Normally he could quell his dread with some sugar and a few spooky stories pulled up on his phone. But he couldn't muster the brainspace. It felt like the doorway he was sitting in was the entrance to a cavern or chasm. He needed air.

Lurching upward and walking away from the van, soda still in hand, he walked forward still plagued by his own ideas. Would they forget him? Move on to greener pastures if they see that their old senior pal Wynn Missing can't be anything more than a high school kid with a chip on his shoulder and a van that's half a decade out of style? Tired, hurt, infuriated, and fueled by existential dread, Wynn turned and hurled his soda at his van, smashing it into the thing that reminded him the most of just how trapped he truly was.

The crash of the glass bottle seemed to coincide with a snap in Wynn's rationality. The van was the enemy here. It was always this stupid van. He was always the one in the driver's seat, speeding his way into more and more problems with reckless abandon. Well, this was one pothole he couldn't push himself out of, now could he? Furious, he stomped forward and slid the door closed, slamming it so hard that, were he not dead, he'd surely feel a bit of pain from the recoil.

His hand clenched around the door handle, Wynn stood in a rageful silence as he pondered what to do. He was over it. Over this stupid van. Over this stupid unlife as a miserable ghost with a stupid car and stupid clothes. But he was angry. He couldn't just park the van and leave it to the elements. No, he wanted the inanimate object to be destroyed. To get a taste of the permanence he felt eternally bound to against his will.

Losing control of most of his impulses and reasoning, he recalled that this particular pit stop and town was built on a series of plateaus. That meant elevation. In a frenzy, he ran from the side door to the front, peeking behind the vehicle and seeing that he was correct. A short ways away, behind a simple guard rail, the road gave way to a cliff of some kind. Confirming what he knew, he looked back at his vehicle. He was terrified of heights. It was only fitting that the two things he hated could meld into one. The van was heavy, but it could certainly be pushed.

Shifting gears and letting go of the brake, Wynn positioned the van optimally, got out old the driver's seat, and began to frantically, angrily push as hard as he could. Each time, the grinding of the tires as they crunched across asphalt and onto rocks and pebbles emulated how absolutely deteriorated his reasoning had become. He was spiraling absolutely, but he couldn't take it anymore. He wanted nothing to do with this life anymore, and the van was emblematic of a frozen state he sought to destroy. He survived an Apocalypse, for god's sake! He looked death in the face and shot it with a spectral arm cannon. He survived magical high school. Why couldn't he just AGE?

Passionate frustration turned to angry tears as he felt the first tire heave over the edge. He knew the van could phase through the rail, but it felt like just another bitter reminder that nothing he did had any impact on the world around him. Each time he shoved the vehicle further and further over the edge, he found himself yelling to the inanimate object about all the ways it had wronged him.

"THIS is for being a useless puzzle piece from my past that doesn't tell me ANYTHING and only serves to be a PUNCHLINE for jerks at school–!"

"THIS is for reminding me every day that I don't belong in this world anymore..!"

"And THIS is for never letting me down. All you really did was get my hopes up that I could ever move on in the first place..!"

Wynn found himself punching at the metal doors over and over until a creaking sound became and indication that things had reached a literal tipping point. Standing back, he watched in silence as his ghostly van--his one constant companion he'd carefully maintained for over sixty years--tilted down the incline and over the edge. It was strangely quiet for such a massive object careening over such a height. But as it disappeared over and out of view, Wynn didn't bother to see it plummet.

He turned away, instant regret creeping into his veins like ice. Wynn, feeling unsteady, let himself kneel on the damp asphalt. His silent tears, now quickly turning into choked sobs, flowed into the cloudy puddles beneath him. Why did he do that? How was he going to get back home? No…this place. This city. Crumbling Heights, U.S.A…..this was his home, wasn't it? He braced himself to hear his van smash into ground, but in never did. Instead, he began to feel a strange tugging sensation on his right leg. Around his ankle. Almost as if he was being grabbed.

"Huh–?" Wynn looked behind him to see an eerie glowing…*something* attached to his leg and descending down the very path he'd sent his van upon. It was like something had chained itself to his leg with some sort of spectral string. And it was pulling. The van was dragging him down with it.

"No no no no, please no!" There was nothing to grab onto as he clawed at the ground for dear life. Each inch he went backwards felt like an eternity, and the weight on his leg was immense. He felt almost pressed to the ground, unable to look back properly to get a grip on what was, well, gripping him. Not even the guard rail could save him, as he involuntary phased right through.

Petrified, any semblance of fearlessness and daring normally found in his personality evaporated as he was dragged closer and closer to the edge. "I'm sorry! I didn't –please no!" Wynn was whimpering like a terrified child as he felt his legs leave solid ground. But wasn't that just what he was, at the end of the day? A terrified child?

"I--I–" Pleading to nothing, Wynn could do little more than beg to the open air as his chest was dragged from the road and met the open air. He clung to the edge for as long as he could, refusing to look below him and see how far he would fall. "I'm sorry! Please! I'm sorry!" The weight pulling him down became too much to bear, and as his scuffed hands left the crumbling ledge, the adrenaline and fear in his body sent a shockwave through his entire being that shook him into seeing…something.

For a single split-second moment, Wynn was enveloped in the most vivid deja vu he'd ever experienced. He was warm, his tone fleshy instead of a ghostly blue. It was pouring and the ground felt slippery. The ledge and guard rail replaced with a cliff's edge. He was at eye level with a pair of white vinyl shoes and tires he hadn't seen in at least half a decade. He was falling, plummeting downwards and the last thing he could make out was that he had his hand on someone's ankle. They were falling together. The memory faded as quickly as it came, and the sensation of falling multiple stories downwards into the night refocused his attention back to his own certain doom.

He watched helplessly, too scared and confused to even shout as the ledge got smaller and smaller. All he could process was that whatever was dragging him did so with precision. He wasn't plummeting aimlessly, and as he dared to look behind Jim for a moment, he saw that the van had landed on its side, and the tether was dragging him into the very side door he'd walked away from only a short while ago. As the ground grew closer and closer, all Wynn could muster was a quiet "help" before falling right into the opening of the side door. The impact snapped the door shut, trapping the terrified ghost boy in a sort of makeshift vehicular crypt.

Inside, all was quiet for a moment as Wynn tried to process what the hell had just happened. He was alive. Or, well, alive as any ghost could be. Was this punishment for trying to escape? Was it a sign? Was the deja vu…a clue of some kind? Was the van….alive??? His lower lip felt warm, and he noticed that it was bleeding–something that always seemed to happen when he went though any sort of intense mental or physical strain. Looking down at his hands, though, he was alarmed to see that he looked…different? It was difficult to see, as the only light came from small LED screens within–microwave clocks, phones being charged. It was enough to see that something was…off, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Scrambling upward, acknowledging (somewhat begrudgingly) that fall damage didn’t apply to the dead, Wynn searched around the van’s interior for his phone. Grabbing it and turning on the flashlight, he noticed that his hands weren’t off…it was his sleeves. 

Wynn, baffled, used the phone to search for a lightswitch. Flipping it on, it became clear that he was wearing a completely different outfit. No longer clad in a button up and tie, he was in a plush turtleneck and green jacket. His glasses were darker, too. Turning on the phone’s front-facing camera, he was completely taken aback at the fact that, whatever had just happened, it had altered his appearance entirely. His swooping hair was now tucked neatly into a more clean-cut, conservative mop top, and he was wearing shades. What was going on?!

He marveled at his face, his new hair, and his new shades for a moment before the frustration set in. This was all just more unexplained mystical nonsense that have him more questions than answers! Tossing his phone to the side in a huff, he put his head in his hands. He’d made his bed, but he certainly didn’t want to lie in it. Wynn did a few inhales and exhales to shake off any remaining pent-up feelings from his tantrum or his fall. Best to not tell anyone back home how any of this…transpired. Peering through the windshield, he saw that the van was in a space that was going to be a nightmare to get out of. It’s a good thing he had all the time in the world. He felt around for the door, sighed, and began to pull.

The side door of the van felt heavier than usual as Wynn twisted the handle and unlocked it with a loud metallic clank. He was exhausted, his tired eyes squinted at the sight around him, adjusting to the cold, dreary environment nearby. Another day, another night. 

No one but himself and the van.