[This was the second honorable mention for our Ghost Story Flash Fiction contest.]
I hate that van. I hate that van with no back seats and heating always cranked high as can be in fall. I hate that van and its twists and turns that make my stomach churn and my head pound. I hate that stupid van and the fact that I’m always stuck in the back of it.
I didn’t used to hate the van, not when my dad first had to use it. I thought it was cool to get picked up in this large van with no windows or seats. I used to stretch out in the back and take naps to quiet instrumentals after long days of the usual high school pandemonium. It felt like home. It felt like salvation.
If I knew then all the pain that metal death trap would cost me, I may have never gotten into it in the first place. Though it wasn’t like we had much choice now, was it? Wasn’t like we had any money for a car lying around and my dad’s work only had the one to supply. Funny how things like that work out.
Moving away from home was hard. I knew it would be, but I also knew it was inevitable. I had always dreamed of going to college. Of course, younger me had dreamed of studying dinosaurs or music, though I doubt the kid would mind that I settled on history. So, yes, I had to move out for college even if only an hour away. I was chasing my dreams.
The moving process had been stressful; making a list of stuff I needed or wanted to bring, packing it all away into old boxes, checking my list twice, stacking it all up in the back of the van. My nerves were expertly frazzled for the whole week before getting in that van beside all my things and leaving home for the first time. My parents sat in the front as they always did, and my dad turned the radio on to his favorite classical music station before we were on the road to my dreams.
I never made it to college. It’s amazing what can happen in an hour-long drive on a hot august morning. I remember it as if a dream now. I sat with my eyes closed next to a box full of bedding, my sunglasses sliding down my nose. My mom was talking with my dad about her first week of class and a soft flute was playing from the speaker behind me. It was a nice moment after a week of stress. Then a semi hit us right off the road at 80 miles per hour. My death was fast and painless with nothing but boxes of my life to shield me, but they couldn’t do much for the caved in skull where I had crashed it on the crumbling door I had been leaning against.
I hate that stupid van. I really hate that I had to die in it.
