The Brink

~Volant~ · 2008-05-24T01:49:11Z

The Brink I never know what to make of this gift of mine. Some might say it was given to me by God, but I never was a very religious person. They don’t understand because they can’t see. But I can. And what I see doesn’t fit in with my pastor’s sermons, or what the Bible teaches. To me, religion is for people who still have things invisible to them. I wish I had that ignorance. That really would have been a blessing. I was relaxing at a park, not a mile away from an old amusement park called The Razz. It was a grey day, the kind that you don’t know whether it will rain or not, the sky swollen with clouds. A boy sat beside me, fairly handsome, with loose brown curls of hair and shinning blue eyes. He leaned against the back of the bench, smiling at a couple of kids playing tag in the grass, slipping and sliding and screaming. “Cute,” he said. I grunted. Don’t talk to me. “You come here often?” Only if I want to escape. “No.” He nodded, not getting my mental messages. “I visit here a lot, and most of the time I see the same people. I haven’t seen you around.” “Maybe you’re thinking of another park,” I suggested, forgetting myself. A few women, watching the kids playing tag, kept glancing at me nervously. I pretended not to notice. “No,” he said with a shake of his head. He didn’t notice the moms at all. “My friends and I always meet here. This is our bench.” I bristled at that. “I don’t see your name on it,” I snapped. “Of course not,” he chuckled. “I wasn’t saying that you should leave. After all, it is a public bench, isn’t it?” “Well, then, choose your tones more carefully,” I growled. The Moms stared at me for a while, then stood and rounded up the children. The young ones complained loudly about the interruption of their game, but their mothers shushed them and hurried them away without a backward glance. The boy chuckled, leaning forward on his knees to watch the group scurry away. “Jeez,” he said. “What’s their problem?” I didn’t answer, because I knew exactly what their problem was. He recognized that the subject was uncomfortable for me and changed the course. “I’m Jason,” he said, holding out a hand. I regarded the hand, then his face. He shrugged. “If you’re here often, I might as well get to know you.” I turned around, pointedly ignoring the hand. “Hannah. So pleased to meet you.” Jason looked at me for a while, then lowered the hand. “So, um…why do you come here?” Because I didn’t want to meet your kind. I tried to escape. Don’t you get that? Can’t you leave me alone? “To relax.” I hate this. I hate it all. Go away, I want to be normal, I want to be ignorant and happy. Of course, he heard nothing of my mental anguish. “My friends and I always meet here before heading to The Razz,” he said. “Thought I might find them here.” “You can’t call them?” “I tried. Their phones are disconnected.” I nodded absently. “Why did you lose them?” “I don’t know,” he said with a frown. “It is summer. Probably all gone on vacations and band camp. They always travel, always, every chance they can get.” I hesitated. “Where are your parents?” “Gone to Florida,” he said with a shrug. “It’s their anniversary. That’s why my friends and I go down to the Razz so often.” “How fun,” I said, but I didn’t mean it. An ice cream truck wheeled by, an enthusiastic ditty braying through the speakers. The tune was slightly sharp and had a tin, metallic quality that made me cringe. A couple of kids rushed all around us to attack it, despite the cold day, drawn like ants to sugar. I was slightly worried they’d carry away the truck. “You ever been to The Razz?” he asked. Loads of times. More than you ever will. “No.” “Really?” he was aghast. “Everyone around here has been to The Razz!” “Well I haven’t,” I snapped, fully turning on him for the first time. He gazed at me for a long time, and I held it, coldly and angrily. “Alright, alright, chill,” he said with a smile, raising his hands as though defending a blow. “I get it. What’s your problem?” he laughed. My problem? I’ve seen things that you only have had nightmares about. I’ve seen things that would make your skin crawl. I’ve seen things that keep me up terrified and crying little I’m three again at night, because I’m just so scared. “I don’t know,” I said finally, pretending to lose interest. He chuckled. “Sorry if I got on your nerves a little,” he said. “But these big-town people are crazy; No one wants to pay attention to a kid. I tried to find out where my parents were staying, or where my friends are, but hey, it’s summer vacation, isn’t it? Anyone could be anywhere and no one would know.” He sighed and looked in the direction of The Razz. “I would like to know where my parents are, though. Never thought I’d miss them.” He chuckled bleakly. “Have you looked on the internet?” I asked hopefully. “You could’ve found your parents’ names somewhere. Hotel records and stuff?” He pursed his lips. “The library computers are ridiculous. They’re so slow. And sometimes, I’ll just be sitting there, and someone will come along and push me out of my seat. I mean, honestly.” I sighed. It was a little while before we spoke again. A boy and his dad set up a kite in the field, the father patiently explaining the procedure to his son. They were too far away to hear the words, but the man was gesturing so dramatically, you’d think he was trying to flag down something flying up above them. “Well, my friends aren’t coming,” said Jason, his voice heavy with disappointment. “I’ll try again tomorrow, I guess.” “Good luck,” I replied. It was an obvious dismissal that he didn’t pick up. “I haven’t been there in a while,” he said. “We could go together if you’d like. I’d show you the more fun rides, the kind you’d like.” The Razz?! I had to hold down a gag. “No, thank you,” I muttered, miserable. The last thing I wanted to do was step into The Razz. He laughed. “Don’t worry, they have some gentler rides that we could start out with.” No, they don’t. I shut my eyes tight. Please, please, please, I don’t want to be around him anymore. I can’t take this anymore, I can’t. Please, let someone else deal with him, please. But I knew nobody would. Nobody could. “Come on,” he said, misinterpreting my discomfort. “It’ll be fun! I’ll pay, alright?” No, you won’t. You don’t need to. “Okay,” I said reluctantly. “Let’s go.” So we went to the park. As we were walking Jason talking about his friends. It made everything worse. “Derek’s a real daredevil. Hasn’t been a ride yet invented that he’s been afraid to go on. Even string rides aren’t intense enough for him. He has to go on all the rides that have deaths behind them.” He laughed heartily. “I swear, that’s the way he will die, someday. It’s the way he wants to die. Bryce is a bit shyer, though. Drops freak him out. Loops, too, but not as much as drops. He can take loops because they press you into the seat and make you feel safe, even if you don’t have any seat belt. But drops tug at you, do everything they can to pull you out. Tyler was always unbuckling his seatbelt. Thinks he’s invincible, the idiot. But we all love him.” He glanced my way suddenly, frowning. “You okay?” I took a deep breath and opened my eyes, trying a smile. I wasn’t successful. “Yeah,” I answered shakily. “Yeah, I’m fine.” “Good.” He flashed a brilliant smile. “We should be there soon. Prepare yourself for the awesomeness of The Razz!” I tried to smile again. A pitiful attempt, really. I hadn’t smiled since I was five. We turned the corner, and he stopped, confused. I sighed wearily. “Welcome to The Razz.” The H, the A, and one of the Z’s were missing on the sign, and an old abandoned bird’s nest, grey with dust and age, spilled from a jagged hold in the R. The ticket windows were boarded up with warped wood. Old posters advertising rides hung torn and faded from the walls, fluttering weakly in the breeze. Poor Jason looked confused. “I…you sure this is The Razz?” I closed my eyes painfully and nodded. “The sign says so,” I said shakily, gesturing at the sorry old remains of the letters. “It was the Razz when it was open.” Jason barked a dry, mirthless laugh. “I…I was only gone for a week…” I sighed and looked away, trying to keep the pity from my face. I couldn’t bear it. “Well, no point in coming all this way for nothing,” I said grimly. I walked up to the gates and easily hopped them. No one would be there to check if I had a ticket or not, and no security cameras or sensors would scream that I had stepped into the park without one. Jason came behind me, if a little hesitantly. He moved as if in a dream, a dazed look on his face. Flattened coke bottles and discarded candy wrappers crinkled under his feet, the only sound in this graveyard of a place. He froze, staring at a poster portraying an old-fashioned mining cart careening down the track out of control. The people in the cart were clinging to the sides in terror, eyes wide. One man had a hand clamped on a cowboy hat to keep it on. Another girl’s bonnet flew off behind her. It was a rather comical picture, really, but like everything else, it too had grayed and aged, eaten by bugs and torn and warped by the weather. The name of the ride had been scrawled with blood-red ink above the picture in a wide arc: Dynamite. “That was the one Derek wanted to go on,” he said, his voice small. “We all couldn’t wait until it opened.” I turned away, biting back tears. “Except Bryce.” He seemed to become a ghost, with a wispy voice and a thin, hunched frame. “Bryce didn’t want to go.” I drew a trembling breath. “Jason…” He turned to me with pleading eyes, begging me to tell him that it was all a dream, that we were in the wrong park. He seemed ready to believe anything I told him, just as long as I saved him from this nightmare. But the truth was worse. I sighed and closed my eyes. “Maybe I should just…show this to you. I can’t explain it.” I turned and walked down the park. I knew the way. I’d done this before, both in real life and in nightmares. And now, I was reliving each horrible moment from both. We reached Dynamite after what seemed like an eternity of walking. I led him through the walkway that snaked towards the main ride. The cars were the same old-fashioned mining carts from the poster, painted a dusty brick red and burnt umber. The real wood lay naked and exposed in patches where the paint had peeled or stripped away. It hadn’t been moved for years. I led him onto the track, then turned towards him. He stopped, looking around him with glazed eyes. I was secretly hoping it would all click for him. No such luck. “Why are we here?” he asked, his voice dried up as though he hadn’t drunk anything for a long time. I took a deep breath. “This ride only ran seven times, not including test runs. A pity, really. It looked like fun.” Still no realization. Or, maybe he did know, but was rejecting it. “Follow me,” I said, and walked down the tracks, listening to his feet brush the gravel behind me. The tracks were built like train tracks, with thin wooden rails on either side to keep the carts from flying off the edge if it hit a wrong turn. I dragged myself up a hill, climbed down a drop, stepped over the crossing trails of a loop, and finally climbed up a long tunnel of synthesized rock. There was another chain of cars here, leading to the top of the hill, but these were crooked and leaned heavily against each other, as if something had tried to smash them together like a toy slinky, then decided it wasn’t fun enough and tossed it aside. Some had even toppled over, so that Jason and I had to clamber gracelessly over a few to press on. Around us, suspended from the ceiling, were fake bats with dusty, plastic fur and red light bulbs for eyes. For this bat, one eye had popped from its socket, swinging comically like a clock’s pendulum measuring time; for that bat, half a wing, revealing a plastic frame and wires, the bones and veins that once made them flap like real creatures. In the cave, there was a strong, musty smell of decay, dust, and wet ash. It made me cough, but Jason seemed unaffected. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought that he was too deep into his confused trance to notice a freight train running over his foot. But I did know better. As we reached the top it got lighter, even in lighting such as today’s. Scorch marks were splayed across the walls, and some of the wooden track had also caught fire, forgotten and allowed to burn until they were twisted like worms in pain. The cart at the mouth of the cave had been blown into firewood, scattered across the ground. But it had been sifted through, as if someone had been looking for something among the rubble. Jason stopped, staring at the shattered cart in shock and disbelief. Hearing him halt behind me, I turned and put an arm around his shoulder, turning him away and leading him out. “Don’t look at it,” I whispered. It just seemed proper to whisper around here, around him. “It doesn’t concern you.” I stopped at the crest of another drop. The track plummeted steeply and turned sharply to the side, into a sideway run. One side of the rail had been broken through, and the shattered remains of the front cart were sprawled around the concrete below. Among them were some dark stains that could’ve been anything if you didn’t already know what they were. “This,” I said softly, “is what concerns you.” He knelt on the track, his hands on the low rails, looking down at the cart. He looked so small and helpless, kneeling at the top of the plastic mountain looking down at… I tried my hardest to keep back the tears. I tried so very hard. You’ve done this before, Hannah. This is nothing new. “You’re not real, Jason,” I whispered. “You’re…no longer…alive.” Jason drew a shuddering breath. “I’m dead.” “Yes.” He kept silent, looking down on the remains as if he wanted to join them and splatter himself across the pavement to end this. But he had already been splattered across the pavement, and that hadn’t ended anything. “The Razz has been shut down for a couple of years, now,” I explained, “because of this tragedy. Sure, people have died on rides before, but not this many. Eleven deaths on one ride, enough to get the government to shut down the park altogether.” He turned his head against his shoulder, trying to hold back tears. But he couldn’t. I cried myself, familiar tears that trailed down my cheeks. Just seeing these people, wandering the world blissfully ignorant of what had happened to them, made me want to cry. But seeing them like this, aware of what had happened, made it completely impossible to keep tears away. “Your cart broke off and went out of control,” I explained. “The disconnection of the wires sparked a fire in the second car, and everyone in there was burned alive.” I swallowed. “They came first, because they suffered the most. They knew they were dying, and felt the pain of it. It was almost unbearable to show them that cart back there.” “Bryce came before you,” I continued, “Because he also knew he was dying, and at the last moment, he knew that he didn’t even want to risk himself in the first place, that he could’ve just stayed home and missed this incident all together. He died in anguish, but I helped him on. “Then Tyler. At the last moment, he realized that he wasn’t invincible, that risking his life like this, just for a cheap thrill, had been stupid. He wanted to live so that he could his treasure life more and keep himself safe. Obviously, that hadn’t happened. He died in guilt, but he’s okay now.” Jason’s shoulders shook with one sob, but then he was still, frozen against the cold sky. “Derek?” he asked softly. “I don’t think he stayed behind,” I replied, drawing the sleeve of my jacket across my eyes. “You said yourself, this is what he wanted to die doing; taking a risk and having a blast doing it. I imagine he’s already on the Other Side, wherever that is, waiting for you.” He let out a long breath, as if he had been holding it. He turned to me, tears streaking his face. “What do I do?” he asked softly, his voice sounding so very small. “How do I get out of here?” I drew a deep breath and pulled him from the suspended track, onto steadier ground. “You move on, obviously,” I said quietly. “Something happened that kept you back, and you have to cut that bond so you can leave.” I shouldn’t have said that. Nothing was easy when you realize you’re dead, that you no longer have a chance to change the world around you. He closed his eyes and groaned, “I should’ve known. Nobody seeing me, nobody hearing me, acting as though they didn’t know I was there.” He looked up at me, trying to dry his eyes with his fingers. “Why can you see me?” I might very well be schizophrenic. But of course I didn’t say that. It’s always at the front of my mind, lurking somewhere that I’m just insane and that all these people aren’t real, but I never tell them. It would just make things worse. “I don’t know why I can see you,” I answered instead. “But I wish I did.” I rested my hands on his shoulders and slid him down against the charred plaster, so that he was sitting against the wall. I sat down beside him. “Listen, Jason,” I said quietly. “Your friends aren’t here. I know you loved them very much; you guys were really, really close friends. Friendship bonds like that are hard to come by, and even harder to break, especially after death.” Wish I had a friend like that. Just one that understood me, like I can understand you. “You thought they were here,” I continued. “You waited for them everyday at that bench, where you always had met. But now that you know they are on the Other Side, waiting for you…” I took a deep breath. “You have a natural pull towards them. Let them pull you where you belong.” He closed his eyes, and new tears welled from his eyes. Biting my lip, I hugged him tightly, hoping to comfort him. He turned and sobbed into my shoulder, making my shirt wet. “You don’t belong here,” I whispered. “Move on to where you are needed.” Bryce, I thought, the name echoing around my skull. Derek, Tyler. Your friend is here. Your friend needs you. Take him back. Take him away from us. He let out a deep sigh, relaxed, and was gone. Jason began to glitter, slowly melting into a golden dust that couldn't hold the shap of a boy named Jason and collapsed into a soft cloud of yellow stars that sifted and swirled away, spiraling lazily into the cold, grey day. I watched it go. My fingers clutched the empty air and my arms, now embracing nothing, collapsed and slowly dropped to my sides. I was alone in the musty cave, surrounded by death. I looked away, blinded by a sudden emotional surge of anger and pain. I hate this, I thought vehemently. I hate this, I hate this I hate this, I hate… I pulled my knees up against my chest and sobbed for Jason, for his friends, for anyone and everyone who I had ever helped move on. I cried for a long time. {This is an idea I'm playing with, so it might not be as good as it could be. But I'm not very good at foreshadowing. How long before you realized that Jason was dead? Thank you very, very much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!}

Is there more because I'm addicted to this [b]beginning? It's just so amazing you just have to write and post more! Make this a prologue or a chapter one!

I'm shocked by how deeply you developed Hannah in such a short piece, you brilliantly showed her attitude and personality. Now I just want to know what happens to her. Surly she can't live a normal life? Maybe she has to go on an epic journey in search of the knowledge that will allow one of the dead to move on but she could develop a relationship that gives her mixed feelings over whether or no she wants the dead person to leave her. Or maybe its not only dead humans that Hannah can see and communicate with, who know she might meet animals or monsters... If she met monsters could it be that whilst alive they live in one dimension but after death the go into this half state from which they can break away and venture in to our world with evil intentions? Can Jason return?

I must also add that I love your writing style it just flows brilliantly with all the pauses in the right places for tension and I also think the way that at the start when you were telling us Hannah's thoughts was superb. I demand more of it!

Being such a good writer I would be really happy if you could find the time to read the
sci-fi/horror/action novel with no name that I'm writing. I could really do with some tips on how to improve it. Be warned that the prologue is rather dull but on my opinion it does become more exciting after that.

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