The Tour Drop-Off!

“Hey, did you guys hear the rumor of the girl dying on this ride?” One of the girls asked. “Knock it off, you’re scaring me!” Another girl trembled as she closed her eyes shut, too afraid to open them. “Relax, that was a long time ago. Besides, it’s not even true,” a boy said. “Is too!” The girl who brought it up shouted. “Just look down there,” she said, pointing to the ground below them. “The girl died around here. She fell through this very floor and hit her jaw straight through a pole!” She explained. “And? I didn’t see any poles around there,” the boy pointed out. “Exactly, they got rid of every pole underneath this ride’s route because the girl died,” she continued. “Scary…” the trembling girl stuttered. “As I said, this happened a long time ago. It was rumored that it happened even before the ride was finished.” The enthusiastic girl said. “Forget about that now, look! We’re about to drop!” The boy said with excitement as the 3 friends prepared to drop into the ocean.

*Sigh!* The bored operator pushes a button that ends up opening the floor of the ride and drops the 3 friends into the ocean, hearing their excited screams before they get cut off entering the ocean. “I’ve only been working here for a week, how could I be so bored already? I work at an amusement park for crying out loud…” The operator thought as she pressed another button that closed the doors to the ride for another group of people. “Well, I did end up with the most boring ride to press buttons for,” she thought. The Tour Drop-Off, the ride is called. People are supposed to use this ride to see the amusement park from up high and even some of the city but, people just ride it for the ending. All that just to get your clothes wet. Well, I guess that’s why people like it. The ocean’s right here so people can just go back and forth from the ocean to the amusement park. “Oh…” She sighs again.

“Hard day at work today,” she says sarcastically to herself as she starts walking home. In the distance, she could see that construction workers were doing some concrete work and she would have to walk the long way home. She sighs as she turns around to find another way home. She didn’t live too far away so it wasn’t as much of a hassle she was making it out to be.

As she started walking through a different, unfamiliar street, she realized that she hadn’t gone too far from the amusement park. Just above her are the cords that carry The Tour Drop-off to the ocean. “Is it… always this dark during this time?” She thought, recalling that just moments ago it was still bright out. Now, there was no sun in the sky, slightly foggy and hard to see through the darker sky. “And fog? That’s super strange.” She thought as she continued walking, now very conscious of her surroundings. Suddenly, she had to stop in her tracks. She noticed a figure in the distance, far out into the fog. Ironically, floating like a ghost. She wasn’t the type to believe in ghosts, but seeing this right in front of her eyes scared her. Just as she was going to start walking again, preferably away from whatever was in front of her, she heard a groan, almost like someone was in pain. It was quiet, though, very quiet like she was the only one about to hear it. Another groan, much louder this time. It was like she had gotten closer to the thing, even though she was sure that she was walking in the other direction. Just to make sure she wasn’t going crazy or anything, she turned around to see if the thing was still there. She gasps aloud as it seems that it was closer. Another groan, it was almost clear what the thing was trying to say. “R…ruuu…” The thing groaned. Just like that, the fog almost cleared around the thing, so now, she could fully see what was there. She covered her mouth before she could scream aloud at the sight. In front of her was a dead-looking girl stuck to a pole. The girl’s head was covered by her long, black hair which was doused with her blood. Her innocent school-looking uniform was also covered in her blood. The pole was going straight through her jaw to the top of her head. “R…runnn…” The dead girl groaned, what she was saying finally hearable. She stood there in fear, the image of this dead girl scorching through her head to permanently stay forever. “Don…Donnntt…r…” The girl groaned once again, her hand slowly moving upward. The hair covering the girl’s face slowly moved away, revealing her rolled-back eyes. Suddenly, the girl’s eyes move and look straight at her, the terrified girl’s eyes. This sudden scare finally got the girl running away from the horror.

She ran and ran and ran. Everything in that moment for her depended on her running away from whatever she just saw. Taking one glance behind her, she sees nothing like everything was normal. No fog, the sky wasn’t even dark. Seeing nothing, she reluctantly decides to slow down. Bending down and placing her hands on her knees, she tries her best to catch her breath. She slowly looks up and all around her once she gets enough breath back. The sky was just as it was before, yellow with the warm orange tones, the sun just barely ready to set. No fog or smoke insight. And finally, she doesn’t see some dead girl behind her trying to kill her. Still shaken up by recent events, she walks the rest of her way home, uneasy.

Seeing her apartment complex getting closer and closer, she breathes a sigh of relief. Getting her keys out of her pocket, she opens the door to her apartment. Her hands shake as she tries to enter the key. Finally opening the door, she rushes inside and closes the door shut behind her, immediately locking the door. Before she has the chance to relax, she locks every window and closes every curtain. Sitting down at her table, she stared blankly, trying her hardest not to think of the girl. . She still felt so uneasy. So, images flash through her mind, unsurprisingly. She anxiously gets up out of the chair to look around. She goes around her small apartment and finds no dead girl anywhere. “Okay… just calm down,” she said to herself. She sits herself down in the chair, but she cannot seem to feel any safer in her apartment.

Pacing back and forth, she thinks about what she should do. She doesn’t feel comfortable in her own home, so how is she expected to stay here? She doesn’t believe that she’ll calm down in any second either. “I don’t have any friends to go to, my parents live 2 hours away from here. I don't own or know how to drive a car, and I can't just go up to some homeless shelter saying ‘hey! I’m scared for my life because I stared straight into a dead girl’s eyes and she stared back at me like she was going to eat my soul!’ Yeah no, not happening,” she argued with herself. Her only real option was to stay where she was. She hated that thought.

For the rest of the night, nothing eventful happened, as the encounter with the girl was a hallucination. Almost like she didn’t have that encounter with the girl, like a hallucination. She couldn’t do much but sit around on her bed, waiting for herself to become tired. She wasn’t hungry, so she didn’t make dinner, or eat a snack. She didn’t even want to sleep, so she just waited and waited. Her heavy eyes finally fell, and she rested her head on her soft pillows.

In her nightmare, she finds herself back in the dark, foggy night. Already hating the dream, she tosses and turns, just begging to wake up. The dead girl appears in her dreams, still hanging on a pole. This time, she was standing directly below the dead girl so she could truly see the pole being stabbed into her jaw. The blood continuously flowed down to the bottom. Everything felt so real. It was real. The girl hanging on the pole suddenly snaps her eyes down at her, just like their first encounter. She wakes up from all that fear. She huddles into her blanket, suddenly becoming very afraid of the dark. She felt like closing all those curtains was the worst mistake of her life. Because if they were open, she would be getting a bit of light from the moon. For the rest of that night, she couldn’t sleep at all. She just couldn’t. She felt like she was being watched and couldn’t shake that feeling away. After that, every sound or noise scared her to no end. She swore that every shadow was the dead girl watching her, and every sound was her messing with her. She just didn’t know why. Why mess with her? She’d normally feel horrible wishing her fears and dangers to someone else, but right now she didn’t care. She wondered why the dead girl was haunting her and not anybody else. That’s the only thing she wanted at that moment. For her fears to go away, or at the very least, to someone else. Why is she so afraid in the first place? She doesn’t believe in ghosts. Well, now she does.

Seeing the sunshine through her curtains, she slowly uncovered herself from under her blanket. She carefully searched under her bed and surroundings for the dead girl before getting up. Just like a 5-year-old asking their parents to check for the monster under their bed. She slowly gets up from her bed. After more searching around her apartment, she yet again couldn’t find anything. Sitting down in her chair, she thinks about her next move. Did she go back to work like nothing ever happened? Does she go back to that street to see if there were any signs of the dead girl? Or should she just stay home for the day and wait things out? She hated the idea of staying home or going to the street where she saw the ghost, so, in the end, she reluctantly decided to go back to work.

Everything about going to work was normal. She stayed far away from that street and area so there was no problem. But it was when she started operating the Tour Drop-off ride that she felt suddenly…scared. Worried, fear, like someone, was watching her. But what was even worse for her was the moment she had to press the ‘Drop’ button. The button that opens the floors to the ride and ‘drops’ all the people inside the ocean. She had a strong urge to press it way before the people were even near the ocean. Thankfully, though, she would suppress her urges and would only press the button when needed, above the ocean. However, every time it was an immense struggle. With the combination of the fear of being watched and a strange urge to basically injure or possibly kill someone, her day wasn’t an easy one to be sure. Toward the end of her shift, she felt relieved to know that her day was almost over.

As she walked home, she still felt like she was being watched by someone or something. She saw that the street was still being worked on which made her sigh. She wasn’t going where she went yesterday so Sure enough, she found a different street to walk. The way home wasn’t as easy as she had hoped for. She had never felt more paranoid about just walking down a street before, let alone being in her own home. Unfortunately for her, this was just the beginning.

She was set to have this paranoia for months and months. She had gotten so scared for her life that she stopped going to work. It had gotten so bad that she didn’t even go out to buy her groceries, something that was so important. Sure her job was important but food? And water? All of that went away in a flash. Every waking moment she would look outside her windows and peek outside her door. Every dream and nightmare she had was of the girl. All of this was just crazy nonsense to her; she had only seen that thing once and now it had almost complete control of her life! But, not only had she been paranoid, but she was also obsessed. Obsessed with whoever the dead girl was. All she wanted to know was who the girl was and how she died. And maybe, just maybe, she can finally get her life back. Just the thought of getting her old lifestyle back brought her happiness, happiness that quickly became fear again. She thought her life was miserable before, if only her old self saw this, then she would start loving her life, no matter how boring or uneventful it was. Because the only thing ‘eventful’ that has happened to her was seeing that girl. Something she quickly, and immediately regretted.

Before completely locking herself in her apartment, she went to the library to look for some things. She grabbed a ton of paper and a pen, then sat down at a computer. Her first thought was to go through every piece of media or newspaper about the amusement park. After finding everything on that, she then searched for every missing person or dead person from the last couple of decades or more. She wrote down everything she thought might be useful. Doing all this searching and writing took about a week. When she finished, she went home and never went out again.

She must’ve looked through every piece of paper she had at least twice. Nothing she found satisfied her. There would be pictures of people who have gone missing or have recently died, but none of them looked like the dead girl she was looking for. Knowing that the girl was wearing a school uniform, she dedicated most of her time looking at the kids or teenagers that would’ve gone missing or died but once again, none of them looked like her. One thing that struck her interest was that apparently before the amusement park was done being built, someone died nearby the park. And the street the person died on was the street she confronted the dead girl. There was no picture of the person who died, however. So either it was a coincidence or this was the person she was looking for.

Most of her information came from older newspapers with small sections about the amusement park. But something else was strange to her. Ever since the amusement park opened, there had been missing people left and right. Every month or so another person would go missing; this missing person just so happened to work at the park. Every Single Person is an operator of The Tour Drop-off. Noticing that pattern, she chuckled to herself. “So what, I'm next?” She said aloud to herself. She continued to laugh at herself but soon came tears. “Is this really how it is…?” She asked herself as tears kept pouring down her face. “All ‘cause I took some job that I never cared about or loved?” She said, wiping the tears from her eyes and face. “I hope that I found all I needed and just solved this, but, at the same time, I'm still scared.” “I don’t know the correlations between the operators and the dead girl but I could care less.” She thought as she started to gather all her papers that she had spread all around the floor. After finding all her discoveries, she rested in her bed and took the longest nap of her life. For the first, and last time, she didn’t dream about the dead girl.

She jolts up from her sleep after hearing the loud knocks on her door. “Hey! Are you still alive??” Someone from outside yelled as they continued to knock on her door. Without thinking about it, she got up and opened the door to see her landlord. “You didn’t pay rent, yester- Woah! You smell!” He shouted, dramatically, covering his nose in the process. “Sorry, I'm leaving…” She said quietly, moving past her landlord to start walking. Her landlord stood there, confused, as he saw her going down the stairs.

Walking down the filled streets, she recalled her life. She remembered her first time walking to her job at the park, or rather, running since she was 5 minutes late. She then goes on to wonder about the ‘what ifs’. Even so, she doesn’t think of the negative parts of her life; every moment to her now was a happy one. Something terrible was going to happen to her no matter what so why dwell on the negative parts of her life now of all times? She stopped when she realized where she’d walked. An empty area with nothing around her insight other than the ride above her, heading for the ocean. “Oh… right, this street isn’t supposed to look like something from a horror film,” she said to herself, one last sarcastic remark. She stood there and looked around the street, wondering where the person had died.

After her last trip to the street, no one saw her again. Just like everyone before her, there were no witnesses to where she had gone, only that her landlord saw her walking somewhere, which was anybody’s guess. The park had already hired another person to operate the same ride while she was locked away in her home. Their horror hasn’t started yet, but, soon, it will.