Another Hitchhiking Story
Okay, so my last story sucked. I still can't let go of the theme, though, so here is another incarnation.
This one takes place in the FFVII universe. I give you...
It was always the same road, in the same direction. They would drive down the old road through the arid landscape and find a single man walking in the direction of Midgar. He would turn, and make the universal sign for "Going my way?"
He looked tired and dirty, but he did not smell, thankfully. His SOLDIER uniform, which nobody ever wore these days, anyway, was dusty, stained, and frayed around the edges.
He simply had to get to Midgar, and the driver often obliged, and the stranger would get in the back, even when offered shotgun. When the time came to let him off, he was gone.
It was not that unusual a story, though Cloud never thought he would encounter it outside of a book, instead hearing it from people who claimed to give the hitchhiker a ride. He did not think much of these tales, but he could not pull himself from this one. Maybe it was because Cloud himself felt bound to that same path.
As the world became safer, Cloud found himself among more travelers, most of them soldiers and fighters themselves, to share the bar with and share stories. The more details he heard, the more he felt there was a reason his stomach twisted up when he heard the story.
The stranger was tall and quite slender, one messenger said, with raven hair like a hedgehog's spines. He had wide shoulders, a good set of muscles, and a few battle scars. Despite the battles he must have seen, and large, purplish bags under his eyes, he still possessed a youthful spirit and an irresistible smile, which let him charm his way into your back seat.
One man stepped forward and said what Cloud himself almost did. "I know that man! I didn't recognize him until it was too late, but I know him, or I knew him."
He could have fit most of the description himself. SOLDIERs did have a certain build and "look" to them. This man, however, was a redhead who never seemed to find a decent outfit to suit his purposes the way his uniform did. Scars covered the upper half of his face and he wore very large dark sunglasses.
"He got on and started talking about Midgar and how he had a friend who was helping him get there. He asked me what I thought he could do when he got to there."
A round of "He asked me the same thing!" interrupted him.
The man's voice cracked as he continued. "He needed a place to stay. Said his old girlfriend's mom wouldn't like him over. He'd have to start over from scratch. Thing is, if I'd figured it out I would have let him stay at my place. At the time, I didn't want him to talk his way into it, 'cause we SOLDIERS can be kind of crazy nowadays, you know? But I had a weird feeling about him, so I asked him for his number."
He had to reach under his glasses to wipe at his eyes, and he accidentally knocked them off his face. One eye stared to the left as the other looked forward.
"I think he knew who I was. He was a wanted man. He wouldn't have given his number out to just anyone. I'm so stupid! When I couldn't find him, it hit me just who he was. He was an old friend of mine. I checked me phone and, yeah, it's the same number."
"It's been so long, and I still have his number on my phone. I knew in my heart he was dead, but I guess I always thought he might call me again. I'll bet we got intercepted. We were idiots, using the ShinRa network to escape from them. It was probably our damn phone calls that killed him!"
He needed another drink. A younger man rose from his seat all of a sudden and a practically yelled, "I killed him!" Heads turned to a young man who still wore his cadet jacket for warmth.
"I was there! I gunned him down! We had him a million to one, and he was all by himself and he fought like a demon before we got him. When I saw him he was already more lead than human. He tried to charge me, and I saw his eyes before I opened fire. That was the beginning of the end of my ShinRa career, now that I think about it. When I remembered where I saw those eyes before, I seriously screamed."
The bar opened up into a cacophony of who and what he was, and just who it was who killed him. The disfigured SOLDIER winced, and stayed quiet. In the end, he found he had to leave. Cloud felt the same way.
Cloud rode his motorcycle, equipped with the side car he used for taking the kids out, up and down the road around where people said they'd picked him up. He also rode in the areas before and after, just in case. There was a rock formation he passed by multiple times to satisfy a vague memory.
Don't be stupid, he told himself, ghost stories don't happen when you're trying! His heart won out, desperate to see this ghost.
But it was funny, wasn't it? He'd encountered Zack's spirit before, though very briefly, and there was no hint of him being bound or tortured. If he had his metaphysics right, then his consciousness was part of the planet's, or in a new body now.
The little arrow made its way to the white E, and he knew he would not make it home unless he left now. He ran it down to to empty anyway, swerving to get little bits of gas out of the recesses in the tank, and running on nothing but momentum until Fenrir slowed to a stop.
Night had fallen, and the temperature dropped severely in the dark. Great work, genius, he scolded himself. There was nothing left to do except hitchhike and hope he did not become a ghost himself.
He waited a while. There was absolutely no traffic. Perhaps it would not hurt to take a little stroll to keep the blood flowing, he thought. He decided to take his few steps toward Midgar (where else?).
Cloud did not remember this area ever getting fog, but there was a first time for everything. He could at least see the side of the road under his feet, and he knew the motorcycle was just a yard or so behind him. Although he could not see his ride when he looked back, before him, some distance away, he thought he could make out a figure. It was hard, though, with his blurred vision and the feeling that the haze had rolled into his mind, as well.
"Hey! Wait up!"
He trotted toward the figure, who did not get any closer, even though he walked away only very slowly.
"Wait! I'm stuck out here, and I need help getting home!"
The figure turned, looked at him briefly, and kept walking.
"That's not going to work, Spike. He's looking for a ride."
Cloud jumped at the voice that came from right next to him. To his right, walking casually alongside him, was the ghost he was looking for.
"Zack!" he gasped, and took a step forward. The man stepped away and motioned nervously. "Woah, don't try touching me! It's not gonna work. It might break the spell, you know?"
"Oh... oh..." Cloud hung his head, frustrated.
"Something on your mind, kid?"
"Well, I wanted to see the hitchhiker everyone talked about."
"You mean him?" The dead man motioned to the figure walking ahead of them.
"So, he's not--" Cloud looked at him again, somehow now seeing him clearer than before. For the first time he recognized the worn uniform, the long, black hair...
"Zack?!"
The figure turned again. It really was his friend. He stared at them, almost suspicious, and again continued on his way.
"He doesn't recognize you."
"Why not?"
The Zack next to him shrugged, "You don't fit his story, I guess. You're the Cloud we wanted to help make, not the Cloud we knew. That's my theory."
"Well, why can't we just tell him, er, you?"
"He doesn't know he's dead."
A voice came from up ahead, the same as the one from just next to him. "I do, actually."
The nearby Zack stopped, clearly startled by a response. "Do you, now?"
The Zack ahead stopped, and faced them. He kept his distance. "I figured it out after a while. I'm never getting to Midgar. I'm forbidden to go to Midgar."
"Why can't you go?" Cloud asked, "Nobody can stop you now."
"I'm an obsession with this road and what could have been. I spent so long on the road, and I really thought I would get to the end. The rest of me chose death, but I could not let go of my mission. It's not fair that I had to die after all this."
"No, it's not," the other Zack sighed, "Life isn't fair, and I died pretty horribly. I guess I couldn't help but leave a part of myself here when I left. Well, now that you know better, you're coming back, aren't you?"
He shook his head. "It's not so easy. I'm more than one person's obsession, especially now that I've haunted a few people. Only one of them is really keeping me here, though, but even if I broke away from that somehow, I would not leave without a single trace. Also, I was born traveling, and I think, if I can't get to Midgar, I want to go someplace else. Have you ever heard of Valhalla?"
"That's... The heaven for warriors," Cloud said.
"Right. It's the great hall for those who died in the passion of battle as I did. All the things they deserve for their suffering will be there. They can eat, and drink, and fuck themselves into eternity, or at least a really long time, and they can fight all they want without dying. It'll be like SOLDIER, before I knew we were evil. Yes, I'll make it just like SOLDIER--the fun parts."
"Listen, me," his other self told him, "I'm becoming something of a saint now, and I have to say I've never seen a Valhalla in the Lifestream. I'm not sure it's real."
"Then I'll build it. I'll build it all by myself and just for me. Maybe some soldiers like me will come, I hope."
"Hey, we can't be alone! We just go crazy alone. I left ghosts and talked to a kid in a coma, and you're building a one-man Valhalla! Valhalla or not, you'll go crazy if you're left alone long enough... And I mean crazy, crazy.... vengeful spirit crazy, not brain-crazy."
"It doesn't matter," the other Zack said with a smile, "I'm stuck here anyway. I'm not the only one who can't let go."
Cloud felt left out of this conversation. He did not know how ghosts worked, and he still felt confused and a little sad that this Zack was not affected by seeing the person he died traveling with. Maybe this ghost story did not involve him as much as he thought he did.
His heart went out to the trapped spirit. It swelled with his own feelings. He thought of his brief memories bathed in green that came to him in the night and the throes of Geostigma, and he thought of the memories he had to make from pictures and stories of what happened and what he used to think he himself did, and his heart, a youthful ShinRa cadet with nothing to be proud of, went out to Zack.
"Well, damn," the nearby Zack marveled, "I didn't think you were messed up enough to make ghosts when you're still alive. You surprise me ever day."
The hitchhiker's eyes went wide. "Cloud!" he cried joyfully, opening his arms wide for the young man to run into. He swung his old friend around and held him tight, repeating his name over and over.
"I don't want to go to Midgar," this Cloud said, looking up at his friend lovingly, "I don't want to ever go to Midgar, or Nibelheim, and I definitely don't want to be stuck on this stupid road anymore!"
Tears stung both Zacks' eyes. "Whatever you say, kid. I'm sick of being stuck, too. Let's leave this place and never come back. We may have to hitch a ride or two, though..."
The two walked together, half in the world and half in another, along a different road with different rides. Hopefully someone would be going their way. That was what Cloud understood, at least. He turned to his friend, to ask him if it was true. Zack said something, but he could not hear.
Cloud had scared a fellow traveller, he found out after being shaken awake. The world was safer for travelers, but definitely not safe enough yet to nap on the side of the road. The man offered him a jug of gasoline he kept in his truck to avoid situations like his. Cloud thanked him, and, recognizing him as the scarred man from the bar, pondered telling him... something. He'd had an interesting dream, as far as he could remember, and it felt important.
He took the man's number, feeling a friend of Zack had to be a friend of his, too. It was time to make new friends, he thought. A weight had been lifted, and his heart felt light enough to make room for the future.
This one takes place in the FFVII universe. I give you...
It was always the same road, in the same direction. They would drive down the old road through the arid landscape and find a single man walking in the direction of Midgar. He would turn, and make the universal sign for "Going my way?"
He looked tired and dirty, but he did not smell, thankfully. His SOLDIER uniform, which nobody ever wore these days, anyway, was dusty, stained, and frayed around the edges.
He simply had to get to Midgar, and the driver often obliged, and the stranger would get in the back, even when offered shotgun. When the time came to let him off, he was gone.
It was not that unusual a story, though Cloud never thought he would encounter it outside of a book, instead hearing it from people who claimed to give the hitchhiker a ride. He did not think much of these tales, but he could not pull himself from this one. Maybe it was because Cloud himself felt bound to that same path.
As the world became safer, Cloud found himself among more travelers, most of them soldiers and fighters themselves, to share the bar with and share stories. The more details he heard, the more he felt there was a reason his stomach twisted up when he heard the story.
The stranger was tall and quite slender, one messenger said, with raven hair like a hedgehog's spines. He had wide shoulders, a good set of muscles, and a few battle scars. Despite the battles he must have seen, and large, purplish bags under his eyes, he still possessed a youthful spirit and an irresistible smile, which let him charm his way into your back seat.
One man stepped forward and said what Cloud himself almost did. "I know that man! I didn't recognize him until it was too late, but I know him, or I knew him."
He could have fit most of the description himself. SOLDIERs did have a certain build and "look" to them. This man, however, was a redhead who never seemed to find a decent outfit to suit his purposes the way his uniform did. Scars covered the upper half of his face and he wore very large dark sunglasses.
"He got on and started talking about Midgar and how he had a friend who was helping him get there. He asked me what I thought he could do when he got to there."
A round of "He asked me the same thing!" interrupted him.
The man's voice cracked as he continued. "He needed a place to stay. Said his old girlfriend's mom wouldn't like him over. He'd have to start over from scratch. Thing is, if I'd figured it out I would have let him stay at my place. At the time, I didn't want him to talk his way into it, 'cause we SOLDIERS can be kind of crazy nowadays, you know? But I had a weird feeling about him, so I asked him for his number."
He had to reach under his glasses to wipe at his eyes, and he accidentally knocked them off his face. One eye stared to the left as the other looked forward.
"I think he knew who I was. He was a wanted man. He wouldn't have given his number out to just anyone. I'm so stupid! When I couldn't find him, it hit me just who he was. He was an old friend of mine. I checked me phone and, yeah, it's the same number."
"It's been so long, and I still have his number on my phone. I knew in my heart he was dead, but I guess I always thought he might call me again. I'll bet we got intercepted. We were idiots, using the ShinRa network to escape from them. It was probably our damn phone calls that killed him!"
He needed another drink. A younger man rose from his seat all of a sudden and a practically yelled, "I killed him!" Heads turned to a young man who still wore his cadet jacket for warmth.
"I was there! I gunned him down! We had him a million to one, and he was all by himself and he fought like a demon before we got him. When I saw him he was already more lead than human. He tried to charge me, and I saw his eyes before I opened fire. That was the beginning of the end of my ShinRa career, now that I think about it. When I remembered where I saw those eyes before, I seriously screamed."
The bar opened up into a cacophony of who and what he was, and just who it was who killed him. The disfigured SOLDIER winced, and stayed quiet. In the end, he found he had to leave. Cloud felt the same way.
Cloud rode his motorcycle, equipped with the side car he used for taking the kids out, up and down the road around where people said they'd picked him up. He also rode in the areas before and after, just in case. There was a rock formation he passed by multiple times to satisfy a vague memory.
Don't be stupid, he told himself, ghost stories don't happen when you're trying! His heart won out, desperate to see this ghost.
But it was funny, wasn't it? He'd encountered Zack's spirit before, though very briefly, and there was no hint of him being bound or tortured. If he had his metaphysics right, then his consciousness was part of the planet's, or in a new body now.
The little arrow made its way to the white E, and he knew he would not make it home unless he left now. He ran it down to to empty anyway, swerving to get little bits of gas out of the recesses in the tank, and running on nothing but momentum until Fenrir slowed to a stop.
Night had fallen, and the temperature dropped severely in the dark. Great work, genius, he scolded himself. There was nothing left to do except hitchhike and hope he did not become a ghost himself.
He waited a while. There was absolutely no traffic. Perhaps it would not hurt to take a little stroll to keep the blood flowing, he thought. He decided to take his few steps toward Midgar (where else?).
Cloud did not remember this area ever getting fog, but there was a first time for everything. He could at least see the side of the road under his feet, and he knew the motorcycle was just a yard or so behind him. Although he could not see his ride when he looked back, before him, some distance away, he thought he could make out a figure. It was hard, though, with his blurred vision and the feeling that the haze had rolled into his mind, as well.
"Hey! Wait up!"
He trotted toward the figure, who did not get any closer, even though he walked away only very slowly.
"Wait! I'm stuck out here, and I need help getting home!"
The figure turned, looked at him briefly, and kept walking.
"That's not going to work, Spike. He's looking for a ride."
Cloud jumped at the voice that came from right next to him. To his right, walking casually alongside him, was the ghost he was looking for.
"Zack!" he gasped, and took a step forward. The man stepped away and motioned nervously. "Woah, don't try touching me! It's not gonna work. It might break the spell, you know?"
"Oh... oh..." Cloud hung his head, frustrated.
"Something on your mind, kid?"
"Well, I wanted to see the hitchhiker everyone talked about."
"You mean him?" The dead man motioned to the figure walking ahead of them.
"So, he's not--" Cloud looked at him again, somehow now seeing him clearer than before. For the first time he recognized the worn uniform, the long, black hair...
"Zack?!"
The figure turned again. It really was his friend. He stared at them, almost suspicious, and again continued on his way.
"He doesn't recognize you."
"Why not?"
The Zack next to him shrugged, "You don't fit his story, I guess. You're the Cloud we wanted to help make, not the Cloud we knew. That's my theory."
"Well, why can't we just tell him, er, you?"
"He doesn't know he's dead."
A voice came from up ahead, the same as the one from just next to him. "I do, actually."
The nearby Zack stopped, clearly startled by a response. "Do you, now?"
The Zack ahead stopped, and faced them. He kept his distance. "I figured it out after a while. I'm never getting to Midgar. I'm forbidden to go to Midgar."
"Why can't you go?" Cloud asked, "Nobody can stop you now."
"I'm an obsession with this road and what could have been. I spent so long on the road, and I really thought I would get to the end. The rest of me chose death, but I could not let go of my mission. It's not fair that I had to die after all this."
"No, it's not," the other Zack sighed, "Life isn't fair, and I died pretty horribly. I guess I couldn't help but leave a part of myself here when I left. Well, now that you know better, you're coming back, aren't you?"
He shook his head. "It's not so easy. I'm more than one person's obsession, especially now that I've haunted a few people. Only one of them is really keeping me here, though, but even if I broke away from that somehow, I would not leave without a single trace. Also, I was born traveling, and I think, if I can't get to Midgar, I want to go someplace else. Have you ever heard of Valhalla?"
"That's... The heaven for warriors," Cloud said.
"Right. It's the great hall for those who died in the passion of battle as I did. All the things they deserve for their suffering will be there. They can eat, and drink, and fuck themselves into eternity, or at least a really long time, and they can fight all they want without dying. It'll be like SOLDIER, before I knew we were evil. Yes, I'll make it just like SOLDIER--the fun parts."
"Listen, me," his other self told him, "I'm becoming something of a saint now, and I have to say I've never seen a Valhalla in the Lifestream. I'm not sure it's real."
"Then I'll build it. I'll build it all by myself and just for me. Maybe some soldiers like me will come, I hope."
"Hey, we can't be alone! We just go crazy alone. I left ghosts and talked to a kid in a coma, and you're building a one-man Valhalla! Valhalla or not, you'll go crazy if you're left alone long enough... And I mean crazy, crazy.... vengeful spirit crazy, not brain-crazy."
"It doesn't matter," the other Zack said with a smile, "I'm stuck here anyway. I'm not the only one who can't let go."
Cloud felt left out of this conversation. He did not know how ghosts worked, and he still felt confused and a little sad that this Zack was not affected by seeing the person he died traveling with. Maybe this ghost story did not involve him as much as he thought he did.
His heart went out to the trapped spirit. It swelled with his own feelings. He thought of his brief memories bathed in green that came to him in the night and the throes of Geostigma, and he thought of the memories he had to make from pictures and stories of what happened and what he used to think he himself did, and his heart, a youthful ShinRa cadet with nothing to be proud of, went out to Zack.
"Well, damn," the nearby Zack marveled, "I didn't think you were messed up enough to make ghosts when you're still alive. You surprise me ever day."
The hitchhiker's eyes went wide. "Cloud!" he cried joyfully, opening his arms wide for the young man to run into. He swung his old friend around and held him tight, repeating his name over and over.
"I don't want to go to Midgar," this Cloud said, looking up at his friend lovingly, "I don't want to ever go to Midgar, or Nibelheim, and I definitely don't want to be stuck on this stupid road anymore!"
Tears stung both Zacks' eyes. "Whatever you say, kid. I'm sick of being stuck, too. Let's leave this place and never come back. We may have to hitch a ride or two, though..."
The two walked together, half in the world and half in another, along a different road with different rides. Hopefully someone would be going their way. That was what Cloud understood, at least. He turned to his friend, to ask him if it was true. Zack said something, but he could not hear.
Cloud had scared a fellow traveller, he found out after being shaken awake. The world was safer for travelers, but definitely not safe enough yet to nap on the side of the road. The man offered him a jug of gasoline he kept in his truck to avoid situations like his. Cloud thanked him, and, recognizing him as the scarred man from the bar, pondered telling him... something. He'd had an interesting dream, as far as he could remember, and it felt important.
He took the man's number, feeling a friend of Zack had to be a friend of his, too. It was time to make new friends, he thought. A weight had been lifted, and his heart felt light enough to make room for the future.