Styx
Quinn Matteson
When that kid died going the wrong way down an exit ramp, they brought his car to me. It was a beautiful thing, or else it must have been, all sleek and angled with black chrome and an exhaust pipe that screamed danger. But now, with the crumpled hood folded in on itself, it just looked like a child with a mean expression and gaping mouth.
The man who delivers them has a thick beard with a potbelly waist and sad eyes. “Hey, Benny,” I say as I slide open the chain link gate for him.
“Hey,” he says out his window. He tells me the details as he lowers the cars from his truck, even though I never ask. Drunk driving. Speeding. Wrong way. College-aged kid, single mom heading home. No survivors. Once he’s done he leaves, never has the time to stick around, always some other crash.
“Take care of it, ok?” Benny asks. I nod, though I’m never sure which way exactly he means.
They always clean the blood off. I think maybe they’re trying to save someone from seeing something, though who it is really I never know. The blood’s never the issue. Once, I found a photo strip tucked up in the sunshield, from one of them photobooths. Black and white. One photo serious, one kissing, and one smiling. It’s still in my office, somewhere, but I never look at it. I just couldn’t bear the thought of it in some junkyard.
People come around often, more often than you might think. They always say they’ve forgotten something. I tell them that the chances are the car is long gone. They ask me to check anyways.
“The gray sedan, the VW, hit from the side—you know the one?” they ask. I nod. “I left something in the glovebox,” they say. “Something important.”
“Alright,” I say. “I’ll look.” And I do, but I know that the car isn’t here anymore. I know that they didn’t leave anything, because I gutted it before it left. I give them the number for the junkyard and they thank me, ready to head there next. They’re ghosts, they just don’t know it yet. Only thing I can do is send them on their way.
Benny likes to call me a grave robber, but I think of myself more as a doctor. Saving what there is to save, even after what’s under the hood has stopped ticking.
It’s late now, and the car is just about finished. I wonder what that kid was thinking, if he ever even saw what was coming. It strikes me that I’m probably the last person who will ever be in these cars. It feels sacred, somehow. Like the last person out of the room who has to turn off the light.
Quinn Matteson is a a sophomore in Pauli Murray College studying Astrophysics. He is from Golden, Colorado, where he spends his time hiking, playing piano, and hanging out with his pets. He has been published in All Existing Literary Magazine and Abditory Press, as well as for the Denver English Speaking Union.
ABOUT THE ART | Beauty Parlor by Olivia Charis, 2025. Olivia Charis is a student at Yale University.
