Vince: Parking Lot Philadelphia Experiment
A Navy ship was the last thing I expected to find in the fire lane. Once per shift, we have to walk a lap around the outside of the mall. It’s like a ceremonial thing more than anything else. The worst thing I usually find is trash on the sidewalk. Not today.
I’m coming around the corner behind Macy’s when I hear a big “whoomp” and see a misty green fog pile up on the ground, and then a huge ship appears right in the parking lot. In the fire lane, specifically. It made a grinding noise as it settled on the pavement and leaned to the side. It smelled like rust and dead fish. Had “DE-173” painted high on the port bow. I recognized it as a Navy destroyer escort. Never expected to see one illegally docked in the fire lane.
I look around. Somebody else must be seeing this, right? The parking lot was empty except for a scattering of employees’ cars, and some seagulls squabbling over an empty Shake Shack bag. Except the seagulls were silently frozen mid-air, mid-peck, mid-squawk.
Suddenly, I hear screaming, the real serious kind, so I drop my radio and run to the ship. The top half of a man in an old-fashioned sailor’s uniform is sticking out of the ship’s hull. Not sticking out through a porthole. Stuck in the hull itself. I don’t know what’s going on with his bottom half. I guess he doesn’t either.
I lunged towards him, reaching into the green fog. It felt like electrified syrup. I grabbed the sailor’s hands and tried pulling him free. The sailor looks me right in the eyes, begging for his life. I’ll be seeing his face in nightmares for the rest of my life. I feel a pulsing, like gravity is wobbling, like I’m playing tug-of-war with the destroyer escort. I’m hanging onto the sailor for dear life, then I’m falling face-first into the void.
I landed on my hands and knees, hard. I wasn’t lying in a parking lot, I was inside, on a polished concrete floor. My brain identified it by smell before my eyes could catch up and process everything: I was in a 7-11. It smelled like sweaty hot dogs rolling under a heat lamp, stale coffee, and despair. The clock on the wall tells me it’s ten minutes ago. The store is empty except for the clerk at the register. She’s giving me a sour look, like I was the weird one here.
I grab a newspaper off the rack. I’m staring at it, trying to figure out why it has a bunch of news about Virginia Beach on the front page when there’s another feeling like someone twisted the universe like a balloon animal, and I’m back in the mall parking lot.
The ship is gone, the green fog is gone, and no one’s screaming. The only differences are I’m soaked in sweat, I have today’s newspaper from Norfolk Virginia in one hand, a button from the sailor’s uniform in the other, and my radio is on the ground in a dozen pieces. Over the ringing in my ears, I can hear the seagulls fighting over stale French fries. Situation normal.
The only thing I ever want from these situations is proof. The button and my newspaper aren’t proof to anyone but me, but that’ll have to do.
Come back for new stories every Thursday!














