This is a story I doubt my readers have heard, but all should be fearful of … Have any of you seen the cars that drive across those streets we students brave? The big and the small, the slow and the swift, the polite and the rude. They blend in well with the rural atmosphere of Walla Walla, slightly spotted by their time here. But some are much more clearly marked by age and damage via various events of their pasts. Fender benders, unnoticed trees, raccoons, narrative-haunting deer, those things … But, there is another cause for at least some of these missing parts: The Franken-Car.

Nobody knows what the Franken-Car truly is, but a few survivors of its sightings know what it looks like. It is a misshapen automobile with parts bolted together in madness, and with the demeanor of a beast. Its wheels are all different sizes, doors are of different models and colors and its grill crunched as if to look like teeth. It has five headlights, two on each side with an extra on the left, all glowing with malevolent yellow light. And pushing out from its broken trunk are many tails of license plates that scrape against the street, signalling the Franken-Car’s arrival. Those who hear it are said to not have long to live, with the only mercy being a sacrificial offering of one’s own car parts.

While we know what it looks like, we still do not know what is under the metal and broken glass. Some think it to be the workings of some mad scientist who sought to create life from a corpse. However, instead of reviving the corpse, it animated the trashed car he was doing his work on. Another story is the tried and true story of ghosts haunting it and using it as a vessel for their will, whether that be of a demented drunk driver, the spirits of stolen land or even just some really bigoted settler. But, if I were to give my two cents to solve the mystery, I claim this as the truth … it’s an absurdist art piece.