Cherry didn't quite understand if she had it rough or not. Sure, the theme park she lived in was more rundown than, well, a rundown place. But right now, the booths and rides were surprisingly warm and cozy in the face of the chilling late Autumn wind. The big mahogany tree that dominated the center of the pavement rained dried leaves like wedding flowers. The thin red dress she wore, and same colored long hair that still looked neatly brushed, fluttered dreamily; they always do.

How many autumns had it been? Five? Six? A dozen? If the layers of graffiti and moss on the walls didn't lie, it might as well be centuries.

Okay, probably not that long. At least cell phones are still relevant, and teenagers looking for a desolate place to make out. Cherry didn't mind. Free porn. Who would? She simply hoped the couples didn't mind the icy cold shivers that sometimes ran down their spine.

Cherry loved having teenagers over. Many would seriously mind their home being a canvas for angsty, porny or sometimes downright insulting graffiti art, but time and loneliness had taught her to appreciate every little change in her monotone life.

Afterlife.

There were downsides, though, sever ones. She couldn't eat, a process she regrets never fully appreciating when she was alive. She never got that kiss from David of the football team, or was it Jeff? Or his sister Jenny?

Did he even have a sister?

She couldn't go too long without sunlight, unless she wanted to go into PTSD mental breakdown mode. Moonlight worked, but it made her drunk, drunk enough for her to pick up a particularly foul mouthed teen by her shirt and throw her accross the pavement. Poor girl landed in a difficult angle and had to limp away crying because her friends booked it the moment Cherry grabbed her shirt. She did help her over the fence as an apology, though.

Friends. That idea confused her, had even been confusing her for the sixteen years she was alive. It meant people who are nice to you, but also not nice to you to a certain extent. In every way it sounds like a very fragile thing, friendship. Yet so many humans who come around claim to have that. Maybe it's not a fragile thing, then. Things get confusing when no one's talked to you for years.

Okay, it might not be that no one has talked to her over the years.

Through the first few months of her afterlife, as she likes to now label as her "Angsty times", when she did things like throw fences and rip out electric cords, people used to call the ghost busters on her all the time. Though all it took was a little scratch to send em away, she soon learned that the best way to keep them away was simply ignoring.

Not that she never put a finger on the occasional planchette, though.

But without the teenagers, it was just her and the park, and all it's rundown, and run over, and overgrown wonders. The haunted house was now an impenetrable wall of six feet tall grass, not that it resists Cherry from moving in or out. The Mary-go-round had toppled and half sank into the ground. A family of raccoons lived in the abandoned ice cream van in one side. The kids were the cutest things in the world, coming to play with her in the evenings. A pack of deer lived in the small zoo for a few days, but they ran away after someone shot at them from the mountains that Rose from the north of the park. If Cherry could leave this place, she would've hunted him down. But she was like a fly in a bottle.

Her favorite spot was the ferris wheel, though. In particular, the top carriage. It gets enough sunlight, even when the days are cloudy. It was metal, so full of energy. And from the top, you get a perfect paranomic view of the city down in the valley and the green forests of the mountain beyond it. Often times, she'd sit there and unbeknownst to her, would start becoming visible to breathing people, and, as she recently learned, that earned her the local name, "The Cherry on the Top". She loved that name.

And that was what she was doing that night, drunk in the light of the crescent moon, gazing longingly at the distant City lights, when the creepy people tore the sky open.