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There was a buzz beneath his skin. Movement abated it, but the tremors of restlessness refused to cease. He’d already worn a ditch in his floor with his tireless pacing. It wasn’t enough. He found himself reaching for his keys, and was already walking out the door before he allowed himself time to consider that he needed to be out of bed by six the next morning. 

As he sped down the road, it occurred to him more than once that this was a waste of gas, and that he was far above the speed limit. He hadn’t bothered to put his seat belt on, either. He shoved the thoughts away and pressed down harder on the gas pedal as if to spite the part of his brain that remained rational in this void of boredom.

Every day, he returned home, all too aware of the way his muscles in his back had been reduced to junk-drawer cables, knotted as they were from sitting at his desk all day. His mother had suggested he get a referral to go to a chiropractor. He didn't bother to explain that he couldn’t afford to use his own health insurance. It would only make her worry, and she nagged when she worried. 

Every day, he resisted the urge to roll his eyes as his coworkers called him by the wrong name. He had a face that looked far too much like it belonged to someone else. He frequently found himself wondering if it did belong to someone else, feeling detached from his body, as if he was operating a machine instead of living in his own skin. 

Every day, he considered reaching out to old friends, picking up the phone, and putting it down. What was the point? They hadn’t reached out to him, and so anything he initiated would be awkward, full of annoyance and obligation for whoever he chose to inflict himself upon.

That’s all he was, wasn’t he? A mild infliction, a human version of the common cold, something to be tolerated until you could be rid of it. He wasn’t oblivious to the way his coworkers tried to rush any conversation with him along. He was cognizant of the way dates never called back. The way his own father couldn’t seem to speak more than two words to him was painfully obvious. 

He’d let friends, family, society slip away from him. He’d dropped hobbies. You didn’t exactly need refuge from the world when you were barely a citizen of it. 

So here he was, flying down the road at midnight. In the back of his mind, he was still aware of how many hours there were until he needed to get out of bed for work, until he needed to subject himself to another day trailing through an endless fog. 

When the deer jumped into the road, his whole body locked up, his hindbrain registering the pain in his back as those already stressed muscles tensed, while his forebrain screamed at him to turn the wheel, turn the wheel, turn the goddamn wheel! 

He jerked the wheel to the right.

The milliseconds between the turn and the crash into the guardrail was an entirely visual experience. He didn’t feel a thing. Time slowed, stretching and elongating until it was no longer recognizable. He ordered his body to step on the breaks, but this time it did not obey. He simply hurtled through those scarce inches between a kind of death and the real thing. His life did not flash before his eyes. Instead, a cold seeped from his core and into his very bones. It had occurred to him that in order for your life to flash before your eyes you had to have one first. 

When his body was found, it was several feet in front of his car, having been tossed through the now broken windshield by the force of his own momentum. In the days between uncovering his body and identifying it, his absence was hardly noticed. It wasn’t an oddity for him to be too exhausted after work to call his mother. The neighbors were too busy with their own lives to notice the comings and goings of one man, a fact they could hardly be blamed for. It would, perhaps, have gone unnoticed entirely was it not for the fact that he had a schedule to keep at work. 

When he didn’t show up, his now-former employer was almost glad for the excuse to let him go. His work was fine, but he simply didn’t fit with the company culture. At least, that was how his former employer justified his feelings about him. He was so reclusive, and when he did speak, it was awkward, stilted, like he hadn’t spoken to another human being in days. To put it frankly, he was off-putting to be around. It wasn’t until the day after that, when he didn’t show up again, that his former employer even suspected something was wrong. 

The funeral service was nice but vacant. His extended family was practically nonexistent, and even if his mother had known how to get in touch with his old friend, would they have come? His death imitated his life. Quiet, somber, and absent of people. 

In the moments following his death, the deer had stared at the car, the front crumpled like a piece of paper. Its wide, black eyes fixated on the shards of glass littering the hood of the car, the asphalt, the grass past the guardrail. Then it went off, unaware of how much grief its actions should have caused and how little they actually did.