No! Not to me... You can't do this... We have a contract!!

"Andrew Dies Alone" (2011)

The car.
The lights.
The road.
The turn.
The sound.
The silence.
Black.
Numb.
Lying under spent metal and a spinning wheel, Andrew’s brain flails, sending a desperate signal to his legs that never quite makes it. The realization doesn’t come to him just yet; he’s still reeling from the impact. His head is pounding hard. A dark fluid makes its way down his cheek. He shuts his eyes but he sees stars anyway. He tries to grit his teeth and move the vehicle just enough to crawl out from under it, but even his arms aren’t responding. The wheel stops spinning, slowly and carefully, as if not to disturb the tragedy playing out before it.

Andrew’s eyes open, wet and puffy. The tears come, but they are without the burning sensation he is familiar with. There is no feeling of release. Andrew can see that he is in pain but he can feel none of it. The rain starts. The water is just inconvenient at this point. He wants to fight, he wants to live, but the ditch is taking on water. The street is cold and dark and empty. He took the road less traveled and is dying beside it. The irony is literally killing him. He wants to laugh but he isn’t sure if it would be appropriate. Maybe he should respect his own demise.

The dark of the surrounding woodlands is oppressive, the kind of dark you only see when you’re going to die. The crunch of the fall leaves under him gives way to the even shush of the rainstorm. The rain hushes him like a comforting mother with a cloth pressed against his lips to smother him quietly. The water rises beneath him, but it cannot lift the car. He’s still pinned beneath the weight of his own salary. He isn’t anywhere near paying it off yet. The debt is almost as crushing as the metal itself. His jeans are dark in the pool of water carrying itself up his body. He hates this slow death.

Andrew always pictured his own death as a pleasant farewell in a hospital bed with friends and family surrounding him. Now, even the fauna have scurried off and abandoned him. Nobody knows where he is. He isn’t expected to come home for days. He has effectively been forgotten. He turns his head to avoid drowning in the rainfall, but his lips suck up mud and dirt instead. Even the worms have burrowed deep underground. Even the soil seems like it wants to move away from him. The world is slowly seceding from his grim, private reality…the water climbs higher and higher…he feels nothing…no lightening, just the faint glow of the moon overhead to spotlight him in his final moments.

Andrew dies alone.