How It Happens


You’re on your way home one evening, and the freeway is empty. It's that strange time between day and night when everything is amber-coated, trapping you in it’s strange, orange world. You feel hungry or dizzy, like you're rushing through your head. The car veers to the left onto a new road; or, weren’t you here once before? It pulls you along, and the city lights die. You imagine your Sunday school god at a console, slowly turning the dials, the curtain lifting on a new world. Then, everything is black, except for the eyes of little animals, sending you signals that you follow, implicitly. The gas gauge says empty. The speedometer says zero. You stomp on the pedal with both feet. The steering wheel spins in your hands like a toy. You let go. Years go by. You stop in a clearing. A deer appears a few yards away. The car is slung into space like spear. Then she is beside you, eating your old life right out of your hands.

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