Originally published in Garbled Transmissions.
“Sleep, those little slices of death. How I loathe them.” -Edgar Allen Poe
The world: all shadows and smoke. A body lies nearby, oozing life in all directions. Concentric circles of blood and color mix with the blackness of the surrounding world. He squints without eyes, trying to make out details. The corpse is far away and getting farther, a view from another existence. He does not see the vehicle responsible for the scene, nor does he notice the EMT trying to resuscitate the dead man. The body is the focus of his world, a lone piece of debris in a world painted black. He thinks that maybe the body used to be him. Or maybe it used to be a complete stranger. He imagines himself as a spectral rubbernecker.
Charlie Brooks 