Dead men. Dozens of the them litter the street, eyes hollow like the blackened core of rotten trees. Some still twitch others, fester quietly in the wet chaos of the road, oblivious to the mounds of traffic racing past them not three lanes over. You can’t change the dead, I know that. It’s one of those things, one of those constants that we’ve been forced to confront, day after, no.

That’s not right. We aren’t. We think we have but it’s not true. Not like this. They’re lined up, bodies crushed under the weight of their own mass as they hit the concrete, the smell of petrol and burning rubber ripping the air apart like tissue paper. Death is one thing. It’s loss, it’s the natural ending. This isn’t it. Bodies. Bodies. Thrown and tossed about, the inertia of daily life suddenly halted in them, torn asunder replaced into a nest of bones and ruptured organs.

My head hurts, so I sit, taking a spot next to someone, what used to be someone, a man in what must have once been a nice blue striped dress-shirt. His head faces the road, something bulging out from his neck. I consider touching him, curiosity urging me to see his face, to look at the- No. I slowly pull my knees up to my chest. I wrap my arms around myself. For the first time I notice one of them is missing. I look at the white stub still protruding from my shoulder, it as curious as I am. I close my eyes and brace myself against my kneecaps. It’s okay, it’s around here somewhere. I’ll find it in a second, I just need a second, just a minute to-