this, and only you understand. So you take the shovel and begin digging. That next-door neighbor is blubbering, driving you mad with his inchoate shouts and begging, and the soldiers beat him down with the butts of their rifles, and that only makes you dig harder, sand blistering your feet, the slivers of the shovel handle impaling themselves on your fingers, sweat scalding your eyes, and you must dig deeper and deeper, all that is left is pure action, and maybe if you continue to dig, the order will be forgotten, or there will be a reprieve, or you will sink lower and lower into the pit you are building until you come out the other side, and all will be forgotten, like when you awakened after your very first night in this life.
The headlights are like tracers, locating, pin-pointing, target sighted, they come straight at me. Finally, the moment that was always incipient, anticipated, previewed in my head like
 | | a bad B movie, and just as in the movie like a stupid animal I stare at the lights, even as the rest of me catches up and screams Move move move! And then shame, because the headlights are those of my own car, it was a trick of reflection, the chrome bumper of the truck in front of me, or the mirrored glass of the billboard this side of the rise. All around me, other cars rush. It is a pity, I was ready for the crash, now I must cope with the pain in my ear that dominates my head, runs all the way down the back of my neck, straight to my heart like an injection, and it is too much, it is always too much. I imagine it, that's what I am told, I am merely imagining my misery, isn't that what we are always told, it's all in the head, but why is that statement always tossed off, undervalued? When the bodies are gone and forgotten, it is all in the head, and that is the disgust of it all, it is all inside me, no one else. I pull off the side of the road, the car rattling against the gutter, plush leather seat stabbing me
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