I can't sit still. I don't know why I'm like this. I don't know how long I'm going to be like this. I sure as hell don't know enough about the problem to fix it. All I know is that I'm agitated, I'm restless and I can't stop thinking at two-hundred miles a minute. My brain is moving at bullet-train speed, and my body and nerves keep trying to catch up with it. And my thoughts. Jesus Christ, my thoughts are a mess. It's all spiraling into negativity and anger and frustration and irritation and infuriation and every other “ation” that gets on my nerves. It's a mental shitstorm like you wouldn't believe. Why can't I ever think happy thoughts when I'm like this? I can't stay like this. Need to move. Need a distraction. Need to do something. But what the hell am I supposed to do at 3 o'clock in the morning?

I step outside, and the cool air hugs my face like the clingiest girl I never met. It's invigorating. It almost clears my head. Almost. I'm moving before I even realize it. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going somewhere, so that's fine by me. Where I'm headed doesn't matter for right now. Just need to stay moving. It's the only way I can make the agitation go away. After I clear a couple of blocks, I stop for a bit. I still know where I am, which is miraculous given how fucked my sense of direction is most of the time, but I'm thankful for it. Getting lost at 3 A.M is the last thing I need right now. My brain is still hammering along fast enough to give Usain Bolt a scare. I lean against a nearby wall, wishing the weight of the brickwork could help tether me in place for a while. My fingers bring the cigarette to my lips before I can stop them, and I breathe a little easier once I exhale the smoke from my lungs. Wait. When did I light this?

With every step I take, the street just gets more and more unfamiliar. This always happens. I don't even know why I went outside. I can't keep direction to save my life. One of these days, I swear I'm going to make some wrong turn and never find my way back home again. I've smoked maybe three or four cigarettes now. I always consume these things like candy whenever I'm nervous. I don't know what it is about nicotine that calms my nerves when my nerves need calming, but I'm grateful for it. If I'm going to kill myself by inches, I might as well feel alright while I'm doing it. I turn another corner onto another street that looks foreign and familiar at the same time. I've been here before, I know I have. I just don't know when, or what for, or how the hell I got back out. Why can't these things ever stick with me when I need them?

Somehow, I managed to find my way back to my car. I don't know why I didn't think to use this thing sooner. It has one of these “Gee-Pee-Ess” things in it for a reason. The car races past dingy alleys and dirty sidewalks, and I just know I'm going over the speed limit. I don't care. Nobody else is awake right now. I'll be fine. What I do care about is the fact that I still don't know where I'm going. Speeding down this empty street fills me with adrenaline and a wild eagerness to get somewhere, but it doesn't give me any ideas for where the hell I'm supposed to go at this hour. At this rate, I'm going to run out of gas before I figure out what it is I'm trying to do with myself right now. Something moves into the street from one of the sidewalks and I almost jump right out of my skin. I end up cutting the wheel sideways out of reflex and come dangerously close to plowing into a stop sign and suffering death-by-irony. Suddenly my aimless joyride turns into a hell-on-wheels fight for control of my own damned car. Eventually I get things back together. Thank God for large favors. But when I look back to try and eyeball whoever or whatever it was that was stupid enough to get in my way, all I see in my rearview is an empty street with a few skidmarks on its surface. Let's hope that doesn't happen again.

I had to get out of the car. The pain. It's unbearable. My doctor calls these things “my-grains” or something. I hate them. It's like having my head slowly crushed from the inside. I don't know what the hell brought this one on, but I can't drive like this. I can't even think like this. As I stumble away from my car, my eyes and brain protest the entire way. I shield my eyes from the lights around me. The street lamps are just making it worse. Every time there's a light source nearby when one of these things comes on, it feels like the light is searing into my skull. My body keeps twitching on its own. I desperately want to put a stop to it. I want to put a stop to this whole thing. But I don't know how. Fuck it. For now, I need to sit down somewhere. Someplace quiet and dark where nothing else can bother me.

There's glass on the floor of the shop from where I punched through the window. I have to step carefully around it so that I don't cut myself. I should have put on my shoes before I went outside. I don't know what store this is. It looks like an antiques place. I see old furniture and trinkets all over the place. It's like walking into someplace that's stuck in a time warp. Outside of the shop looks modern and new, but the inside looks old, dated and forgotten. I'm barely ten seconds into that thought before it occurs to me that even places that like this can have those silent alarms installed in them, ready to alert the uniforms at the first sign of a break-in. I just punched through the glass window like some superhero comic book villain about to steal forty cakes. The cops could be on their way right now, and I'd never know. I can't let them catch me here. But I can't go outside either; my head is still pounding, and if I have to face those street lights again, I think I'm going to lose it. There has to be some other way out of this mess. What do I do? Wait. Stores like this have at least one back room. Maybe I can just hide in one of those for a while?

I couldn't get into the back room. Why does everything in this store have to be locked? I'm freaking out now. Any moment, those cops could show up with flashing lights and guns drawn, and I won't be able to do a thing about it. They'll take me away, to a jail or a mental ward or somewhere else I don't want to be, all because I had a my-grain in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't want that. I don't want that at all. It's not long before I'm running out of the store and climbing back into my car at good speed. I can't stay here. I need to go back home before someone sees me and makes a connection. I don't care about the street lights anymore. They can't put me in prison for several years. Right as I'm getting back into my car, I swear that I can hear police sirens off in the distance. I close the door behind me, and then my foot hits the gas faster than it's ever done in my life.

The roar of the car engine is playing hell with my brain, but I force myself to fight through it. I can't stop now, not before I've made it far away from the antiques store and the sirens that are so fucking obviously heading in that direction. I can still hear them over the car's noise and the throbbing pain in my skull, and that terrifies me completely. Street signs sweep by so fast that I can barely make out their details as they pass. I have no regard for the speed limit anymore. There's nothing out here. Nothing but me and my own sins. Or at least, that's what I think at first. Something moves into the street again as I'm driving, and I'm convinced that it's the same something that got in my way the first time. Except now, it shows up even faster, almost too fast for me to react. I swerve off the road in a panic, but not before finally seeing what it is for myself. ...Is that me? My car plows into something, hard. My head snaps forward right as the steering wheel hits my chest and knocks all of the wind out of me. My vision goes hazy and blurry. I'm gone before I can realize what's happening.

When I wake up, I feel numb pains all over my body. My car is flipped over. It must've smacked into something a lot harder than I thought, because the window is fragmented and I can see the hood all torn up from my spot in the driver seat. My door is dented inwards, and I'm pretty sure the rearview mirror on the side is missing. This car looks like how I feel right about now. It takes me some time to climb out of the undamaged door, but as I do, I realize suddenly that one of my legs isn't moving all the way. When I finally get myself out of the car, I'm forced to lay on the ground and crawl. A broken leg. Just what I needed... I can hear some commotion around me. People must've seen or heard what happened. Now they're gathering around to watch the injured man climb out of his totaled heap of a car and pull himself across the asphalt. I don't want to be the center of their attention. I want to get out of here. I want to go home. But I don't have that option anymore. The sharp twinges that show up with my every movement are the first sign that I'm worse off than I realized. The second sign comes when I start coughing and blood comes out of my mouth in thin splatters. It's not long before I stop crawling and lay down, doing my best not to make anything worse than it already is. I've officially fucked up. People are starting to come forward. I hear one talking on the phone with what I can only assume is 9-1-1. The rest are looking at me with some mixture of shock and confusion at what they're seeing. I'm starting to understand that old saying about a car crash you can't bring yourself to look away from. I can only imagine everyone's thoughts on the guy in his pajamas and bare feet who just wrecked a car in the middle of a residential area so early into the morning. Then I see it again, the same figure that got in my way and caused this wreck to begin with. He looks just like me if I were wearing something suitable for outside. He's staring at me, silently, with only the barest expression on his face. I can't tell what he's thinking, and that bothers me more than anything else right now. If that's really me, then I should know what's going on in his head. The fact that I don't just doesn't feel right. Another cough comes along. Another spatter of blood ruins my shirt. When my vision focuses again, the man who looks just like me is gone, leaving an unfamiliar person in his place. I look for him in the crowd out of reflex, expecting to see him somewhere else in the gathering of spectators. I don't find him. Eventually, I wonder to myself if he was ever present to begin with. I start to hear sirens in the distance again, but I'm too exhausted and in too much pain to care about them anymore. My body feels heavy and worn, and my brain feels like it's been kicked into paste. Fatigue is setting in like the most painful blanket I've ever rested under. Suddenly, I'm too tired to pay this scene any more attention. I need rest, and I need it now. Whatever happens afterwards is something I can deal with when it comes. It all comes to an end. I close my eyes. My awareness fades. The world around me goes silent.