Ryan turned the key, revving the engine of his dull-gray Ford. As the car spurted to life, both vehicle and owner released similar sighs of exhaustion. Having just finished a ten-hour shift at Culver's, a local fast-food chain, the young man was ready for a long night's sleep once he returned home. With his left hand, he turned on his headlights, which stained the dark and desolate parking lot with beams of white. The restaurant had closed at ten o'clock. It was now eleven o'clock, and Ryan's was the only car left. While his coworkers had wasted no time in leaving after they'd finished closing, Ryan remained. Today had been a tiring day. The work itself had been easy enough. He bussed tables, took orders, helped in the kitchen, assembled the orders, and delivered the final product to their beloved "guests". Simple stuff.
However, after several hours of complaining customers and pessimistic coworkers his misanthropic inclinations were at an all-time high. He pulled out of the designated employee parking, far from the front of the restaurant, and set off for home where he lived with his mom, dad, and three siblings. Before he turned onto the main street, he contemplated calling his mom. Although the young man was twenty years old, on the cusp of adulthood, he still called his mother every night before heading home.
He fished his phone out of his pocket and was just about to call her when he stopped himself.
This is stupid. She'll see me in ten minutes, thought Ryan as he set his phone on the passenger side seat. It was pretty late at night, but he knew his mom would be awake. She always waited patiently in the living room until all her children returned to the nest. Still, Ryan really didn't feel like talking to anyone right now. He'd apologize to his mother at home; she'd forgive him easily.
So, Ryan turned left, heading southbound to the house where his mother waited. As he breathed in the chilly air from the AC, he glanced to either side of the street and noticed the changes that had befallen his city. Countless trees had bent under the gale force winds they'd received earlier in the day. Mailboxes, white-picket fences, and telephones poles had all been smashed by the great pieces of uprooted timber. On a normal day, Ryan could count on the streetlamps and stop lights to illuminate his way home, but the stormy winds had stolen that light from Omaha, Nebraska. While the moon cast a faint shimmer down on the cars and streets, the main illuminators were the headlights of Ryan and his fellow drivers.
He stopped as he came to a lightless intersection. The car ahead had just advanced as their turn at the four-way-stop came. He now eagerly awaited his turn. The cycle repeated, and after three turns of cars clearing the space one after another, his turn arrived. Following the advice that he'd often heard as a child, he looked to the left and then to the right before crossing the street. Seeing that it was all clear, he entered the intersection.
Letting out another sigh, he tried unwinding his troubled mind. Maybe he'd watch an anime when he arrived home. After a long day at work, sleep seemed impossible. Although he had to work tomorrow morning, he'd probably spend two, three, maybe even four hours indulging in the Japanese media. He wasn't particular about the genre. Yesterday, he'd finished a romance between two star-crossed lovers. The series before that had been a political drama set in a fantasy world.
Having seen hundreds of anime, Ryan was beginning to grow slightly tired of Japanese cliches and tropes. Many were different than those found in the west and had fascinated him at first, however, over time, disillusion had begun to creep in. Stories with heroes transported to another world were commonplace, and they all ended with the death of a demon king and an era of peace and prosperity. He'd never been a fond of fairy tale-like happy endings. He often thought to himself that mankind had long ago told the last unique story; those of the modern day were just retellings. Cliches frustrated him to no end. He saw them as proof of an author's unoriginality.
His internal rant had failed in relaxing his mind. All he found was another thing that annoyed him.
It was at this moment that Ryan noticed he was still in the middle of the intersection. While it shouldn't have taken him more than five seconds to cross the four lanes of traffic, he found himself stuck in place, having only barely crossed the median. As much as he loathed the cliché, it was as though time itself had stopped. The reason why slowly became apparent. Though the crossing should've been clear of all cars, beside his own, Ryan noticed a black pickup truck approaching from the right. It fought against the stagnant time, inching ever closer to Ryan's Ford. An impact was certain. His fate sealed.
Sensing his incoming death, all he could think of were the logistics behind the phenomena unfolding before his eyes. It was certainly cliché. In books and movies, characters were always given a berth of time before death took them from this world. Some saw their lives flash before their eyes. Others were given a chunk of borrowed time with which they performed one last, heroic act. For Ryan, it was neither. It was as though the world had simply given him a few moments to accept his impending death. He'd be a victim of vehicular homicide, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was living through a cliché without purpose.
The grim reaper in the guise of that black truck rammed into Ryan's shoddy car with more horsepower than it could handle. As a series of events unfolded, Ryan wished that he'd been in the passenger seat, or that the car had come from the left instead of his right. That way, he would've died instantly. Sadly, neither was true. Still in slowed time, the right of Ryan's car caved in. His phone hurtled toward the windshield and smashed a fist-sized hole through the glass. The resulting shards assaulted his bare arms and face like a hail of needles.
Inertia propelled the mutilated car backwards, where it met the stone median he had just barely passed. The vehicle overturned, and as it did Ryan felt a hard knock to his head. Whatever happened next was both irrelevant to Ryan and impossible for him to know because he was on the verge of unconsciousness.
In the recesses of Ryan's brain two electronic signals fired. The first chain was his last regret: the call that his mother would never receive. Their conversations never lasted long.
"I'm heading home," Ryan would say,
"Okay. Be safe," his mother would lovingly reply.
Short as they were, Ryan desperately wished he could've heard his mother's words one last time. "I love you" hung in his throat, but words were beyond him now.
The other message was less heartfelt. It contained his utter distain for humanity. He hated the entitlement of customers that frequented his place of work. He hated his incompetent coworkers who incited the customers' wrath with their foolish mistakes. And he hated himself for being powerless to lash out at anyone. He always played the arbiter, the placater, the sympathizer. As a result, he was well-liked. Customers loved him and his coworkers depended on him. Still, there was nobody whom Ryan considered a friend. He kept his thoughts to himself and confided in no one. And so, he would die alone with only his family to remember him.
At the end, though his vision was pitch black, Ryan heard a voice. He felt it as little more than vibrations. It held neither tone nor pitch; neither effeminate nor masculine.
"I'm so sorry. I didn't notice the stoplight because it was out. Hey, are you okay?"
Ryan discerned that the voice was the owner of the black truck. They had run the light. They were the cause of his end.
"Fuck you!" That he could speak at all was a miracle, and the curse marked the end of Ryan's life.