It could have been a tin can but it was most likely someone crossing the street. I probably couldn’t see them because they were cloaked with nightfall. I look into the rear-view mirror, barely having felt a thing. Tin can? Person? Tin Can? Person. It was a person.
I drive back around the block just once to make sure and see a tin can, flattened, lying in the middle of the street. It was a person. I’m positive it was a person. Did I lock the door? Did I make sure that there were no bears in the back yard? Is the stove off? Did I prevent a grease fire? Can I start a grease fire? What’s home owner’s insurance like? Does it cover grease fires?
The tin can is plastered to the asphalt, glinting dimly under my headlights. It was a person.
I am the worst of villains. I have turned a person into a tin can.
This time it’s not the OCD. It’s not the ADHD. It’s not the BP II or DID or the BPD or ED brought on by GAD. This is REAL.
No one will have to know. I’ll go back into my house. Tin cans don’t have blood, so they won’t be able to check it for DNA or anything like that. It was under my tire, so they might be able to identify my car that way, but I’m not so sure I left an identifiable mark. How could I have done this? How could I have accidentally hit a person in the middle of the night and flattened him into, not just the shape, but the form and elemental composition of a tin can?
I pull into my driveway. I begin to sweat. My eyeballs are sweating, too. They’re sweating a dark brown effluvium that I can’t keep from dripping. It drips aggressively. It is the most active dripping I have ever seen any liquid perform. I touch it with my fingers and it snakes around them and down my cheeks onto my white t-shirt where it spells out “Killr.” It can’t even spell correctly. Neither can I. I can barely remember how to spell misspell. I spell it in my head. Em-Aye-Ess…Ess? No. Em-Aye-Ess… Yes. Em-Aye-Ess-Ess-Pee-Ee-El-El.
I turn the car off, breathing discreetness. I walk into my house, greeting my cats and girlfriend as if nothing has happened. “Hello, everyone, I am so fucking happy!” It comes out all wrong. I though I was going to say yo but my mouth betrayed me like it’s done a million times before.
Everyone looks at me suspiciously. I think my girlfriend has already phoned the police. My cats are ready to be put into their crates, sent off to live with my girlfriend and her new boyfriend, who is not a manslaughter can-turner.
I still try to act calm. Chances are my girlfriend is in too much shock to call the police. You really think you know a guy and then, bam, he doesn’t even take down the can’s information or call the police. I look out the window. There it is. The man-turned-can whose family will probably miss him dearly.
Four hours later I am still staring out the window, hoping that this new homunculus I’ve made doesn’t revert to its true form. I fall asleep at the window sill. The next morning, the can is gone. Perhaps in my sleep I called some kind of cleaning service. Perhaps I told them “I’m agoraphobic and have a mental disease that makes me stare at cans. Please remove this from my neighborhood. I will PayPal you the money.” That has to be what happened.
For another day, I am free from the chains of the US justice system. But for how long will my tyranny last before I am finally discovered?