text: I'm a high school student so I don't have an incredible amount of experience writing. I'd appreciate some advice, although I'm sort of nervous about posting here lol. Thunk. Immediately, I knew what had happened. I begged for it to have been a rock, or a piece of debris on the road, but I knew better. Supposing it immoral to wish it to be a particular species of animal, I still couldn’t resist dearly hoping it not to be a cat. I pulled over my car. I was incredibly terrified to glance over at what I had done. I, instead, temporarily focused on assessing the damage done to my dilapidated little beater. I couldn’t identify any damage to it immediately. Dread creeped inward and shivers ran down my spine realizing that it was time to look at the animal I had mercilessly slaughtered. I doubted that the average person would turn around for such an event, and it provided me a slight amount of comfort in that I felt particularly caring. It was a raccoon. Its insides had been squeezed out of its mouth like a tube of toothpaste. I nearly vomited at the sight of it. Shock and guilt rung through me like a bell, sending shivers through my body from head to toe. The fragility of mortality never left my thoughts, and the consideration of my inevitable accompaniment of my raccoon acquaintance into nothingness consumed my thinking power. I sat down quickly upon the pavement, attempting to dismiss the previous events as meaningless. Thinking about the gruesomeness of the death of the raccoon, I forced the conclusion upon myself that the death was quick and relatively painless due to shock. I felt immeasurably envious of what I perceived as the “average person’s” dismissal for the slaughtering of animals. I briefly entertained the idea that perhaps the raccoon experienced some sort of afterlife, but, of course, I dismissed the comforting fantasy almost immediately. The thought that I would likely keep the trauma and guilt I experienced in this incident to myself forever for fear of ridicule spun me deeper into despondency. With the neverending pondering of the existential nature of our existence infinitely amplified by the gruesome face of the raccoon’s demise, the thought that I will someday end up like it pounded at my skull. My consideration for the amount of time I had spent staring at this piece of roadkill had been long since gone. I simply couldn’t move on from this incident. It ate at my insides furiously, immobilizing my brain from even considering leaving. I internally wept, having not actually cried for many years. I briefly felt as though I had some sort of cosmic connection with this animal, however the nihilistic nature of my beliefs eventually stripped me of this feeling. I felt hopeless, as if I were in a vast sea of despair of which no other person could relate. I eventually stumbled back to my car, wishing for the last time to no one that the innocent animal I had slaughtered had had a good, long life. I collapsed into the driver’s seat of my car, turned the engine over and continued my way back home. The thought that I could become that poor raccoon, an innocent victim to a reckless driver, at any point never left my brain for the rest of my drive. I eventually arrived at my destination, much to my dismay. My home was an old, run-down duplex in the worst part of my city. Although I worked a 40 hour work week, such a property was all I could single handedly afford, and even then I was still deep in debt to predatory student loan agencies and regular loan agencies the like. I sat in my chair, and lit a bowl. The cheap cannabis tasted like chemicals, and was probably filled with them. Nonetheless, it did its job of erasing the raccoon forever from my memory.