Intermission: The Suit, pt 1.

Up at the crack of dusk. Hilarious, he thinks. To someone who's never heard the joke, certainly. Graveyard Shift had been another good one for about five minutes. He lets out a dry laugh and laces his shoes. No calls today. No double shifts. No extra hands. (Funny for far longer than it should have been.)

No big accidents. Pity.

Shirt tucked. Belt buckled. Tie.. tied. What is the action for ties? He wonders, not realizing he's spoken aloud. Jacket on. Slick black number. New. Unsullied. Middle button only. As an afterthought, he attaches a pair of tasteless cufflinks from his mother: A tombstone on the left, a skull and crossbones on the right. Pretty funny, eh? She had genuinely looked at them and thought her son would wear it. So he did.

His hair-combing, a stall in any case with unmanageable follicles, took twice as long as it should have, to make up for expediency in deciding which button, to button. He glanced at the clock and smiled. Quarter to eight. Fifteen minutes to drive for half of an hour to work. He would have to speed. As he always did. The car unlocks with a soft, strange noise: The music from the exact moment lightning strikes Frankenstein's monster, from the version the man saw as a child. The music is pitched down and chopped into a manageable almost-beep. Nothing in back to slow the drive, either.

He had carpooled, just once, with a coworker who shared his shift. Just once. Are you trying to get us killed? He remembers that he smiled, at that moment, and said no in a voice that was completely genuine. What, then, was he doing on the highway, cleaving time into manageable chunks through sheer speed, in the company car?

Don't do that! Sixteen. Driving practice with his mother. He zooms right up to the nearest car, switches lanes right behind them, at double their speed. Bumpers nearly kiss before momentum pulls him up onto the median, driving through dirt and grass.

This is how the man drives: One near collision to the next, like a beam of light over mirrors.
Swerve.
Back bumper of a red sports car.
Swerve.
Driver side door of an ugly white pickup.
Swerve.
Left turn, rear view mirror passes a hairs breadth from an incoming car's.
Swerve.
Attach, parasitically, to the backdraft of an eighteen-wheeler barreling erratically down the road, unknowing.

Miraculously, he arrives at the mortuary under his own power. From the glovebox he takes a small pad and paper, and adds a small tick mark. There are over a thousand of these such marks.