It happened on an empty industrial road just after midnight. I was tired, distracted, and going too fast. The impact was sudden and soft in a way that still haunts me ' not like metal, more like falling onto wet ground. I stopped. I got out. I saw enough to know that calling for help would mean prison. So I didn't. I dragged what I'd hit to the verge where shadows hid everything and drove home shaking so hard I could hardly steer. By morning the road was clean. No cameras. No witnesses. Just a missing person report a week later that I pretended not to notice. I still slow down at that stretch of road without knowing why. No one has ever asked me a question.