Shuteye

Crash and burn these brain cells gasping for another moment...Burned out and born again. He listens to Iarla O Lionaird and thanks God he doesn't understand the language, for comprehension would spoil the moment, and the tears have just begun to fall.

They don't hang around for very long, do they?

He thinks his grasp on sanity is weakening, the architecture of his mind proven defective, constructed with shoddy workmanship. He's blunted his emotions in so many ways over the years that some of it was bound to work. Wanna be stupid, wanna play dumb.

Next morning finds him him sitting behind the wheel, thinking that a good chunk of his life has been wasted commandeering an automobile to and from countless shitty jobs with no future, the stereo's volume extracting even more of his precious hearing than he can afford to lose, what with the other irreversible nerve damage.
A man gets used to the ringing. What choice does he have? Can't stop it. Adjust or go insane. Liable to go insane anyway, so you may as well put it off till then.
Cruising at 80 down the endless Interstate, enveloped in the sound world he's chosen for the day...on this particular day it's a Sigur Ros album, Takk. With 85% of his concentration on the music and the other 15% on driving it's a wonder he doesn't have an accident. He is immersed in the sounds, he closes his eyes.

A nice straight stretch of highway, so his steady hand keeps him moving as he tilts his head back and decides not to open his eyes.

The straightness of the highway gives way to a sharp curve, but his steering hand remains stable, no plans to move it.

The car clips another vehicle, an old Econoline van, which barely escapes rolling. His eyes squeezed shut with effort, he collides, in the cab of his Ford Taurus with "Glosolia" swirling in the air, with a gas pump, then careens into the store, glass windows smashing and crashing all over the place and a loud explosion directly behind where the gas pumps had caught fire and blown up with the force of a bomb.

When rescue crews finally located him, his eyes were open. But his body was broken beyond healing and his heart had stopped beating.

The last one starved.