It was impossible for you to understand it until the second before your death. But there have been hints. Bad feelings at parties. Half-remembered movements from a nightmare you can't explain without sounding silly.

Up until this second, you have had an idea of the shape of your life. You have a story explaining who you are. This is a story you've told to others and, mostly, to yourself. The story is wrong. You can't know the story yet. You can't know the story because you don't know the secret. And you won't know the secret until the second before you die.

The secret has underpinned and influenced all the major events of your life. It has been present at every disappointment, every small victory, every moment spent laughing or sneezing or allowing your chattering mind to slacken in front of a screen.

In a way, you already know the secret. You have always known. And in the small eternity of that second before your death, the tenuous connecting threads of the narrative you've built for yourself will unravel, and the truth will come into its inescapable alignment.

Think about these songs, or try not to. It doesn't matter. Because the one you hate the most is going to get stuck in your head the minute before you die.

You retrace your footsteps. You stand baffled in the room you were in just a moment ago. You're really close to remembering. It'll come to me any minute now, you think.

You're alone in your kitchen. It's possible there's someone else coming home to join you; it's possible there isn't. Who has time to remember these things?

You don't recognize the handwriting. But then, it's not really handwriting. More like scratches on paper, hurried but hard. The marks are deep enough that they show up as raised lines on the other side of the paper: PLEh

Maybe it's a prank. Not even a particularly clever one, at that. Maybe it was a friend who stopped by for a visit, or the person who might be coming home to join you. You could have written it.

Hello? You call to your empty kitchen. Is anyone there? The refrigerator hums. The ice settles with a muffled clack. You throw the note away as if it will do any good.

You make a call to your local animal hospital. No, they don't take wild birds. You imagine taking them home, giving them a warm place and a meal for their final hours. But you know that won't work. You wouldn't know how to carry them or what to feed them. Plus you don't want to touch them. It seems gross.

You don't know why you're always the one to find these birds. You just know you want to do something for them and their tiny, broken bird necks. You think of putting down your beloved dog when he got too sick to walk. You think of all the people you've known who go on about what should be done without ever taking action. You know what you have to do.

You really make a mess of the first one. You're not wearing even close to the right kind of shoes. Plus you hesitated because, well, you're not a monster. You had to finish the job in a nightmarish frenzy. When it was over, you were sweating, despite the unseasonable cool. You felt queasy and exhilarated. You are not violent by nature, but when the occasion arose, you stepped up. The colors around you seem a little sharper now, and the pain in your lower back has subsided. Your sense of smell—you always seem to be congested these days—is coming in clear. Taking something out of this world has brought you back into it. You would never say you enjoyed doing what you did. But you know you feel more alive than you did in the moments before the dying bird.

The rest of your encounters end in a similar way, but cleaner. You're more confident, and you make a point to wear heavy shoes. You walk through your neighborhood feeling like an angel of mercy. You imagine your footsteps bring the writhing birds comfort in their final moments.

Then one day you're outside the hospital, having delivered yet another dying bird—this one was a finch, you're pretty sure—to eternal peace. A woman comes up to you, an expression of horror on her face. She asks why on Earth you did that. You explain you were helping the bird. It was in pain, its neck was broken. She tells you that's almost definitely not true: birds fly into things and get stunned, sometimes, but rarely do their necks break. Mostly, after a few minutes or an hour, they get up and fly away unharmed.

You don't have much to say except Oh before you slink away. There's blood and a single, mottled feather on your shoe. You walk away from the woman and the bird with no destination. You really need to wipe your shoe.

You don't know them. They're much younger than you. The first thing you notice about them—even if you're not the kind of person who normally notices or pays attention to these things—is that they have really nice skin. It's practically perfect. They have striking eyes as well. Very large irises. You look at them, a little curious, a little annoyed, and wait for them to say something. They don't. Instead, they smile. It's a big smile, but you wouldn't exactly describe it as a friendly one. And though they're looking right at you, it seems like it's a smile that's not meant for you. It's a smile that is maybe only even tangentially related to you.

Around you, people are brushing past. You realize that wow, their irises are really big. Like maybe it's unhealthy for them to be that big. You are frightened for them, for their health. This is what you tell yourself as fear swells in your belly and your thighs.

And then they're gone. They turn and walk away without a backward glance. You relax your shoulders, which were bunched up by your ears, and unclench your sphincter. That was weird, you think. You keep walking. After an hour, you've basically forgotten the encounter. A lingering unease burbling up from your stomach is its only trace.

Months pass. You walk your normal routes. Sometimes you feel uneasy and you don't know why. One day, you look up as a bus drives by. For a split second, you make eye contact with someone. It seems as if they'd been staring at you. You remember the moment on the sidewalk then. Is it the same person? The bus windows are smudged and dirty. It's impossible to tell with any certainty. But the feeling was the same: the smile, the perfect skin. The too-large eyes upon you.

The moments of unease increase in the weeks following. You catch glimpses of what might be them in cafés, on distant park benches, on high floors of office towers. You're out for a walk, and to one side of you is a wide field. On the other side of the field, a figure stands there, motionless. It's too far to see, but you know who it is. The apartment across the alley from yours, the one where you could sometimes spot the young couple making love in their window. Someone is staring out their bedroom window, standing right where the bed used to be. The couple moved out a month ago. You pull your curtain back, stare, and give a wave.

And then, abruptly, they stop. You wait weeks. You look for them through windows and open fields. No sign of them. More weeks, still nothing. You know this should come as a relief. But you feel a small sense of loss. You were getting used to seeing them. You're convinced they were conveying a message. And now you'll never know what they were trying to tell you.