Gleb hung upside down.

The world flipped three seconds ago. Before that, Gleb was a successful architect in a two-thousand-euro suit, rushing to a meeting to present a model of a forty-story needle.

Now Gleb was a chunk of flesh trapped in the chewed metal of an Audi lying in a ditch.

The seatbelt pressed into his collarbone with the enthusiasm of a boa constrictor. Somewhere, dripping: drip… drip… drip… Gasoline or blood. Didn’t matter.

Gleb’s leg was broken. He knew because his bone protruded from his Armani pants like an antenna picking up the Universe’s signal.

There was no pain. Only white noise.

Gleb looked through the shattered windshield.

There, exactly fifty centimeters from his face, in the ditch’s mud, a dandelion swayed. It looked like a ghostly light. The wind methodically dismantled its perfect sphere.

And then it hit Gleb.

His brain, freed by the impact from all social constructs, suddenly saw everything at once.

Accustomed to drawing straight lines, he now distinguished the perfect geometry of chaos. The crumpled Audi metal twisted into Fibonacci spirals, the protruding bone created a perfect golden angle with the horizon. This wasn’t an accident. This was a masterpiece.

He saw himself, broken, shattered, crushed. This was Death.

And in the same instant, he saw how a sunbeam refracted in a gasoline drop, creating a rainbow that would make Van Gogh jealous. This was Life.

They didn’t stand in line. They didn’t fight. They fucked.

Horror and Beauty intertwined into one tight knot.

Gleb suddenly realized the radio still worked. From the speaker, pressed into the dashboard, a cheerful DJ’s voice broadcast:

“…and now for all lovers - the hit of the season! Let’s go!”

And some unbearably tacky pop song started playing. “I’m your baby girl, poochy-woochy…”

In his world, this would be blasphemy. Dying to “poochy-woochy” - that’s disgrace.

But in the world Gleb flew into through the windshield, this was the only right thing.

This idiotic song was as much a part of God as his protruding bone. As the dandelion.

Gleb felt laughter rising in his throat.

This wasn’t hysterical laughter. This was the laughter of Buddha who finally got the joke.

He hung in a mangled pile of iron, bleeding out, listening to shitty music, and staring at a flower.

He was BOTH a victim of the crash AND the center of the Universe.

At that moment, people ran to the car. Someone’s hands reaching, someone yelling: “Don’t touch him, spine!”, someone filming on a phone.

Gleb looked at them with an inverted gaze. They were pale, frightened, serious. For them, this was Tragedy. Only Tragedy.

“Fools,” Gleb thought with incredible tenderness.

He wanted to tell them everything was fine. That there was no tragedy. That there was only thick, rich broth of reality where everything floats together. That a broken bone is just design, and fear is just vibration.

He wanted to shout: “Look! I’m dying, and I’m happy! It’s the same thing!”

But instead, he gurgled blood and said:

- Turn it… louder.

- What? - a man in a cap asked, leaning toward him. - Are you in pain?

Gleb closed his eyes. The dandelion’s light imprinted on his retina. His heart beat perfectly in sync with “poochy-woochy,” and darkness covered him softly, like bass in expensive headphones.

- I’m… - Gleb whispered, feeling laughter tickle his lungs. - I’m… amused.

And he passed out with the smile of an idiot who’d grasped the absolute.