The deer stood obscured by the woods at the edge of the highway, its great height made even more impressive by the sharp branches of antlers glinting under the moon. Next to the deer stood a chicken, shivering with roughed-up feathers, full of rain, with the stain of what looked like a drop of blood on its right wing.

Moonlight lit the road, which was slick and sticky with heat, red as a flood of epinephrine and dopamine through the body. They asked existential questions between them, about how to be, and why? about how to live and when to die?  The chicken studied the stars while the deer studied the cars whizzing around the bend.

To cross the road requires perfect timing, said the deer. The chicken began to flap its wings, while the deer coiled its legs like a spring. Moonlight lit the road, which was slick and sticky, and red as grenadine mixed with butterflies.

The deer was at his highest point when the Range Rover hit him; antlers punctured the windshield, impaled the driver through the chest, bringing the Range to roll before collapsing in on itself, causing a massive pile-up. Compiled from dashboard cameras and CCTV, the footage was replayed over and over on the news: moonlight lit the road, slick and sticky as strawberry jam the morning after a red tide.

The next day, over and above the scene in a tree on the other side of the highway, slick with rain and red with dahlias, the chicken roosted having made the first in what would be a long number of crossings – back and forth – each with seemingly less purpose than the previous, but each with more knowledge and depth of the red road than any who had come before.