Mike Ryan drove a truck. Not a big truck, not a small truck. A medium truck. It was a medium truck with a medium engine and a medium cab and a medium bed that held medium loads of medium goods from medium places to medium destinations. It was the kind of truck that existed in the space between important and unimportant, and Mike was fine with that. He had been fine with that for twenty years.

He lived in Iron Creek, Ohio, which was a town that used to make things and now just existed. The factories had closed in the nineties. The people had left in the two thousands. What was left was a main street with three businesses that were open most of the time, a diner that was open all of the time, and a bar that was open most of the nights.

Mike lived above the bar. The bar was called O'Malley's, though O'Malley had died five years ago and the bar was now owned by a man named Ray who was not Irish and didn't care. Mike lived in a one-room apartment above the bar with a kitchen that was really a corner of the room, a bathroom that was really a closet, and a bed that was really a mattress on the floor.

He had a job. He was a death registrar for the town of Iron Creek. His job was simple: when someone died, he went to their house, filled out a form with their name, their age, and the cause of death, and filed it with the county.

It was not glamorous work. It was not exciting work. It was work, and Mike was fine with work.

Every day, he drove his medium truck to the medium house of the medium dead, filled out the medium form, and drove back to his medium apartment above the medium bar.

One Tuesday, he filled out a form for a woman named Kathleen Ryan. She was thirty years old. The cause of death was heart failure. Mike drove to her house, knocked on the door, and waited.

No one answered.

He knocked again. Still no one.

He tried the door handle. It was unlocked. He opened the door and walked into the kitchen. Kathleen Ryan was sitting at the table, drinking coffee.

"Mrs. Ryan," Mike said. "I'm sorry to bother you, but there's been an accident."

Kathleen looked up. She had the same face she always had—flat, dark, not unkind. "What accident?"

"You died. Three days ago. Heart failure."

Kathleen set down her coffee cup. She looked at Mike for a long time. Then she said: "I know."

Mike felt something move through his chest. It wasn't fear. It wasn't sadness. It was the absence of both—something flat and hollow, like the space between notes in a song he couldn't remember.

"You know?" he asked.

"I know I died. Three days ago. Heart failure."

"Then you're—"

"I'm still here. I know. It doesn't make sense. I don't make sense."

Mike stood in the kitchen and looked at Kathleen Ryan, who was dead but still drinking coffee, and he thought about all the forms he had filled out over the past twenty years. All the names. All the ages. All the causes of death.

How many of them were still here? How many of them were still drinking coffee in their kitchens, going to work, paying their bills, living their lives—dead but not knowing it?

He drove back to his apartment above the bar. He made himself a sandwich. He turned on the television. He went to bed.

The next morning, he went to the county office and looked at the death registry. He looked at all the names, all the dates, all the causes of death. And he looked for his own name.

He found it.

Mike Ryan. Age forty-five. Cause of death: unknown. Date of death: twenty years ago.

Mike sat down. He picked up the phone and dialed the county office. A woman answered.

"This is Mike Ryan," he said. "I'm the death registrar. I have a question."

"Go ahead."

"Who died twenty years ago?"

There was a long silence. Then the woman said: "You did."

Mike hung up the phone. He looked out the window at the town of Iron Creek, which was gray and quiet and full of people who were dead but didn't know it.

He went back to his desk. He picked up a form. He filled it out. He filed it.

And the cycle continued.