The Perfectly Sterile Demise of Arthur Pumble

Arthur Pumble was a man who saw death in every dust mote, disease in every doorknob. His medicine cabinet resembled a small pharmacy, his home a hermetically sealed lab. He self-diagnosed with everything from Martian flu to spontaneous combustion, meticulously logging his imagined symptoms. He was so vigilant against the grand, exotic maladies – the ones with unpronounceable names and terrifying Wikipedia pages – that he overlooked the mundane. He'd just finished sterilizing his already sterile kitchen, wiping down the already gleaming floor tiles for the third time, convinced a rogue microbe from his recycled air might have settled. Stepping back to admire his work, he tripped over his own oversized, ergonomic, anti-slip house slipper, hit his head on the precisely angled corner of his custom-built, germ-resistant countertop, and died instantly. Cause of death: "Accidental Blunt Force Trauma." His last, fleeting thought, if he had one, was likely not about a flesh-eating bacterium, but perhaps, "Why didn't I worry about *that*?"