Re-Edited Until the Deadline

tw: death, lewdness

“I love you.

“It’s hard to explain.

“This is a lot for me to confess, so I really appreciate you giving me grace as I collect myself, because the thought of not talking to you or telling you anything besides how I truly feel would tear me apart, and I want to establish off the bat that this has nothing to do with your looks because to me you are a transcendent being with no physical form, because I can’t see you, of course, although I know you would have the most perfect breasts or a mastodon-sized penis if you manifested yourself, but I want to tell you that l really love how kind and powerful you are—more so your kindness compared to your power, although in a weird way it’s hot how you have power over me, to command my very fate with your deliberately chosen words, like I’m someone who likes to get choked during sex, or someone who gets turned off when a potential partner becomes too nice, even though I don’t get turned off when you’re too nice because I can sense the kindness in everything you write, like how you don’t kill off your characters gratuitously, or how all everyone in your stories has purpose, like I’m sure my purpose right now is to make this confession to you…

“But anyone can be kind, or powerful, or both, and anyone else who’s kind and powerful I probably would not have such strong feelings for. There’s something deeper, something about you specifically that—”

Jarrel goes on like this.

He is struck by lightning and dies instantly, gratuitously, before his body hits the ground.

Before he died, he talked with his hands. Literally, his hands mimic mouths and the words came out of them. He stood on the roof of a random house, on a random day, with neutral weather. His eyes darted in every direction as if he were talking to someone who exists everywhere at once (which he may have believed). Granted, he rarely made eye contact while talking. This could have been due to social anxiety or undiagnosed autism.

Prior to his death, Jarrel was bald, yet for the sake of this freak occurrence achieving the maximum amount of exaggeration, he had hair upon the fatal lightning strike. It did not grow, per se, but rather it appeared. One may interpret this as time stopping in the fraction of a millisecond between the moment the lightning bolt shot from the sky and the moment it struck Jarrel’s crown so that an afro, not dissimilar to the one he fashioned during his senior year of high school, can be drawn onto his head. This application of hair may also be interpreted as painted on, although the acts of drawing and painting imply that the world this Jarrel exists in resides on a paper or canvas, which would further imply that Jarrel lives in a cartoon world. Other interpretations on this acquisition of hair can be that it was sculpted on or transplanted. In any case, hair was necessary so that, once time turned back on and the lightning struck him, his hairs would stand straight up, dramatizing the event further.

His corpse tumbled off the roof and onto a concrete driveway. The fall to the driveway was accompanied not with a thud but with a splat. Given the prevalence of hidden cameras throughout the nation, a camera has likely recorded a video of the event and will automatically upload it to the internet. A splat instead of a thud upon his corpse hitting the ground will make his death less traumatic for the toddlers who will inevitably stumble upon the footage on their mother’s smartphone but will be a few years shy of desensitization to human suffering.

It was during the descend from the roof of the random person’s home to that same random person’s driveway when two more amendments were placed upon Jarrel’s lifeless body. His shirt visibly changed as he fell, which is evident if one would not be too hung up on the visual of the lightning mercilessly unaliving him. It was not until the splat and subsequent settling of the corpse’s giggling flesh post-concrete bounce that the amendments became clear: he was wearing a red swastika t-shirt, and his face was covered with tattoos of penises, one across his forehead, and one on each cheek, curving from the base of each ear to point to both corners of his mouth. Extraordinarily, further retconning will reveal this shirt-tattoo combo on every image of him in existence, including pictures and videos of him posted on social media and saved to the private cellphones of loved ones and estranged friends/family members, as well as physical photos of him at his mother’s house, regardless of his age or setting at the time those photos were taken. An uncleanable blemish on his legacy.

The neighborhood in which he died is quiet. No one is home, in fact. There are parked cars, but the entire street is deserted without explanation. This very important detail is to ensure that Jarrel died alone and wanting.

Jarrel’s tenth worst fear was to be stuck by lightning and not receive lightning superpowers. Unrequited love was somewhere among the top nine. Before he died, he talked about loving me. At the beginning of this story, you, the reader, thought you were reading a love story. I am sorry. There is not enough space for such a thing. There is a plant in the livingroom that needs to be watered. The kitchen counter is littered with containers of honey and peanut butter and chili oil. A pyramid of little Whataburger spicy ketchup cups has been erected, of which I do not want to waste. Too many worn clothes are scattered across the bed, but they might be necessary to wear again throughout the week. A corner has already been reserved for new novels that will take me years to start reading. There are Q-tips, ChapSticks, coasters, tablets, candles, gaming consoles, dirty skillets, balls of socks, loose cardboard, a giant mirror with an I-pod frame, hidden Nerf guns, cases of water bottles, meticulously organized piles of trading cards, and unfinished bags of Japanese candy.

Not enough space for him. Or you. Or me.